Since President Correa took office in January of 2007, the government has embarked on a series of reforms to transform and regulate the financial system. One of the most important effects of the reforms was seen during the world financial crisis and recession. Ecuador was particularly hard hit by the crisis, since oil is its most important export. Oil prices collapsed in the second half of 2008, and the fall-off in remittances was another enormous shock to the economy. These shocks combined were comparable to the falloff in private demand in the U.S. from the collapse of the housing bubble that caused the Great Recession. Yet Ecuador experienced only a mild downturn, losing about 1.3 percent of GDP during three quarters of recession. A year later, or 7 quarters from the onset of the recession, the economy had returned to its pre-recession level of output (this took four years in the United States). Ecuador’s recovery owed much to a successful stimulus plan, amounting to nearly 5 percent of GDP in 2009, one of the biggest in the hemisphere.