A tempestuous economic decade, by the numbers

Up and down in the 2000s:

_ On March 10, 2000, the technology-heavy Nasdaq composite index sat atop a bubble at 5,048.62. This past March, it fell as low as 1,293.85.

- In the spring of 2000, unemployment declined to 3.8 percent, the lowest in 30 years. But when the jobless rate hit 10.2 percent this fall, it returned to a level not seen since Ronald Reagan was president.

- Thanks to loose lending, the number of Americans who own their homes climbed to just shy of 70 percent by the middle of the decade — an all-time high. But the collapse of subprime lending, combined more recently with mounting job cuts, has erased those gains. More than 2.1 million homes have been lost to foreclosure since mid-2006, according to listing service RealtyTrac Inc.