In 2009 the job market was still royally screwed, most real estate markets were still in the gutter, and in generally main street America was not very well off. People were choosing to drag out college longer because the job market was that bad. The only thing that was obvious was that not enough had been done to mitigate the effects of the financial crisis. That's the environment that helped lead to the passage of more banking regulation in Dodd-Frank in 2010, and probably contributed to rates being left so low for so long.