  It is important and informative to compare and contrast major economic crises
in order to confront novel and unknown cases such as the COVID-19 pandemic. The
2006 Great Recession and then the 2019 pandemic have a lot to share in terms of
unemployment rate, consumption expenditures, and interest rates set by Federal
Reserve. In addition to quantitative historical data, it is also interesting to
compare the contents of Federal Reserve statements for the period of these two
crises and find out whether Federal Reserve cares about similar concerns or
there are some other issues that demand separate and unique monetary policies.
This paper conducts an analysis to explore the Federal Reserve concerns as
expressed in their statements for the period of 2005 to 2020. The concern
analysis is performed using natural language processing (NLP) algorithms and a
trend analysis of concern is also presented. We observe that there are some
similarities between the Federal Reserve statements issued during the Great
Recession with those issued for the 2019 COVID-19 pandemic.
