The Federal Reserve released a study this week showing that Americans' net worth fell dramatically between 2007-10. However, while reporting on the study, Fox News hosts falsely claimed the decline occurred during the "last three years," even though it's clear the decline began two years before President Obama took office.

Fed: American Families' Net Worth Declined Nearly 40 Percent From 2007-10Federal Reserve: "Median Net Worth Fell 38.8 Percent ... Between 2007 And 2010." From the Federal Reserve's June 12 bulletin:

The Federal Reserve Board's Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF) for 2010 provides insights into changes in family income and net worth since the 2007 survey.1 The survey shows that, over the 2007-10 period, the median value of real (inflation-adjusted) family income before taxes fell 7.7 percent; median income had also fallen slightly in the preceding three-year period (figure 1).

The decreases in family income over the 2007−10 period were substantially smaller than the declines in both median and mean net worth; overall, median net worth fell 38.8 percent, and the mean fell 14.7 percent (figure 2).Median net worth fell for most groups between 2007 and 2010, and the decline in the median was almost always larger than the decline in the mean. The exceptions to this pattern in the medians and means are seen in the highest 10 percent of the distributions of income and net worth, where changes in the median were relatively muted. Although declines in the values of financial assets or business were important factors for some families, the decreases in median net worth appear to have been driven most strongly by a broad collapse in house prices. [Federal ...