Welcome : THE GREATEST DEPRESSION

Consumer confidence is, well ... in somewhat of a depression.
Reuters reports today:

The April 20-23 Gallup survey of 1,013 U.S. adults found that only 27 percent said the economy is growing. Twenty-nine percent said the economy is in a depression and 26 percent said it is in a recession, with another 16 percent saying it is "slowing down," Gallup said.

Tyler Durden notes:

That means that more Americans think the country is in a Depression, let alone recession, than growing.

How can so many Americans believe that we're in a depression, when the stock market and commodity prices have been booming? As I noted last week:

Instead of directly helping the American people, the government threw trillions at the giant banks (including foreign banks; and see this) . The big banks have - in turn - used a lot of that money to speculate in commodities, including food and other items which are now driving up the price of consumer necessities [as well as stocks]. Instead of using the money to hire Americans, they're hiring abroad (and getting tax refunds from the government).

But don't rising stock prices help create wealth?

Not really. As I pointed out in January:

A rising stock market doesn't help the average American as much as you might assume.
For example, Robert Shiller noted in 2001:

We have examined the wealth effect with a cross-sectional time-series data sets that are more comprehensive than any applied to the wealth effect before and with a number of different econometric specifications. The statistical results are variable depending on econometric specification, and so any conclusion must be tentative. Nevertheless, the evidence of a stock market wealth effect is weak; the common presumption that there is strong evidence for the wealth effect is not supported in our results. However, we do find strong evidence that variations in housing market wealth have important effects upon consumption. This evidence arises consistently using panels of U.S. states and individual countries and is robust to differences in model specification. The housing market appears to be more important than the stock market in influencing consumption in developed countries.

I pointed out in March:

Even Alan Greenspan recently called the recovery "extremely unbalanced," driven largely by high earners benefiting from recovering stock markets and large corporations.

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As economics professor and former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich writes today in an outstanding piece:

Some cheerleaders say rising stock prices make consumers feel wealthier and therefore readier to spend. But to the extent most Americans have any assets at all their net worth is mostly in their homes, and those homes are still worth less than they were in 2007. The "wealth effect" is relevant mainly to the richest 10 percent of Americans, most of whose net worth is in stocks and bonds.

I noted in May:

As of 2007, the bottom 50% of the U.S. population owned only one-half of one percent of all stocks, bonds and mutual funds in the U.S. On the other hand, the top 1% owned owned 50.9%.

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(Of course, the divergence between the wealthiest and the rest has only increased since 2007.)

And last month Professor G. William Domhoff updated his "Who Rules America" study, showing that the richest 10% own 98.5% of all financial securities, and that:

The top 10% have 80% to 90% of stocks, bonds, trust funds, and business equity, and over 75% of non-home real estate. Since financial wealth is what counts as far as the control of income-producing assets, we can say that just 10% of the people own the United States of America.

Indeed, most stocks are held for only a couple of moments - and aren't held by mom and pop investors.

How Bad?How bad are things for the little guy?
Well, as I noted in January, the housing slump is worse than during the Great Depression.
As CNN Money points out today:

Wal-Mart's core shoppers are running out of money much faster than a year ago due to rising gasoline prices, and the retail giant is worried, CEO Mike Duke said Wednesday.
"We're seeing core consumers under a lot of pressure," Duke said at an event in New York. "There's no doubt that rising fuel prices are having an impact."
Wal-Mart shoppers, many of whom live paycheck to paycheck, typically shop in bulk at the beginning of the month when their paychecks come in.

Lately, they're "running out of money" at a faster clip, he said.

"Purchases are really dropping off by the end of the month even more than last year," Duke said. "This end-of-month [purchases] cycle is growing to be a concern.

And - in case you still think that the 29% of Americans who think we're in a depression are unduly pessimistic - take a look at what I wrote last December:

The following experts have - at some point during the last 2 years - said that the economic crisis could be worse than the Great Depression:

* Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke

* Former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan (and see this and this)

* Former Fed Chairman Paul Volcker

* Economics scholar and former Federal Reserve Governor Frederic Mishkin

* The head of the Bank of England Mervyn King

* Nobel prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz

* Nobel prize winning economist Paul Krugman

* Former Goldman Sachs chairman John Whitehead

* Economics professors Barry Eichengreen and and Kevin H. O'Rourke (updated here)

* Investment advisor, risk expert and "Black Swan" author Nassim Nicholas Taleb

* Well-known PhD economist Marc Faber

* Morgan Stanley’s UK equity strategist Graham Secker

* Former chief credit officer at Fannie Mae Edward J. Pinto

* Billionaire investor George Soros

* Senior British minister Ed Balls

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States and Cities In Worst Shape Since the Great Depression
States and cities are in dire financial straits, and many may default in 2011.

California is issuing IOUs for only the second time since the Great Depression.

Things haven't been this bad for state and local governments since the 30s.

Loan Loss Rate Higher than During the Great Depression

In October 2009, I reported:

In May, analyst Mike Mayo predicted that the bank loan loss rate would be higher than during the Great Depression.
In a new report, Moody's has just confirmed (as summarized by Zero Hedge):

The most recent rate of bank charge offs, which hit $45 billion in the past quarter, and have now reached a total of $116 billion, is at 3.4%, which is substantially higher than the 2.25% hit in 1932, before peaking at at 3.4% rate by 1934.

And see this.
Here's a chart summarizing the findings:(The chart some pie charts for those that dig those line graphs
video at site links sources and more depressing finding's to rock the holes in your socks its been confirmed we are depressing -figg)