We are not even officially in a recession yet, let alone a depression. The word depression is used perpetually in the media to describe our economy. These comparisons are irresponsible and only do more to unnecessarily destroy confidence.

Confidence is what makes the economy work.

By way of comparison between today and the Great Depression:

· Unemployment was 25% during the depression, today it is about 6%.

· Our economic output (GDP) shrank by 25% during the depression, over the past year it grew at 3% .

· Consumer prices fell by 30% during the depression, today they are still rising.

· 40% of all mortgages were late by 1934; today only 4% are late.

· In the 1930’s more than 9,000 banks failed, in the past two years there have been about 30 failures.

*statistics taken from MarketWatch.

Thanks again for the great post. It is good to hear something positive for a change!

Truthfully, my husband and I are lucky that we are still in the position to go out to dinner and buy some new clothes (though not at designer stores). But, I do have friends and family who have had to massively scale back on their spending and cut luxuries out of their lives because of job loss or reduced income over the past year.

Attention span of a gnat? Uncalled for.

I don’t know where you saw the media cheerleading home prices. The last 3-4 years all I’ve heard the media do is moan about how we were in a recession or heading for one (despite lack of evidence at the time) and trying to talk down the economy at every turn. And any story I heard about home markets was generally negative because of the rising prices.

You are right about staying calm, but don’t be foolish thinking this is almost over. Keep your powder dry and ready to pounce at a better time. I know most of you probably have the attention span of a gnat, but if you exercise patience and do *research* instead of relying on permabulls for your info, you can actually *make* money in these markets.

I work in the financial services industry, and people are getting crazy with pulling out of their investments. It’s pretty frustrating. We need more people speaking like you and fewer crazy tv people telling the public that the world is ending.

I work in a relatively safe industry (non-profit), but my husband works in retail. Let me just say that when people are dropping anywhere from $250 – $700 on jeans and t-shirts, it’s not a depression.