Every indicator

More bad news: foreclosures, unemployment, you name it.

It's starting to stack up on us. Earlier layers include the big news - recession since 2008 - and the barely made the news - real income spiral-down over the last few decades.

Back to that recession thing, and Rasmus, he points out: this recession is impressively worse by every economic indicator than every preceding recession this century - but not at depression -- yet.

Until now, recession meant GDP declined 2-4 percent for a couple quarters. This time it's 5-15%. Depressions have been much worse, but we could get there.

Until now, recession meant 10 percent unemployment or less. This time we hit 17%, including a million job losses per month from Nov. 08 to May 09. It's complicated by the fact that the government keeps changing how it calculates unemployment, but controlling for that, it seems clear that we are looking at much worse unemployment now than previous recessions. Depressions have been over 20%. And as public employers continue slashing deep, we could move that way.

Industrial production, exports, and stock markets, all worse than previous recessions. But not hitting levels we had in depressions -- yet. If you want a jolt, read this book.