Depression is the inability to construct a future.

No one can possibly have lived through the Great Depression without being scarred by it. No amount of experience since the depression can convince someone who has lived through it that the world is safe economically

Isaac Asimov

Michael Snyder has an interesting article on Seeking Alpha that discusses why the economy is scarier than we have been lead to believe.  His major points why this is worse than the depression:

1 – In the 1930s, Americans lived on farms or knew how to grow their own food. Today’s Americans are dependent on the system for their most basic needs.

2 - A hugh number Baby Boomers will retire, and Social Security has nothing but government IOUs.

3 – Americans never had to compete for jobs with the world. Now, millions of jobs have been "outsourced" to third world nations for less than a dollar an hour.

4 - There was no derivatives bubble.

5 - The US economy was relatively self-contained. Today we  do live in a global economy.

A surprising fact from the article, 10,000 people make 30% of the total income in the United States each year.  So the rest of the 99.99% of people live on the remaining 70%.  Who makes the decisions in that environment?

Read the article.  It is worth a look: http://seekingalpha.com/

Also see http://www.philstockworld.com/

The Great Depression, like most other periods of severe unemployment, was produced by government mismanagement rather than by any inherent instability of the private economy

Milton Friedman

Depression is the inability to construct a future.

Rollo May