Blogs have been atitter since The Independent held its telescope up, peered across the Atlantic and declared the US of A has been plunged into a new Great Depression.

Sensational!

Quite.

Only it turns out that the photo they ran with the story was taken in 2005. And it’s got nothing to do with increased use of food stamps, like the article implies. It’s people lined up (er, “queuing”) to get free coats in a handout NYC Mayor Bloomberg had organized. In other words, the actual story is: in 2005, New Yorkers came up with 80,000 coats they didn’t need any more in a citywide closet cleanout. (What? You mean they didn’t need to burn them for fuel?!?!?!)

The article also mentions that the increase in food stamp applications has also been influenced by better marketing of the program. Cough.

Look, it’s no fun when the money is tight. I know that feeling well. But a Great Depression?

For most Americans, it’s more like a Great Annoying Few Months In My Life.

Like the people in this Wall Street Journal story from yesterday’s front page. The story reports that increasing numbers of Americans are delaying retirement — actually, delaying taking early retirement, if you accept that 65 is the target for that milestone:

In February, the proportion of people ages 55 to 64 in the work force rose to 64.8%, up 1.5 percentage points from last April. That translates to more than an additional million people in the job pool, according to the U.S. Labor Department.

The trend is supposed to continue into March.

The Independent says the Labor Department is expected to show that we’ve lost 50,000 jobs in March.

The WSJ says over 200,000 people who would have retired in February decided to stay on deck.

Not clear if the 50,000 is net figures after the 200K. I’d assume so–the Labor Department is the source for both articles. Still, an economy that can absorb an extra 200,000 workers every month doesn’t exactly sound like a crisis.

The lead anecdote in the WSJ story, btw, is a fellow who had hoped to retire at 59. He’s changed his mind, now, because his retirement account is down to 240,000 (it’s lost 20 percent of its value in recent months) and he’s having trouble selling his house. He’s dropped its asking price to 250K.

The article doesn’t say whether there’s a mortgage on the house or not. Likely there is. But even if he gets 250K cash out of it when he sells, he’s cutting things mightly close. Back of the envelope calculations say that you need $600,000 in the bank if you want to maintain a living standard of $30,000/annually for 20 years. Is someone who now lives in a house worth something in the neighborhood of 1/4 million going to be happy on 30 grand a year until he’s 79?

So we have a fellow, no offense, sir, who was cutting things pretty close as it was–even if you set aside the fact that his “net worth” was based on an economic projection, not cold hard cash in hand.

The point of the WSJ article is that people whose net worth was based on real estate or the stock market are having to rejigger their retirement plans.

I’m sorry for them–it’s no fun when something you’ve banked on turns out to be a set of misplaced assumptions.

But this isn’t a Great Depression. Sorry. Not even close.

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