While I won’t compare it to the Great Depression right now, I have to say in some regions of the country, unemployment is pretty dang rough.
And I don’t know if California was giving out IOU’s for tax refunds.
That has been true in ANY economic downturn. It always seems to hit ONE group harder than the others. For a while it was aerospace folks in CA and TX, then it was the manufacturing jobs in the Midwest, then it was the Savings and Loan debacle, then the dotcom bust, and now the Financial sector.
In each downturn, there have always been, seemingly at the same time, a real estate downturn. There was one in the early 80's, one in the early 90's, and now the big one, which would not have been SO bad, had it not been fueled by the mortage fraud in which many engaged to buy the houses. This was made worse by the desire to 'flip' houses, to make big bucks, without the thought that maybe, just maybe, someone wouldn't be willing to pay double the original purchase price, with only a few thousand dollars of cosmetic changes having been done. This, combined with the inability to leave the money invested in the house until prices came back up, made for many foreclosures.