"Full Recession" shouts Morgan Stanley. Blogger Trumpet.com seems to have analyzed the full doom-and-gloom report., the upshot of which is "if even the banks are scared, we're in big trouble":

Morgan Stanley and banks in general often tend to be optimistic in their forecasting, since such reports affect investor and consumer confidence. But this splash of cold water from Wall Street comes from Morgan Stanley’s chief U.S. economist, Dick Berner, the company’s “resident bull.” This indicates that even the most hopeful of analysts are getting ready for a precipitous plunge in the American economy.

New construction is down, even car purchases are down (I always wonder how a small town can support several car dealerships, don't you?).

Lending of all kinds will get tighter. Credit card companies will get "aggressiver and aggressiver" to make a buck, to issue you more credit than you can pay back so they can wrap their shriveled little fists around your $39 late fee!

Just how many homes are going into foreclosure? Andrew Galvin, of the Orange County Register, has done an excellent job analyzing how numbers can vary wildly, depending upon who's counting. RealtyTrac has come under fire for having inflated numbers. In their defense, they count each official step a property passes through on the way to a complete foreclosre. That offers some useful information, since fewer that half of the homes on the way to foreclosure cross the finish line. It also helps their bottom line, since RealtyTrac sells foreclosure listings. The bigger the list the more it's worth, right?

Galvin's article appears on ForeclosuresDaily.com, whose mission is to track individual foreclosures and count each property only once. Though RealtyTrac has ackowledged the potential to mislead that its methodology has had, and has begun implementing some corrections, they persist in making the higher numbers - the "actions" - their main news. You really should read Galvin's whole analysis. It's good. He quotes Jack Kyser, chief economist with the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp., who says:

Figures that overstate problems in the housing market “become sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy in that people are afraid to go out and look for a home."

Not only homebuyers, or prospective homebuiyers, are affected. Butchers and bakers and automakers are affected. Bankers and thiefs and government chiefs.

Robert Mickalson looked through 2,542 listings in his area (also Southern California), one by one. The multiple listing service showed 74 foreclosures (underreported by Realtors). He counted 243.

Though the numbers vary regionally, I suspect it's around 10% nationwide, as Mickalson found in his area. It could be 11% or 12%. What it's not it 60% or even 40%. You'd think the world is coming to an end by reading "foreclosure crisis" and "mortgage crisis" everywhere. Is the tail wagging the dog?

Unfortunately, a lot of players have a hand on that dog's tail. First, the lenders, to be sure, and investors and world markets. We're going to be analyzing this and finding new bugs under the rocks for a long time.