CNN: Nearly Half of Americans Expect Another ‘Great Depression’ in Next 12 Months

Three unemployed men start a fire for cooking in this vacant lot in New York City, where they live when they are not searching for work, March 23, 1932. (AP Photo)

CNN:

President Barack Obama’s overall approval rating has dropped below 50 percent as a growing number of Americans worry that the U.S. is likely to slip into another Great Depression within the next 12 months, according to a new national poll.
A CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll released Wednesday also indicate that the economy overall remains issue number one to voters, with other economic issues – unemployment, gas prices and the federal deficit – taking three of the remaining four spots in the top five.

These number can‘t be good for President Obama’s reelection plotters.  More importantly they send powerful signals about the authentic fears gripping large numbers of Americans.  Here‘s CNN’s Eliot Spitzer:

The Osama bin Laden bump is now officially gone. We’re back to “It’s the economy, stupid” as the driver of things political.  At least for the moment.

So here is how CNN breaks down the “Great Depression” results:

Forty-eight percent say that another Great Depression is likely to occur in the next year – the highest that figure has ever reached. The survey also indicates that just under half live in a household where someone has lost a job or are worried that unemployment may hit them in the near future. The poll was conducted starting Friday, when the Labor Department reported that the nation’s jobless rate edged up to 9.1 percent.
“The poll reminded respondents that during the Depression in the 1930s, roughly one in four workers were unemployed, banks failed, and millions of Americans were homeless or unable to feed their families,” says Holland. “And even with that reminder, nearly half said that another depression was likely in the next 12 months. That’s not just economic pessimism – that’s economic fatalism.”
According to the survey, more than eight in ten Americans say that the economy is in poor shape, a number that has stubbornly remained at that level since March.

Read more here.
Even PBS is acknowledging that the economy is becoming a bigger and bigger problem for President Obama: