The psychological impact of recession

Jay Bookman talks about the price of foreclosures ...

We talk a lot about the economic and political impact of the Great Recession, and for good reason. But it’s the psychological impact on millions of individuals, the fear and humiliation, that is likely to linger from all this.

No, it won’t have the generation-defining impact of the Great Depression. But like the Depression, this recession shows no sign of being temporary. The dislocation and redefining of goals are long term and massive in scale.

At the moment, stories of recession-related suicides and divorce are still just anecdotal; the data collection systems haven’t caught up to reality. But at every economic level, abandoned houses represent abandoned dreams; they symbolize lost security and futures that may never be realized.