Sep. 7--Gas and grocery prices are at all-time highs.

Unemployment is rising.

The stock market's down.

Taxes are going up.

Wages are going down.

Say, brother, can you spare a dime?

"The Greatest Depression is coming," John Finger of The Money Management Firm wrote in 2003. "That's no exaggeration. It will be worse, in many respects, than the Great Depression of 1929-1939."

In 2005, Warren Brussee wrote a book called, "The Second Great Depression."

On March 16, The Independent in London carried a headline, "Wall Street fears for next Great Depression."

"Next Great Depression?" the Toronto Sun asked on June 22.

There's even a Web site called TheNextGreat Depression.com.

But is America really headed for another Great Depression?

Not likely, five state and national economists told the Messenger-Inquirer in interviews last month.

Anyone who thinks the country is headed for another Great Depression doesn't remember the Great Depression or even the recession of 1980, said Ken Troske, director of the University of Kentucky Center for Business and Economic Research.

"I don't think we're in any danger of going into a Great Depression," he said. "In 1980, we had a serious recession that was much more severe than today."

National unemployment peaked at 10.8 percent in December 1982.

Prices jumped 40 percent between 1979 and 1981. The prime rate peaked at 21.5 percent in December 1980. And fixed rate mortgages peaked at 17.5 percent in 1982.

"I don't see anything thing like a Great Depression," said Paul Coomes, an economics professor at the University of Louisville. "People are on their cell phones, listening to their iPods, watching HBO, driving good cars and talking about a depression. People are spoiled, basically."

'Scary earlier in the year'

"It was scary earlier in the year," said James E. Glassman, senior economist with J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. in New York City. "You hear all kinds of extremes. When you hear people talking about another Great Depression, you have to ask, is it somebody credible or somebody making noise?"

Glassman said, "If anybody gave talk of a depression credibility, the markets would not be where they are."

"Some people see doom and gloom," said Manoj Shanker, an economist with the Kentucky Governor's Office for Economic Analysis. "It depends on where you are. But it's not a depression."

"In the late '90s and early 2000s, people were riding the high stock market," said Greg Harkenrider, deputy executive director of the Governor's Office for Economic Analysis. "What we're seeing now is a perceived poverty. Homes have less equity and you can't borrow against them. Part of it is perception."

Technically, a recession means a decline in the Gross Domestic Product for two or more consecutive quarters.

Economics.about.com says a depression "is any economic downturn where real GDP declines by more than 10 percent. By this yardstick, the last depression in the United States was from May 1937 to June 1938, where real GDP declined by 18.2 percent."

The worst recession in the last 60 years, the site says, was from November 1973 to March 1975, when real GDP fell by 4.9 percent.

"We may have had a slight contraction in the economy in the fourth quarter of 2007, but we had slight growth in the first two quarters this year," Troske said. "I'm not saying the economy is good, but it is still growing."

So what do economists call what's happening to the economy in 2008?

Period of slow growth

"It's a period of slow growth as we fight through a series of pretty severe shocks," said Coomes, an Owensboro native.