Last month, I did a blog entry explaining why the real unemployment figures are worse than what the official statistics tell us.

Now The Wall Street Journal takes it one step further and gives us 10 reasons why the US economy is worse than we think. More companies are asking people to take unpaid leave and more workers are being forced into part time jobs, which doesn't show up on the stats, the average work week has dropped to 33 hours, the time spent between jobs is now at the highest level since records began in 1948, and the average worker had no wage gain in June.

Commentators say what's needed is another stimulus. But will it do any good?

As Bill Clinton's secretary of Labor Robert Reich says in Salon, we should not be expecting any recovery in the near future. It won't be a U or V-shaped recession, instead it will be an X because people won't start spending until they have money in their pockets and feel secure. And when their homes are underwater and when they are losing jobs, it's hard to see where the money or sense of security will come from.

"This economy can't get back on track because the track we were on for years - featuring flat or declining median wages, mounting consumer debt, and widening insecurity, not to mention increasing carbon in the atmosphere - simply cannot be sustained,'' Reich says. "The X marks a brand new track - a new economy. What will it look like? Nobody knows. All we know is the current economy can't "recover" because it can't go back to where it was before the crash. So instead of asking when the recovery will start, we should be asking when and how the new economy will begin."

In other words, the economy that will emerge out of this mess will look very different.