Today's chart provides some perspective on the current earnings environment by focusing on 12-month, as reported S&P 500 earnings. Today's chart illustrates how earnings are expected (38% of S&P 500 companies have reported for Q2 2009) to have declined over 98% since peaking in Q3 2007, making this by far the largest decline on record (the data goes back to 1936)

Its hard to comprehend this. This doesn't add up. People are still doing the same stuff they did a year ago for the most part. You can only cut back on spending to a certain extent.