Welcome to the doldrums

What word to use to describe the releases this earnings season?  Wretched?  Appalling?  Thoroughly dispiriting?  An economic quagmire of leviathan proportions?

Bad.  The earnings news is bad.  When even Apple, which can't keep the new iPhone 3G on the shelves, is warning that it expects lean times ahead, you know things are pretty awful.

This article available online at:

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2008/07/welcome-to-the-doldrums/3865/