(MONEY Magazine) – -29 October -24 September -9 Year ago

With the U.S. seemingly on the brink of recession, our MONEY/ABC Consumer Comfort index hit an all-time low of -29 in early October. Its previous low of -28 was registered just after Iraq overran Kuwait in August. A staggering 77% of respondents now believe that the state of the economy is ''not so good'' or ''poor.''

Based on a poll of 1,039 randomly chosen adults in the five weeks to Oct. 1. Margin of error on the index data: plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.

CHART: NOT AVAILABLE