The Associated Press has launched the Economic Stress Index. Credit Slips readers will find it very useful and interesting. For a dataphile like myself, it's just plain cool. OK, it's not cool at all because it shows the tremendous depth and breadth of middle America's suffering. But, it shows what someone with real data know-how and computer graphic skills can do.

The Economic Stress Index "weighs three economic variables — unemployment, foreclosures and bankruptcy — to produce a score on a scale of 0-100 that measures how the recession is affecting a county compared to all others." You can scroll over each county and get a separate measure for each of the components or for the composite Economic Stress Index. The press release indicates the index and data will be updated monthly. Check it out.