Can you Imagine living in a city with the country's,

highest rate for violent crime and, foreclosure foreclosure, and on top of that, the second highest unemployment rate. Yes and this is an added kicker . . . you need more Superfund dollars allocated to your city to clean up totally contaminated toxic waste sites than just about any other metro in the whole US.

Well Unfortunately, this nightmare on main street, is a reality for the residents of the home of the Red Wings hockey club, Detroit. The Motor City grabs the top spot on Forbes' inaugural list of America's Most Miserable Cities. Think Ford, GM and Chrysler are pleased? Misery and maybe extreme misery in this case, is defined as a state of great unhappiness and emotional distress. The economic indicator most often used to measure misery is the Misery Index. The index, maybe we can call the Detroit index, yes the city of, Detroit index, was created by economist Arthur O'Rhine, adds the unemployment rate to the inflation rate. It has been in the narrow range for most of the past decade, but was over 20 during the late 1970s, wow what a time that was.

There also exists a Foreclosure Misery Score, which is the sum of corporate, personal, employer and sales taxes in different countries. France took the top spot, maybe too much wine?, or perhaps bottom is more appropriate, with a score of the highest, thanks to a top rate of about half on personal incomes and close to half for employer Social Security. But aren't there other things that cause Americans misery? Of course. So we decided to expand on the Misery Index and the Misery Score to create our very own Foreclosure Misery Measure.

We're sticking with unemployment and personal tax rates, but we are adding four more factors that can make people miserable: commute times, rotten cold weather, crime and fear of crime, and that toxic waste dump in your backyard such and the nuclear waste of Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington, that state, not DC. We looked at only the 150 largest metropolitan areas, which meant a minimum population of 400K or less. We ranked the cities on the six ways above and added their ranks together to establish what we call the Foreclosure Misery Measure.

The data used in the rankings came from Pacific Northwest researcher, a private label drinker, who last year published the second edition of Foreclosure Cities Ranked & Rated along with the dump index. Economic research firms also supplied some data. Detroit in the top spot, and you can find a whole load of cheap bargain junker homes, here with its sister city Flint ranked third, is probably not a great shock. "If Detroit were a baseball team, we'd say they are mired in a slump," says a major league fan. Both Detroit and Flint have suffered tremendously from the auto industry downturn.

Flint's plight was immortalized in the Michael Moore movie Roger & Me, which chronicles Moore's attempts to meet with then General Motors Chief Fool and Executive Roger Smith. Crime and unemployment are closely linked, according to most residents. Our other three most miserable places bear that out Stockton, in sunny yet dumpy California, ranks second. Some call is foreclosureton. All three are among the eight worst cities in terms of both foreclosures terms of both foreclosures, unemployment and violent crime.

The United States' two biggest cities both induce a ton of misery. New York, New York was the fourth most miserable city by our count, while Los Angeles choked with cars and pollution checked in at sixth. The Big Apple has the longest commute times, over 35 minutes, and the highest tax rates (10.5%) in the country. As the financial capital of the world as most Americans think it, and home to beaten down kings of baseball losses, the stankies, New York appears poised for more misery in 2008.