Utah likes to see itself as unique and different (in a good way) from the rest of the nation. You've heard the bunk. Utahns help their neighbors in disasters, unlike other Americans. People in Zion are more ethical and moral and love their kids more than folks out there. Finally, the state's economy — diverse, retooled for the global economy and lousy with entrepreneurs — is immune to the recession trashing the rest of the country.

The New York Times, with the curiosity of nerds poking at a bug in a bottle, probed Utah's newly reported economic downturn. Apparently, the chamber of commerce, the guv and Utah lawmakers were wrong about the state being different.

• Single-family housing permits issued in Utah fell 32 percent in December, the steepest one-month decline since 1980
• Sales of existing homes plummeted, off nearly 34 percent in the fourth quarter of last year — the sixth worst record in the nation.
• Job growth projections for 2008 were recently cut by a third.
  
• New housing starts are expected to fall nearly 60 percent in Utah in 2008, a worse hit than Nevada or Arizona, which have become national symbols of the housing mess.
  
  

  The dismal picture of boarded-up, foreclosed houses that can be seen in places like Las Vegas or Riverside, Calif., would not happen here, business leaders said with a touch of smugness, because Utah, marching to its own fiscally prudent drummer, had not overbuilt. — NYTimes.

  “We’re no longer insulated,” Pamela S. Perlich, a senior research economist at the University of Utah, told the NYTimes. “Utah still has a special story, but it got blurred by the engine of economic growth.”
  
  Still, the Times analysis holds out hope: "Utah does not have the same magnitude of problems that other states are facing, and if history is a measure it will weather a recession better than many other regions."