Investors see recession, Wall Street depression

By Nichola Groom and Bernard Woodall

BEVERLY HILLS, California (Reuters) - The U.S. economy may be in a funk, but that's nothing compared with the pall hanging over Wall Street.

Some of the biggest U.S. investors said on Tuesday they expected the nation's economy to get worse, but then work its way toward recovery later this year.

On Wall Street, however, the road back to health will take much longer.

"It is the Great Depression on Wall Street. It sure isn't on Main Street," Ken Griffin, chief executive of hedge fund Citadel Investment Group LLC, said during a panel at the Milken Institute Global Conference in Beverly Hills, California.

According to Griffin and other top U.S. investors at the conference, the credit and housing crises that led to hundreds of billions of dollars in losses for Wall Street firms will take those investment banks years to claw back from.

"Until you see Wall Street put on their party hats again and get on the tables and start dancing is going to be years," said Ken Moelis, a former UBS (UBSN.VX: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) banker who now runs his own investment firm, Moelis & Company. "It will be a long time for Wall Street to come back to where it was."

Leon Black, billionaire investor and founding partner of hedge fund Apollo Advisors, said the banking system has been "broken" since last summer and has fostered a credit crisis "the likes of which I've never seen in the 30 years I've been in the business."

Notwithstanding that, however, Moelis said he did not expect to see "a deep Main Street recession." In parts of the country, such as Pittsburgh, he said, business is booming thanks to soaring prices on commodities such as steel.