America recently went on a major shopping spree. Last December we had, as a nation, quite a bit of cash lying around. The following month we found a way to spend it. In fact, we spent some $12 billion more in January than we had saved up.

But no worries, we've upped our coupon usage to make up for it. 2009 was a very good year for coupon clipping in this country. That might seem like a modest means of saving, but it adds up fast. How fast? Somewhere around $100,000 fast. That's a lot of Skippy.

The Economic Hardship Index compares different types of communities by their gas costs, car repair expenses, home foreclosure rates and unemployment levels.

Our insatiable appetite for information continues to balloon. And someone has to produce all this content, which means the future of electronic innovation appears to be rather secure.

We all know that the past ten years were largely about the digital revolution but what exactly does that look like? (The short answer: massive innovation.)

And along with the rise of digital media comes our obsession with apps. 2010 proves to be THE year for apps. You may have heard about this little thing called the iPad, yes? And how it can supposedly master some 140, 000 apps? It's true. But it's not the only app-licable (sorry, we'll stop soon) machine out there with a serious app-preciation (really soon) for apps. A pre-iPad study found that the app explosion is well underway.

While most jittery unemployment-stat watchers have been focused on a jobs-creation bill snaking its way through Congress, the Department of Transportation recently and somewhat quietly injected $1.5 billion into the economy in the form of funding for road, rail and other infrastructure work.

Unemployment news during the last weeks of 2009 was, let's say, less awesome than we had all hoped, but some bright spots did emerge. Among them were figures on state-by-state initial unemployment claims for late December.

The one area that has bugged not only us but most economy watchers has been the decided lack of new jobs associated with the recovery. A new administration lending program is intended to address these concerns, and here's hoping that helps. In the meantime, you are probably wondering where jobs can currently be had.

Despite all the unemployment and unsuccessful job hunts, volunteerism in the U.S. is at its peak. One happy consequence of last year's rough economic season was that more people had more time on their hands--and they decided to chip in, help out, do good.

Last year's stimulus bill impacted the economy by increasing our gross domestic product by 2%. Think 2% doesn't make a difference? Here's what you can buy with that measly $284 billion.

Think the U.S. is in a slump? Check out the World GDP numbers for 2009. The U.S. percentage of output has remained remarkably stable, even with recent economic troubles. But on a per-person level how does the output of workers in other countries stack up against the output of U.S. laborers?