When the great minds of Wall Street get out of their limousines and back on the job today, they have a question to ponder. What kind of economy is this anyway? The country’s 16 trillion in debt and facing this fiscal cliff, and a bureaucratic mess that will be generated by Obama care in the coming year. The stock market’s been up and down, mostly down of late, and Hurricane Sandy has caused billions worth of damage on the East Coast, and yet, Americans spent almost 300 million dollars going to the movies over the long holiday weekend and close to 60 billion dollars at retail stores and online. And today - so called cyber Monday - is expected to generate billions more. The holiday shopping season is off to a pretty good start with industry experts expecting an overall increase of 4 percent over last year, when we were still mired in a post recessions. Seems like we’re still in a recession type of economy. Unemployment is still high. so where is all the money coming from? Could be credit. After spending a few years paying down their credit cards, it appears Americans brought them out over the Thanksgiving weekend, and while we heard all of the stories about Mayhem at the Malls. Many a shopper battled nothing worse than a slow internet connection. Online sales were up 26 percent on Black Friday as bargain hunters found great sales on the websites of brick and mortar stores. And here’s a little tip: judging by the email flooding my computer this morning, the black Friday sales are still on at a number of stores, although the selection may be limited.

It’s an economy that’s hard to figure. Many of the numbers look soft and it seems not a week goes by that some long established business doesn’t go belly up. But shoppers proved something over the weekend: there still is a lot of disposable income out there. Whether it all got disposed in one fell swoop is the question for retailers, but right now, the holiday numbers look pretty festive.