Aaron Patzer (CEO and founder of Mint.com) has posted an article titled The Economy According To Mint on Techcrunch. This is probably one of the best real looks at the real economy. Mint.com is a personal finance site used by close to 1 million US consumers to keep track of their spending. Mint’s data is a snapshot of the consumer economy.
From the article:

Consumers are hurting, but if Mint’s data is indicative of the economy as a whole, it is not as bad as you might think….(mint.com customers) are spending $400 less each month than they were a year ago, have burned through half of their savings, and on average have taken on an additional $5k in debt.

Fortunately credit card debt has not gone up substantially yet but we may still need to watch out for a credit card crisis as job losses continue. On the other hand, a robust spending by the government could replace consumer demand by government demand and in turn put people into work and money into their pockets. Theoretically, this sounds good, but only time can tell if it is possible practically.