As Black Friday approaches just over a week from today, you may be wondering where some of the best deals will be had. Sure, the usual suspects like Costco Wholesale Corp. (NASDAQ: COST), Best Buy, Inc. (NYSE: BBY) and Target Corp. (NYSE: TGT) will be offering huge discounts on the largest shopping retail day of the year. This year is different: the U.S. is in the midst of a full-blown economic funk. Consumers are not spending, retail prices are way down and layoffs are increasing. Will you be spending like a drunken sailor this holiday season?

Regardless of the precarious economic climate the U.S. and much of the world is in, retailers are not closing up shop for winter. There are still some great bargains to be had and people will shop for gifts this year, just at a much lower rate than in the past. Just how low a rate remains to be seen, but let's chew on some deals to whet the whistle: Best Buy if offering an eMachines desktop PC with 18.5" LCD monitor and printer for $299 and a Canon Powershot 10 Megapixel digital camera for $199, Target is offering men's cotton sweaters (your choice of neck style) for $10 and a Garmin nuvi 200 GPS system for $119, and CostCo is offering a VTech 3-handset cordless phone system for $39 and a Western Digital portable backup hard drive for $89.

Compared with normal pricing on all those items, there are savings to be had this year. Will you be out in your car early in the morning hours of Friday morning to snag one of these deals or perhaps another one? Human nature tells us that there will be those of you brave enough to trade time and patience for dollars. If you do take in some bargains this coming Friday, you'll be in a select group, as many of us will be reigning in purchases and will be spending extra wisely. The retailers will thank you, and hopefully their bottom line numbers will show your effort this season.

Although the Christmas retail season this year was set up in the media to be a disappointing one, there is still some magic coming from consumers battered by the wacky economic environment in 2007.

As of Christmas Eve, a report from ShopperTrak indicated that sales from the last weekend before Christmas rose more than 18% from the year-ago period, although another report from MasterCard SpendingPulse indicated that a last-minute buying binge from desperate shoppers was not enough to make up for a weak holiday season.

Who ruled the roost -- and lost their shirt -- in retail this holiday season, then?

Target's (NYSE: TGT) didn't measure up, as the second-largest discount retailer in the U.S. said on Christmas Eve that December same-store sales were sitting below its recent guidance. December sales may have even went down 1% from a year earlier. Costco Wholesale's (NASDAQ: COST) CEO indicated that the second-largest wholesale club in the U.S. has "pretty good" holiday sales this year in what is a brilliantly cryptic quote.

When Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT) sent shock waves into the retail sector three weeks before Thanksgiving with thousands of price cuts in every category, was the retail foreshadowing a week holiday shopping season? Although this week's discount plunge by retailers who needed to make up sales volume before the end of December is already in full swing. It's not entirely clear just how bad retail sales were this season. One hot item that increased over last year was the gift card -- from $18.5 billion in 2005 and $24.8 billion in 2006 to an estimated $26 billion this year. Even that increase, though, won't save retailers from the lowest consumer spending amount in five years.