It began as an age of economic wonders.

A time when a dot-com startup that never came close to a profit spent millions to make a singing sock puppet a star of the Super Bowl. A time when one of economists' big worries was what might happen if unemployment fell too low. Back when Enron was a fabulous investment and subprime loans exemplified U.S. financial innovation.

Most never saw the collapse of the First Bubble coming. Or the rise of the Second Bubble behind it that made its predecessor seem almost quaint. Or the Great Recession that seeded fears of _ perish the thought _ the Next Bubble.

What a long, strange and deeply disturbing ride it's been on the economic roller coaster these past 10 years. And though the decade is ending, there's no telling whether the turbulence is over.

As policy makers fought over the past year to right the economy, there have been warnings the U.S. could be destined for a "lost decade," like the stagnation that grasped Japan through the 1990s.

In fact, Americans have already weathered a very different kind of lost decade.

The domestic economy since 2000 has been anything but stagnant. But as the decade ends, consumers and workers, investors and industries find themselves with little, if anything, to show for it.

"If you look at almost any financial indicator, we are far worse off than we were in the year 2000," says Sung Won Sohn, a professor of economics at California State University's Channel Islands campus.

U.S. families earn less now then they did when the decade began. Median family income fell to $61,521 in 2008 from $63,099 in 2000, according to the most recent inflation-adjusted figures from the Census Bureau. A decade of declining income would be the first since the agency began tracking it in 1947.

The sense that we've lost ground is confirmed by the job market.

At the start of the decade, the economy employed 130.8 million people. Ten years later, the nation's population has grown by more than 30 million, swelling the numbers of eligible workers. But the U.S. is shedding jobs. Today, the economy employs almost exactly the same number as it did when the decade began.

The futility is born out by the stock market. On New Year's Eve of 1999, the Dow Jones industrial average closed just below 11,500. Ten years later, even after soaring from its depths, it is cheered for crossing back over 10,000.

The decade's backslide has not been limited to the U.S.; the collapse of the credit bubble has ravaged economies like Ireland and England. Export-dependent Japan sustained significant damage.