There's been a lot of talk lately about the state of the economy, and for good reason. A lot of the talk though is mindless dribble that leaves most people no wiser for having listened to it.
I think a good place to start when talking about the economy is to make sure we all actually know what an "economy" is. Put simple an economy is the distribution of resources (goods) amongst a population. Note - money is not needed in an economy but it makes a useful means of exchange.
Where a lot of people go wrong in trying to understand economics (that includes 90% of economists) is that they believe money drives the economy.
Economic growth doesn't come from money, money does not drive the economy. Energy does.
The computer or iwhatever you are looking at right now required energy to end up in your hands. To extract the raw materials from the earth, transport them, process them, transport them some more, process them some more, manufacture the end product, more transportation and then energy to merchandize in a retail store. And that applies to EVERYTHING.
Before we really started to exploit fossil fuels (coal, oil gas) some 250 years ago economic growth was relatively slow. But economic growth over the last 2 centuries has been phenomenal, exponential in fact. See the link. Abundant energy supply, abundant growth.
Unfortunately it works the other way too. If you are getting a bit bored of hearing the term economic crisis don't be dismayed, very soon it will be replaced by the term energy crisis.