Congratulations, America.

Whether motivated by capitalistic patriotism, economic expectations or the prospect of bargains the likes of which we haven’t seen in years, you outdid yourselves last week in that peculiarly American addiction: spending.

Black Friday 2008, while not quite a record-breaker, broke last year’s mark in terms of sales by a respectable 3 percent, according to research firms that keep tabs on consumer activity. For those of you keeping score at home, that’s $10.6 billion. A staggering amount for one day’s economic activity, really.

Coming on the heels of Wall Street’s largest multiday rally in history last week, and amid news of OPEC’s hesitation to influence the current trend in oil prices, this may well be the best news the economy has seen in months.

But not so fast.

All those hefty sale prices last Friday came at a cost — to the retailers. With up to 70 percent off of some items, profit numbers are unlikely to mirror the progress in sales numbers. As one analyst put it, “Everybody wants value for their dollar, so we saw a tremendous response to the discounts.”While every sale helps — moving expensive inventory out of retailers’ warehouses, generating revenue — we shouldn’t expect any positive surprises out of the retail sector just yet.

Wracked by bad news — coming at times on an almost hourly basis, it seems — and failures at major and integral institutions over the last few months, last Friday’s shopping binge was less a cure-all than it was an encouraging sign. Liquidity, lending and mortgage markets may be frozen solid, but the American consumer public’s pocket book is still, among all of this, able to spend like it always has — for now.

What we saw on Friday was an overwhelming response to a basic economic idea: incentives. If the incentives are there people will spend, even in the worst of economies. This is just as true of corporations as it is of John Q. and Jane Q. Public on Main Street, and a notion that those at the Treasury Department, the Federal Reserve and in Congress might do well to remember. Especially with the heady business set to come before Congress in the next few weeks.