$2.6 Trillion Worth of Disasters

(Dec. 31) – If you've sipped at all from the certifiable torrent of retrospectives that have appeared in the past few weeks, you've been reminded why the 2000s were a period we'd all surely like to forget. This was a decade the started with a recession, terrorist attacks and two wars, then ended with a more severe recession, a thwarted terrorist attack – and the same two wars. In between, we endured disasters that killed thousands and cost billions, watched the Internet wreak its transformative havoc and witnessed the coarsening of both our popular culture and our politics.

Somewhere in there, there were also one or two positive developments.

To take one more run at summing it all up, Sphere has assembled the figures below. In their way, they go as far as any photo or essay to capture the essence of the Aughts.

$2,595,000,000,000

The total amount of taxpayer funds committed to natural and man-made disasters experienced in the 2000s, according to the Congressional Budget Office and White House estimates. A breakdown of the bill: Great Recession bailouts and stimulus packages ($1.323 trillion), the Iraq and Afghanistan wars ($915 billion), 2001 recession stimulus packages ($245 billion) and hurricanes Katrina and Rita ($112 billion).

1,733,993,741

The number of people around the world with Internet access, up from 360,985,492 in 2000. That means one out of every four people globally is now connected to the grid, up from one out of 20 a decade ago.

60,000

Copies of the "Dreamgirls" soundtrack purchased in its first week of release in 2007, the lowest-selling album to hold the No. 1 spot and yet another sign of how badly the Internet has decimated music sales. Just seven years before, 'N Sync set a record when it's "No Strings Attached" album sold 2.4 million copies in its opening week – 40 times more than the "Dreamgirls" soundtrack.

2015

When this decade's economic juggernaut, China, is estimated to pass the United States as the world's largest economy, based on the respective purchasing power of the countries' currencies.

92.3

The percentage of votes in which Democrats in the 111th Congress have voted with their party, up from 84.2 percent a decade earlier. House Republicans, for their part, have towed the party line 88 percent of the time, which is only up slightly from 85.9 percent a decade ago. Partisanship is equally potent in the Senate, where Democrats and Republicans side with their party in 89.5 and 82.7 percent of votes, respectively. Interestingly, while the Senate figure has remained constant for Democrats over the last 10 years, partisanship on the part of Senate Republicans has declined from 88.3 percent. Does this mean Democrats are more responsible for the partisan rancor in Washington?

49

Number of states where at least 20 percent of the adult population is considered obese. The only state without that distinction is Colorado, making it the nation's skinniest place. A decade earlier, there were only seven states with large obese populations.

29

Number of states where voters outlawed marriage between same-sex couples. Not a single state has seen popular support for gay marriage at the polls.

19

The percentage of Arctic ice that was more than 2 years old in 2009, compared with an average of 52 percent for the 1981-2000 period. Ice age is a proxy for thickness, so the sharp decline indicates an unusual melt taking place in recent years.

15

The number of hours of reality TV programming that the four major networks featured in their fall 2009 lineups. That compares with just three hours in 1999. Fox's "Cops" is the only reality show to run for the entirety of the intervening decade.

6

Number of titles won by teams in both the greater Boston and Los Angeles areas, making it a tie for the winning-est sports-city of the decade. But this is not a cut-and-dried result: Three of the six Boston-area titles were actually won by the Patriots, who play in Foxborough, 30 miles away. Meanwhile, the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim and the Anaheim Ducks account for two of the L.A.-area championships. So, if we base it on distance, L.A. comes out on top since Anaheim is only 26 miles away.

0.004

The percentage of Americans who report having both black and white parents, compared with 12 percent who report having black-only parents and 75 percent with white-only parents. While Barack Obama is typically called our first black president, based purely on ethnicity, his mixed heritage makes his electoral victory even more improbable.

-39

The percentage drop in the Standard & Poor's 500 index over the last decade when inflation is taken into account. That "beats" the 29 percent fall sustained during the 1930s. But any optimists who managed to survive the Aughts, take heart: Two other decades actually saw even more calamitous collapses, mostly thanks to runaway inflation: the 1970s (42 percent decline) and the 1910s (51 percent decline).