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1) Interest rates at banks don't necessarily have anything to do with how well the economy is doing. They are mostly tied to the prime rate set by the Federal Reserve. The interest a bank pays on checking and savings accounts is essentially they're payment to you for you loaning them money. The prime rate is essentially how much it costs the bank to borrow money from the Federal Reserve or other institutions. Frankly, they'd prefer to go the latter route because it is easier and therefore the rates they offer you are less than the rates the Fed charges because that is the incentive for them to care about "small" retail accounts at all. That said, if you're still only getting 1% and 0.25% you need to do some bank shopping. I'm currently getting about 4.2% on my savings accounts and I haven't rate shopped. I get nothing on my checking (I don't keep enough in checking to earn much interest so it isn't worth the extra fees to get interest bearing checking). Some searching at bankrate.com suggest that the 4.5% range for saving is pretty common.
2) The cost of cashiers is a relatively small portion of the operating expenses of a Home Depot (though a bigger one for grocery stores). Take the annual wage for 3 cashiers and you're probably talking less than a few cents saved per transaction. Plus you have the purchase and maintenance costs of those registers which aren't necessarily cheap but may have other non-monetary benefits to the business. Especially initially since the cost of the registers may not actually pay for themselves in reduced wages for several years.
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