This segment says it all:

Consumer spending is still spotty. While overall retail sales have grown over the past year, June numbers came in far weaker than expected. Department-store sales were down for the fifth month in a row, and restaurant spending was sharply down as consumers once again ate in to save a dollar. People even bought fewer electronic gadgets for a third month running. The latest GDP figure–1.7%–shows we are still struggling to stay in a 2% economy. “To say we’re doing better than Europe is meager consolation,” says Lund. “We need to do much better.”

Read the full article here.

It does not take a tremendous amount of analytics to support what many, if not most people seem to understand anecdotally. This has implications for every segment of our economy, large and small business as well as local and state governments.