Bad Economic Cycling:
Consumers spend less money à retail revenue goes down à whole sales goes down (because retail don’t buy merchandize as much as before) à inventorying goes up à manufacture cut production and jobs à more people lose job and consumer spend more less money …
During the processes, all kind of businesses and industries will affected and will cut jobs… eventually we will go to the resession which news has been talking about for about one year.
In US, all kind of factors affect consumers reduce their spending: the house price goes down, 401K decrease, Pension fund is dramatic reduced, also bad news is playing a big role here too and they all destroy people's confident.