David Segal comes through in Our Love Affair With Shopping Malls Is on the Rocks in the Times.

Here, ladies and gentlemen, is the crux of the problem: We are reliably informed that whatever part of the economic crisis can't be pinned on Wall Street -- or on mortgage-related financial insanity -- can be pinned on consumers who overspent. But personal consumption amounts to some 70 percent of the American economy. So if we don't spend, we don't recover. Fiscal health isn't possible until money is again sloshing into cash registers, including those at this mall and every other retailer.

In other words, shopping was part of the problem and now it's part of the cure. And once we're cured, economists report, we really need to learn how to save, which suggests that we will need to quit shopping again.

Shoppers' personal indicators confirm this in many ways:

Each of the six women is in a defensive spending crouch for a different reason.

One woman's husband hauls new cars, which means he's on the verge of being laid off. Another's husband is training to be a police officer, which means he isn't earning anything now. The couple have been trying to sell their house for a year, hoping that they can downsize to a smaller home, in the $100,000 range. But so far, no one has even asked to see the house twice, let alone made an offer.

"Have you buried a statuette of St. Joseph in the yard?" Ms. McDonnel asks. (The statue is supposed to bring good luck.)

"A year ago," Ms. Reiter says. "We buried St. Joseph a year ago."

We are spending, but in different ways now. Car dealers are hurting, but auto repair shops are busy as we patch the vehicle we already have, to make it last.