Far be it from us to encourage the kind of materialism that distracts and detracts from our relationship with Jesus Christ, our fellowship with believers, and our outreach to the lost.

But how Americans feel about shopping – and how much purchasing they do in the consumer economy – can be a really accurate indicator of the direction of the country.

And because that’s the case, unless you’re in boom spots like Texas or Silicon Valley or New York City, shopper confidence is showing trouble on the horizon. It’s because more and more Americans understand in their gut, heart and soul that their financial future is in peril – both on the household level and in terms of the entire country – and they’re pulling in the reins on their spending.

Consider the fact that Walmart surprised investors recently by warning that America’s largest retailer now expects relatively flat sales for the current fiscal year, when ends in January, whereas several months ago the company had been projecting sales growth of 1 to 2 percent. So chilling was this warning from Walmart that, immediately, Albertsons, one of the nation’s largest grocery chains, delayed plans for an initial public offering of stock.

Around the same time, government figures for overall U.S. retail sales came out, and they were disappointing, too. Especially in view of the fact that lower gasoline prices have given American consumers a little bit more cash in their pocketbooks, this was not supposed to be the scenario in a U.S. economy that the Obama administration keeps saying is on the mend.

Here’s what’s going on: As the Financial Times put it, the “US consumer [is] finally losing the will to shop.”

And why is that happening? Because we recognize that the supposedly recovering U.S. economy actually is in its seventh year of sluggishness following the financial collapse of 2008. It’s a sluggishness characterized by stagnant wages, rampant under-employment, untrustworthy government leadership, and overall feelings of future financial insecurity that tens of millions of Americans just can’t shake.

It’s only going to get worse, frankly, as world governments continue to load trillions more in obligations on top of an already-teetering debt-money system whose ultimate reckoning will be coming soon.

Our clients know that the only safeguard against all of this is to invest in precious metals, silver and gold coins – what we call God’s Money, because its value has been ordained and preserved from the beginning of time. Contact us at info@realmoneyusa.com or 866-966-0177 to find out how.