What Slow Down

I am just not seeing the "crunch" taking place here like they say it is. There is still a lot of building going on here,two brand new subdivisions going in,Acouple of business buildings. I went to do the grocery shopping saturday and Wally world was just absoutely packed.My DW went into the Mall areas and said the same was going on there.We turn on the tv and and they say the economy has dropped so much and people are in such dire shape.Maybe we are in a safe area but I'm just not seeing the dire cutbacks everyone is talking about!The national news was talking about how the major credit cards were reporting over 20% loses on spending,one example was jewerly, expenditures on over a $1000 items was 21% down by average people. Maybe thats the problem,"average" people around here don't spend $1000 on jewerly purchases here. If you can afford that you don't fit into our "average" citizen group!By the way our gas went down to $1.57 this weekend,a month ago it was $4.35!