What is the consumer doing?

We’re Spent Says David Leonhardt:

But the real culprit — or at least the main one — has been hiding in plain sight. We are living through a tremendous bust. It isn’t simply a housing bust. It’s a fizzling of the great consumer bubble that was decades in the making.

Jared nernstein points out that consumer housing is in the dumps but consumer spending is still 70% of the economy.
So what is the consumer doing if he is not buying a house?

M1V will tell us how fast the consumer is doing it, and the retail velocity seems to continue to drop.  So the consumer is shopping less often, and likely storing up for longer, a sign of a contracted economy.  Retailers tell us that the consumer buy most of his goods on pay day, then stretches out consumption to make it last.