This morning’s Wall Street Journal reports that one year removed from the trough of the recession, American corporations continue to hoard more cash than ever. There are now tentative signs that they are finally comfortable using the money to do some shopping.

The 382 nonfinancial firms in the Standard & Poor’s 500 that have reported results for the fourth quarter of 2009 are now holding $932 billion in cash and short-term investments, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of data from Capital IQ. That sum is up 8% from the third quarter and up 31% from a year ago. And why? Cash is very cheap these days. With all this cash around, it is not surprising that the high end real estate market in Manhattan is so very active right now……with lots of all cash or mostly-cash buyers. The savings rates have also climbed dramatically.

An argument could be made that these corporations have hoarded all this cash at the expense of jobs, the one issue all politicians are blaming unanimously for the tepid economic recovery. But all this cash held in both corporations and privately will be let loose into the economy….its happening already as part of the economic cycle. This will affect inventory levels accross the board. And when inventories need to be beefed up. jobs are created. Slow, painful, and mostly it affects the lowest wage earners. I guess the politicians don’t want to say all of this out loud: its the system.