But Charles Mulford, a professor of corporate finance at the Georgia Institute of Technology's College of Management, says that the effect on the economy of such individual corporate behavior can be similar to the macro effect of consumers individually deleveraging.

“We're in a unique situation here,” Mulford says. “It used to be that companies went into a recession generating cash, building inventory, and spending on [capital expenditures]. But this recession has been different.” He says this time around, managers, who have “gotten much better at cutting costs,” have reduced inventory, cut way back on capital spending, and are “eking out savings where they can find them.” Companies have become “so risk averse” in the current environment that average capital spending has fallen to just 2% of revenues, which Mulford he describes as “subsistence level or less.”

And he warns that with consumers in no mood to start buying again, until companies start spending their money, there won't be much job growth.

Mulford says current monetary policy aimed at keeping interest rates low won't help much if companies decide not to spend their bulging cash reserves because they don't foresee an economic upturn. He suggests that the government needs to turn to tax policy instead. “I think the idea, which has been raised by the Obama administration, of giving companies a year or two to write off the full cost of capital expenditures against taxable income, could give a significant boost to spending down that cash,” he says.