This is a very accurate article regarding the bank shackles that keep them from lending. It leaves out the eventual mark to market accounting that will be imposed sometime between now and 2019, but you get the idea. There are many reasons why the banks are squirreling away money and not lending. Too bad Obama didn't anticipate this, and he had Japan to look at as an example. Then perhaps he would have saved more out for Main Street and created alternative banks, letting these useless, too-big-to-fail banks go under. But now it is too late and Obama doesn't have the money, and the banks don't want to part with theirs.