This is just bad, bad, bad, bad:

Banks struggling to recover from multibillion-dollar losses on real estate are curtailing loans to American businesses, depriving even healthy companies of money for expansion and hiring.

Even healthy companies are seeing their credit lines shrunk, or disappeared?

Drew Greenblatt, president of Marlin Steel Wire Products, figured it would be easy to get a $300,000 bank loan to finance a new robot for his factory in Baltimore. His company, which makes parts for makers of home appliances, is growing and profitable, he said. His expansion would add three new jobs to an economy hungry for work.

But when Mr. Greenblatt called the local branch of Wachovia — the same bank that had been aggressively marketing loans to him for years — he was distressed by the response.

“The exact words were, ‘We’re saying no to almost everybody,’ ” Mr. Greenblatt recalled. “This is why God made banks, for this kind of transaction. This is going to slow down the American economy.”

After years of savagely insane and idiotic misinvestment in non-productive financial assets the dollar has sunk to a point where making a real investment on real capital stock is profitable. And guess what: the banks are so low on capital that they aren't letting any of it go.

Americans for far too long thought any investment that didn't give at least a double digit return was a bad one. Never mind that it was a ponzi-scheme run amok that created the environment we're now in. American business leaders bought into their own lies so heavily that it fed on itself and fed and fed until there was no more left.

So now, when banks say "no to almost everybody," people might understand that we have a serious problem on our hands.

Nota bene: Here's a solution I hadn't thought of, but it makes sense, sadly enough. (It's the first comment at the top.)