Companies have cash but no confidence

WASHINGTON, Nov. 8 (UPI) -- U.S. companies have plenty of cash on hand but aren't doing enough with those cash reserves to stimulate economic recovery, experts say.

The balance sheets of large U.S. corporations are for the most part in good shape, The Wall Street Journal reported Sunday.

Many big companies have piles of cash on hand and credit markets have thawed so that they can raise new funds, the paper said.

But American executives lack enough confidence in the economy to risk expanding their companies, and this hampers the federal government's attempts to stimulate an economic recovery, experts say.

"The concern is that they're not using those balance sheets, that they're not out investing or hiring. And until they do, the economy is not going to engage, and there is always the risk that we're going to fall back into recession," chief economist Mark Zandi of Moody's Economy.com said.