'Too big to fail banks' leaving behind 'too small to help' customers and businesses

Another week and another round of the national guessing game: when exactly will the Great Recession's alleged end impact me? Or my children? Or my neighbors? The "too big to fail" banking crowd has gotten lots of help from D.C. But the jobless rate, despite a decline of late in layoffs, continues to go skyward, or, in the words of that most famous working-class stiff Ralph Kramer to his wife, Alice, "to the moon!"

"This will be a very slow recovery," says Jack Kyser, founder of the Kyser Center for Economic Research at the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corporation. In a telephone interview with WalletPop, Kyser said that "small- and medium-sized businesses still can't get loans from banks." It is, says Kyser, "the perfect stalemate" -- unemployment continues to rise, businesses (especially smaller ones) suffer, and banks don't want to risk lending out their money.