Even looking at the companies in the Standard & Poor's 500 index of blue chips -- and stripping out financials, which are required by regulators to keep large cash reserves in order to cushion against risk -- the cash on hand number is still rather monstrous: $1.1 trillion. To put that in perspective, as a percentage of companies' total market capitalization, that $1.1 trillion is more than double the ratio seen before the crisis.
"Cash is piling up faster than companies can figure out what to do with it," said David Bianco, head of U.S. equity strategy at Bank of America.
Asked about the mountain of corporate money sitting on the sidelines, the out-of-work Byrnes offered his own suggestion for what to do with it.
"Companies should absolutely spend some of that money to put people back to work," Byrnes said by telephone earlier this week, clearly frustrated. "I suppose they need to make shareholders happy, but come on already."
