Robert Samuelson writes for Investors Business Daily:

Economist Robert Litan of the Kauffman Foundation likes to recall that half of today’s Fortune 500 companies began as startups in a recession or a bear stock market. And why not? During a recession, it’s cheaper to hire new workers, rent office space, buy supplies.

But Litan suspects the same process may not be working now. In contrast to earlier slumps, when the number of startups barely fell, there’s been a steep decline. From 2006 to 2009, startups dropped 27%. …

Americans see themselves as go-getters and risk-takers. Our optimism will ultimately rescue us. So it’s said.

But the folklore increasingly collides with reality. The 2008-09 financial crisis traumatized millions. It swelled the ranks of risk-avoiders, worrywarts and victims. Of course, this was mainly a reaction to overborrowing, inflated home values and lost jobs. But now the fear factor is feeding on itself — and it’s smothering the recovery. …

“Risk aversion” — understandable for individuals and firms— has become a collective curse. When everyone is supercautious, the result is stagnation or worse. Imagine an economy doing just slightly better: consumers work off some pent-up demand; stock prices are 10% higher; companies channel $200 billion of their cash to new products or plants; entrepreneurs nurture 10% more startups. A stronger recovery would be self-sustaining.

One contributor to risk aversion that Samuelson doesn’t mention is business’ apparent belief that the Obama administration is going to swipe whatever profits businesses (99.9 percent of which are not on Wall Street) are able to earn in profits, by higher taxes, the upcoming ObamaCare, or whatever else the feds can think of to increase costs on business.

Here’s an example: Last year Congress passed a bill that reduced banks’ ability to charge retailers credit- and debit-card swipe fees. Bank of America responded to the loss of revenue by charging its customers $5 per month for its debit cards. (Another example of the Law of Unintended Consequences.) Banking expert Barack Obama replied thusly:

If you say to banks, ‘You don’t have some inherent right to get a certain amount of profit if your customers are being mistreated, that you have you have to treat them fairly and transparently,’ then some will hopefully get the message. … Banks can make money — they can succeed the old-fashioned way — by earning it by lending to small business and by lending to consumers, by making sure we are building the economy together.

Let’s review: Congress passes a law that restricts a business’ ability to generate revenue. (A business’ fiduciary responsibility, of course, is to generate profits for its owners, a concept utterly foreign to the White House.) The business finds another way to generate revenue. Obama now looks for another way to interfere in this business’ business, instead of letting the business’ customers vote with their feet on whether they want to pay the charges.

That is precisely what business is dealing with today — all businesses, not just the 0.1 percent of businesses that are publicly traded corporations. Because of the looming further threats of the Obama administration, businesses aren’t hiring, which means the unemployment rate is high, which means people aren’t buying things, which means businesses aren’t hiring … you get the picture. Risk aversion may indeed be a collective curse, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t rational.

By the way: Banks are so inherently profitable that the collective profit of U.S. banks, $80 billion, is enough to run the federal government for 7 days and 12 hours.