It's not that there isn't enough business activity, corporations are showing record profits and the rich are swimming in cash, they just keep it for themselves. In the old days, when cash hoarding really started to tank the economy, people called this occurrence a 'cash shortage'. Today economists call it a recession when it meets their arbitrary standards of decline.
When it got bad enough, people would start stuffing their savings under the mattress which caused a 'bank panic,' we call those 'depressions.' Rich people would then take the cash they'd been hoarding and start buying things for 10 cents on the dollar. The Koch brothers fortune was created that way.
The far right business bloggers are pushing the notion that the billionaires are all bailing on the stock market, and so you should expect a 90% correction. (10 cents on the dollar) If I didn't know better (snort), I'd say they are trying to gin up an old fashioned bank panic. They mostly want you to buy gold or a Mayan doomsday shelter. Gold is down by the way. If you bought it a couple of years ago at its peak you've lost about $200/ounce. That was back when righties were saying that I was crazy for telling people not to buy any gold. Every time anything bad happens, the USD goes up, not down. That's why rich people are invested in 'cash'.
More...