Businesses may be waiting for demand to strengthen (something of a chicken-and-egg problem) or for policymakers to stop shooting the economy in the foot.
On the one hand, major players in the American industry shut off wells, sending workers home indefinitely while waiting for demand to rebound.
Phone companies, he said before the results were released, "are waiting for demand to catch up with the capacity they already have online".
A demonstration of the system, open to the public at Song's temporary store on Prince Street in Lower Manhattan, shows screens to send e-mail messages, but Mr. Mapes said the airline was waiting for demand for that service to emerge.
"It was a chicken-or-egg thing, where retailers were waiting for demand to hit, so they weren't putting the resources into the online channel," said Jim Okamura, an analyst with J. C. Williams Group, a research and consulting company based in Chicago and Toronto.
Bosch is used to waiting for demand to develop.
Once that manufacturing capacity roars to life, the industry will find itself in a situation of oversupply, waiting for demand to catch up.
Much of the recovery so far could be accounted for by "a restocking phenomenon" after businesses wound down their inventories and postponed or slowed new production while waiting for demand to pick up.
With a huge trade deficit, consumers spending tapped out and businesses waiting for demand to rise, public spending is the only recourse for getting the economy going, Baiman said.
I know that many of you have told me that you are waiting for demand to rise before you get off the sidelines and expand, and that with millions of Americans out of work, demand has risen more slowly than any of us would like.
