Ellen Davis, with the National Retail Federation, notes that smaller stores have been harder hit than large retailers. "Right now for the American shopper, it is all about low price," she explained.  "And because small retailers don't have economies of scale to be able to order a lot of merchandise at once, they are not able to negotiate the best prices or offer the best deals to their shoppers."

Small storeowners like Paul Phan have begun to slash prices. But for him and others that means making little or no profit. He also says he cannot get a business loan from the bank.

"I want to put more money into advertising to bring more customers in," said Phan.  "I want to put money into bringing in more merchandise to give the customers more choices. However, I don't have the resources in terms of the capital."

President Obama, after a White House meeting with bankers whose firms received government bailouts, said the banks should help the economy by lending more. "So I urged these institutions here today to go back and take a third and fourth look about how they are operating when it comes to small business and medium sized business lending," the president said at a news briefing.

Paul Phan says if he can make it through the first two quarters of 2010 he might be able to survive through some of the hardest times retailers have ever faced.

As U.S. banks repay billions of dollars in government bailout funds, President Obama held meetings with top bank executives in December, telling them it is time to return the favor.

"The way I see it, having recovered with the help of the American government and the American taxpayer, our banks now have a greater obligation to the goal of a wider recovery," President Obama said.

But the president may be giving the financial sector too much credit. 

"It was in a free fall and it was a very scary period,"  said economist Martin Neil Baily said.  Baily is an author and former adviser in the Clinton administration, says after the failure of Lehman Brothers towards the end of 2008, many of the world's largest banks feared the worst as the collapse of the housing bubble exposed investments in risky subprime loans.

"The banks that came closest were Citibank, Bank of America and if those had not been supported by the government, I think it might have caused a cascading crisis that would have been much worse than the one we actually had," Baily added.

Although herunescape power leveling U.S. unemployment remains stubbornly high and consumers appear more focused on saving and debt reduction than spending. runescape money many retailers are extending store hours in the few remaining days before Christmas runescape accounts says the worst is over, Bailey says the banking crisis is not.
More than 130 US banks failed in 2009, the most since 1992.  He predicts high failure rates for smaller, regional banks in 2010 as commercial real estate loans come due. 

"So there may actually be a worsening of credit availability to small and medium sized business in the next year or so," Bailey said.

Analysts say the biggest problem is high unemployment, which weakens demand and makes banks reluctant to lend.  But US Bankcorp chief Richard Davis sees the situation differently.