While some are sighing year-end relief of having already spotted signs of recovery in the United States, others are still as worried as in the midst of the recession.
One could indeed argue that their concerns are well-founded, as the global financial crisis has also triggered a social crisis.
"Until we start to create jobs, we are not going to get out of the crisis. So this could drag on for a long time," said Arthur Segal, a Harvard Business School professor but also a co-founder and former co-owner of TA Associates Realty.
TA Associates Realty, which has over 30 markets in the United States and Canada, was listed as one of "The 30 Most Influential Players in Real Estate in the World."
The professor's concern was supported by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics report, which estimated the October unemployment rate at 10.2
percent -- the highest since April 1983. According to the report, the real under-employment rate was 17.5 percent, taking into consideration all those who have given up looking for jobs and who went from higher paying jobs to
part-time jobs with a fraction of the salary they used to earn.
Manufacturing strongholds such as Michigan, California, Florida, North Carolina, Illinois and Georgia reported higher jobless rates, with the
highest at 15.3 percent as posted in October.
"There has been way too much attention on pumping up the economy in other ways, like a modest tax cut that does not affect anything, instead of focusing on jobs," said William George, former chairman and CEO of Medtronic.
"I don't see the stimulus package necessarily has created jobs, but at best preserved some jobs," Segal agreed, who then pointed to the nexus between unemployment and collapse of the real estate market.
"We now have a trillion and a half dollars of loans that are due on a portfolio of debt of 3.6 trillion dollars that the Federal Reserve reports over the next three years. So we have roughly 500 billion dollars of debt that has to be refinanced but not getting refinanced.
"And the securitization side, which is about 25 percent of the commercial mortgage backed security business, just does not exit any more.
So the question is where the debt is going to come from," Segal said. For real estate to turn the corner, jobs had to be created, which in turn
created capital to pay down debt.
The collapse of the residential market is causing the commercial real estate bubble to burst. The commercial market on average has fallen by at least 40 to 50 percent throughout the country.
"So the government's focus has got to shift to the new company formation to support small businesses in creating jobs, not simply saving
them," said George.
Like Segal, George is a Harvard Business School professor, and was selected one of "The 25 Most Influential Business People of the Last 25
Years" by PBS Nightly News.
Harvard scholars have agreed that high leverage is a deep-rooted problem with both the U.S. government and households.
"Government has never been more highly leveraged, because of all the spending and the previous choice made on tax and foreign policies," said Robert Kaplan, co-developer of both the Activity-Based Costing and the
Balanced Scorecard, which are used extensively in business and industry, government, and non-profit organizations worldwide.
Kaplan has been nominated one of the top 25 business thinkers by the Financial Times and has been elected to the Accounting Hall of Fame, and can thus be considered a business pundit.
Kaplan warned: "Household balance sheets are a wreck! Its debt to Gross National Product has never been higher. So households have got to save for a number of more years!"
In his view, having banks to lend again presents another difficult problem.
Already 115 banks have gone out of business in the United States in the first 10 months of 2009, and Kaplan believes there will be more regional bank failures in the future.
He explained that about 70 percent of the loans fulfilled in regional banks is real estate-related while the remaining 30 percent
consumer-related. But it is exactly the opposite for big banks -- 30 percent real estate-related and 70 percent consumer-related.
"So the irony here is that many regional banks are not well set up to lend and are trapped in their local geographical area.
"We not only need the small regional banks throughout the country to be able to lend, but also the big money center banks to actually extend credit to small businesses," added Kaplan, who believes that in addition to incentives to small business lending, the government should emphasize on investment tax credit, potentially the accelerated depreciation, to help business create jobs.
"It's a very scary time and I think we are in a transition that it's not very clear whether we are making any progress of any consequence yet," said Segal.
But there was one thing these scholars agree: one year after the full outburst of the global financial crisis, the U.S. economy is still on life support and should receive more government stimulus.