While you&#x27;re right the wealthy people don&#x27;t usually hold all most of their cash in their mattresses or checking accounts, that&#x27;s <i>not</i> the definition of &quot;hoarding cash&quot; in the context of the story posted here.<p>In corporate finance and equities analysis, the term &quot;cash equivalents&quot; includes very liquid short-term investments like US treasuries, CDs and money-market accounts.<p>&gt; <i>If they actually are hoarding, the question is why and in the past that is usually because savings returns and investment returns are expected to be negative. In which case, thats the problem to solve.</i><p>Er, no. The question is why companies -- which traditionally need to <i>borrow</i> money to operate -- are keeping large amounts of savings (earning positive but still very small returns) instead of increasing their capital expenditures by building factories, or writing more software, etc.