Six internal factors suggest that the United States’ economy is slowlyhealing. For some observers, these factors were deemed sufficient to form thecritical mass needed to propel the economyinto escape velocity.

While I hoped that they might be proven right, the recent stream of weakeconomic data, including May’s timid net jobcreation of only 69,000, confirmed my doubts. With this and other elements of adisheartening employment report now suddenlyraising widespread worries about the underlying health and durability of America’srecovery, it is important to understand the positive factors and why they arenot enough as yet.

For starters, large USmultinational companies are as healthy as I have ever seen them. Their cashbalances are extremely high, interest payments on debt are low, and principalobligations have been termed out. Many ofthem are successfully tapping into buoyant demand in emerging economies, generatingsignificant free cash flow.

Company cash is not the only source of considerable spending power waitingon the sidelines. Rich households also hold significant resources that could bedeployed in support of both consumption and investment.

The third and fourth positive factors relate to housing and the labormarket. These two long-standing areas of persistent weakness have constituted amajor drag on the type of cyclical dynamics that traditionally thrust the US out of its periodic economic slowdowns.But recent data support the view that the housing sector could be in theprocess of establishing a bottom, albeit an elongatedone. Meanwhile, job growth, while anemic,has nonetheless been consistently positive since September 2010.

Then there is the US Federal Reserve Board. Despite legitimate questionsabout the effectiveness of its unconventional and ever-experimental policystance, the Fed appears willing to be even more activist if the economyweakens. Indeed, if the Fed makes an inadvertentmistake (the likelihood of this is considerable, given the country’s complexsituation and the “unusually uncertain” outlook), it is more likely to err on the side of staying accommodative for too long, rather than tightening monetarypolicy prematurely.

Finally, with the November elections in sight andsubsequently out of the way, some believe that politicians in Washington might finally be in a betterposition to agree to much-needed grand policy bargains. In addition to removingthe damaging specter of the fiscal cliff – a potentially disruptive economic hindrance equivalent to some 4% of GDP, in theform of excessively blunt spending cuts and across-the-board tax increases – greater politicaleffectiveness would serve to remove other uncertainties that inhibit certaineconomic activities.

Each of these six factors suggests actual and potential economic healing.So, not surprisingly, they have provoked excitement in some circles that the US mayfinally be poised to leave behind the depressing trioof unusually sluggish growth, persistently high unemployment, and high andgrowing inequality.

The problem is that these factors, both individually and in combination,are unlikely to be a game-changer, for four reasons:

The economic and financial headwinds from outside the USare strong and gusting, owing largely tothe ever-worsening European crisis, which is now entering an even moredisruptive and unpredictable phase as depositors in some countries step up their withdrawals from local banks. But italso reflects the beginning of a growth slowdown in the major emergingcountries, including Brazil,China, India, and Russia.

  Too many sectors of the US economy have not completed theirbalance-sheet rehabilitation process. Thisis true for the banking system, which has not de-leveraged to the satisfactionof either regulators or the markets, thus limiting the scope for credit growth.It is also true for many households. Indeed, with the average household savingsrate having dropped recently to below 4%, too many families are in the processof exhausting their cushions of emergency cash, if they have not done soalready.

The unusual monetary-policy activism of the last few years risks causing collateral damage and producing unintendedconsequences. While no individual issue is overwhelming yet, together theycould serve to dampen economic activity andthe proper functioning of markets. Recall that the Fed’s policy bet was that these “costs and risks,” to use ChairmanBen Bernanke’s phrase, would be more than offset by the improvement in theoverall economic situation. But this generalized benefit has failed tomaterialize.

Perhaps most importantly, repeated delays in removing the persistent impediments to growth and jobs means that some ofthem are becoming stubbornly embedded in thestructure of the US economy – thus draining its dynamism and reducing itsresponsiveness. For example, with long-term joblessness at 5.4 million and theaverage duration of unemployment at 2.5 times the historical norm, workers areless able to regain productive employment quickly at anywhere near theirprevious wages and salaries. Similarly, the alarmingly high level of youthjoblessness increases the risk of relatively new entrants into the labor forcebecoming unemployable.

The bottom line is unfortunate, but it must be acknowledged. While the US economy isgradually healing, a lot more needs to happen – indeed, urgently – to restoreits traditional vigor and vitality. Most important, robust recovery requires adegree of seriousness and constructive collaboration in Washington that seems elusive today.

Unless and until this cooperation materializes,the hope of achieving economic escape velocitywill remain just that – a hope. And, rather than surging forward, the USeconomy, regrettably and exasperatingly, will remain captive to unusual sluggishness, while itsvulnerability to the ill winds blowing from the rest of the world will onlyincrease.