The infant in Elizabeth's womb "leaped for joy" when Mary approached, we hear in this Sunday's gospel. Small businesses that approach banks for loans are not getting a similar reaction. On Monday President Barack Obama told Wall Street bankers who were bailed out last year they have a moral obligation to make more loans.

"One year ago--when many of these institutions were on the verge of collapse, a predicament largely of their own making, oftentimes because they failed to manage risk properly--we took difficult and, frankly, unpopular steps to pull them back from the brink," Obama said.

Obama said that because taxpayers provided "extraordinary assistance" to save bankers from the financial crisis, "now that they're back on their feet, we expect an extraordinary commitment from them to rebuild our economy."

Banks should not be required to make bad loans, the president said after meeting with executives of financial firms, but "I'm getting too many letters from small businesses who explain that they are credit worthy" but cannot get loans.

In related news Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke was named Person of the Year by Time magazine this week. Time credited Bernanke with leadership that helped set the U.S. economy on a path to recovery, even if bank bailouts have proven unpopular. "Bernanke . . . knows the economy would be much, much worse if the Fed had not taken such extreme measures to stop the panic," Time said.

Source: Articles by Henry J. Pulizzi for the Wall Street Journal, David Jackson for USA TODAY, Mark Felsenthal and Caren Bohan for Reuters, and the Associated Press