WASHINGTON -- The corporate bond market’s slow pace is causing lenders to question loans going to companies across the United States.

The bond market, the MasterCard for U.S. companies, has slowed down to levels not seen since the early days of the recession in the early 1990s, reports The Washington Post.

When the bond market is not healthy, corporate activity can come to a grinding halt. For example, companies will stop borrowing money to buy drilling equipment for coalmines, plants for manufacturing cars and land for expanding restaurant chains.

”It affects everything,” Michael Tarsala, an analyst for Thomson Squawk Box, said of the sluggish bond market. “It’s access to capital. It’s the lifeblood of a lot of big S&P companies...They’ve been encouraged to borrow money to make money for so long, and now the spigot’s suddenly been shut off.”

Despite the bad news on the bond market front, corporate earnings are strong, according to John Delaney of CapitalSource, a Maryland lender to medium-size businesses. That means the magnitude of the current economic downturn will rest once again on the shoulders of consumers, Delaney said. If consumers continue to spend, it is likely the economy will pull through without severe damage, just as it did in the slowdown of 2001.