No Recovery Until 'Well into 2010’: Ross

The U.S. economy isn't likely to recover until "well into 2010," Wilbur Ross, chairman and CEO of WL Ross & Co., said Monday.

"The consumer still has not been rehabilitated" and that's the big problem halting the return to growth, given that the consumer used to be almost 70 percent of the U.S. economy, Ross told "Squawk Box."

It's doubtful that the government's stimulus package will boost growth anytime soon and called for the White House to the renew the Term-Asset Backed Securities Loan Facility (TALF) program as it expires in coming months.

"I don't see how we can do without it," Ross said.

The recent increase in the savings rate was a positive for the long term, but for the economy in the near term it was problematic as the consumer is cutting spending on products which may help with the economy's healing, he said.

If the savings rate goes to 8 or 10 percent and stays there, that would be "a really serious thing because the only thing to offset it whatever the government does," he said.

"We're going to be heading toward France, except without the wine," Ross said, citing how liabilities are being shifted from an overleveraged consumer to the government.

"The housing market certainly hasn't stopped going down. And to me, the $6 trillion destruction in people's net worth, in and of itself, is a big deterrent to spending. The banks are still not making loans," Ross told CNBC, adding that he sees that the asset-backed commercial paper market has been "partly rehabilitated." 

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