In other news, Trump is reportedly planning to resume his Nuremberg rallies later this month where he plans to talk about how the economy is supposedly Great Again.
Meanwhile, researchers at the University of California, Berkeley say lockdowns and home isolation have probably prevented about 500,000 million coronavirus cases worldwide.
Finally, a record low number of Americans were hired in April while 7.7 million jobs were lost permanently.
The monthly Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, or JOLTS, showed layoffs and discharges dropped 3.8 million in April to 7.7 million. That was second highest level since the government started tracking the series in 2000.
Prior to the pandemic, layoffs hovered around 1.8 million. They are nearly three times the worst month of the Great Recession. The layoffs and discharge rate fell to 5.9% in April from a record high 7.6% in March. [...]
Hiring tumbled 1.6 million to a record low 3.5 million in April. The hiring rate plunged to an all-time low of 2.7% from 3.4% in March. Hiring decreased in many industries, with the biggest declines in professional and business services, accommodation and food services and construction.
Wall Street isn't the economy and that has never been more clear than it has been over the past couple weeks. Over 40 million people have lost jobs and unemployment is over 16 percent, but it hardly even matters to the market. The rich are now so rich there's hardly any relationship at all between the real economy and private equity.