The stock market doesn't represent the real economy, Jim Cramer reminded his Mad Money viewers Tuesday. That's why while the stock market is hitting new highs, vast swaths of the real economy are in dire need of additional stimulus.
If you only look at our economy through the lens of the stock market, you'll only see strong earnings from Adobe Systems( ADBE ) - Get Reportsending shares up 2.1% and blowout earnings from FedEx( FDX ) - Get Reportsignaling that commerce is strong. It's easy to look at data like these and think that our economy is strong and COVID-19 is in the rearview mirror.
But underneath our nation's largest publicly traded companies there is a lot of rot, Cramer said. Nearly two-thirds of our economy is service based, Cramer told viewers, and that means that some 15 million retail and restaurant jobs are at risk as social distancing makes small business unprofitable.
Small businesses don't trade on Wall Street, so they're often out of sight of lawmakers. But the fact remains that until we have a vaccine, social distancing and other pandemic restrictions will strangle many small businesses -- and we won't see the impacts until the banks start seeing loans default. By then, it's already too late.
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