How can Wall Street be so healthy when Main Street isn’t?

On average, sure. But people who don’t earn much money aren’t going to be responsible for that bill because they pay no (or almost no) income tax.

There's also the fact that many companies that are doing well right now are keeping quiet about it. I know from personal experience at the company I work for (fintech midsized startup) that executives are very careful not to be openly positive about benefiting from the pandemic. Publicly admitting that you profitted by a global pandemic and an economic recession is in poor taste, and companies are rightly tentative about doing so.

From my work I've seen anything adtech related explode. Publishers or aggregators whose primary revenue stream is online advertising income are growing at incredible rates. Assuming that everyone is hurting because physical businesses are hurting is a huge mistake.

Additionally, as many analysts have been saying, the pandemics primary effect so far has been to accelerate existing trends, not create new ones. We're seeing a fast-foward in economic transition. Companies that were well positioned before the pandemic for the economy of the future (automation, digital) are doing swimmingly.

The stock market is being "invested" in not because it is a good investment at this point (it isn't) but because there is no where else to go. If interest rates ever revert to anything normal, it will get crushed. In the meantime this means that large, multinational companies are flush and are able to destroy smaller, more local competition. This trend is aided by the lockdowns, as well as the fact that large companies have access to the extremely low interest rates, but smaller players do not. You will continue to pay usurious rates on credit cards and most small business loans, while Global Corp. can issue corporate debt as very low rates.

Paying down debt is the opposite of what the Fed wants: in our system debt is the true money supply, so when debt is extinguished the money supply contracts. You can see this clearly in 2008:

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/TCMDO

Steve Keen outlines our best hope, a modern debt jubilee, here:

http://www.profstevekeen.com/modern-debt-jubilee/

"As irrational as it might seem, here’s the way investors rationalize the bullish stock market to themselves (we’ll only find out whether they are right or wrong in the future):

1. The stock market is forward-looking: Investors are betting on what the world and the economy look like in 12 to 18 months from now, not what they look like today, tomorrow or this fall.

2. The big get bigger: Much of the stock market’s success has been the result of a run-up in value for a few big technology companies — including Apple, Amazon and Microsoft — that make up a large share of the index. And retailers like Walmart and Home Depot are growing in part because small businesses have closed, allowing the bigger companies to take even more market share.

3. Betting on a vaccine: Given the daily headlines about the potential for a vaccine, investors want to be invested in the market when the news comes that there is a genuine vaccine, on the assumption that it will send stocks even higher.

4. The only game in town: With the Federal Reserve planning to print money for the foreseeable future, investors don’t want to be in cash or bonds, which are steadily losing value. So where else can they put their money? The stock market has become a default.

5. Help from Washington: As dysfunctional as Congress has proved to be, investors are betting that Republicans and Democrats will find a way to keep plying the economy with stimulus. (Anecdotal stories suggest some Americans have even taken their $600 unemployment checks and invested them in the stock market.)

Of course, all of these rationalizations don’t take into account the possibility of a terrible second or third coronavirus wave, a delay in the discovery of a vaccine, a constitutional crisis come the election in November, runaway inflation, the prospect of higher taxes to pay for the stimulus, a more significant trade war with China, or the dozens of other risks that seem to be bubbling just below — and in some cases on — the surface.

In the meantime, happy trading!"

*

#4 I hadn’t thought of, and is a VERY troubling sign I think. Cash is devaluing because of inflation. Bonds are devaluing because of a loss of hope of future repayment (they are debt instruments).