A Recovery for Some, Not for All

If the stock market's major indexes had recovered at the pace of the unemployment rate, where would we be today? By one rough reckoning, the S&P 500 would read 831, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average, 8,053. That's not how it is in real life. Both the S&P 500 and the Dow set new highs last month. At Tuesday's close, the S&P 500 stood at 1,562 and the Dow at 14,573.

It's been slow going for recovery in labor markets, and just the opposite on Wall Street. This raises a question: If the stock market were recovering as slowly as the labor market, would the policy response have been different? The answer is surely yes. It's hard to imagine Washington tolerating it. Recall the panic that gripped Congress when the stock market tanked in 2008. The result was a rush to action.