Another round of unemployment reporting has pushed the newly jobless figure over 30 million in just the past 6 weeks, as the coronavirus continues to wreak economic havoc  in the U.S.  Even that staggering figure is inaccurate, though, as state-erected barriers to unemployment benefits have made undercounting rampant – NYTimes and WSJ

With those numbers in mind, it’s little wonder that for the first time since 1998 global poverty is likely to increase this year, as some half-a-billion people are set to backslide into destitution by the end of the year – NYTimes

The ECB announced on Thursday that it will start paying banks to lend money. The continent finds itself in the “midst of a downturn not seen since the end of World War II, and the worst is yet to come,” according to ECB president Christine Lagarde – NYTimes and WSJ

In the face of all of that tumult, stocks managed to close out their best month in decades, having “rebounded sharply since the market bottomed March 23.” Still, a precipitous fall in consumer spending (-7.5% in March, as revealed yesterday) and those unemployment numbers brought the indices down to end April – WSJ and Bloomberg

Streetwise helps us understand why the surge doesn’t necessarily mean that “investors [are] making a horrible mistake” – WSJ

Amazon expects lower to negative Q2 profit due to “increased spending to keep logistics operations running smoothly during the coronavirus pandemic.” Bezos & co. did report a 26% increase in sales during Q1 – Bloomberg and MarketWatc

J. Crew is preparing to file for bankruptcy, “one of several high-profile U.S. chains that are on the verge of unraveling during the coronavirus pandemic.” Like others, the “preppy retailer” was beset by plenty of issues before the virus, but the new economic reality means no more delaying the inevitable – WSJ

Tesla’s coming off of an impressive Q1 and more controversial remarks from founder and CEO Elon Musk, but an investor lawsuit on appeal to the 9th Circuit focuses on the company’s 2017 stock losses, with the putative class “arguing the electric carmakers disclosures were ‘absolutely not forward looking’ and they hid delays caused by what an expert says was a ‘horse and carriage’ Model 3 production line” – Law360

As regular readers would expect, early analysis of PPP lending by the DOJ suggests that fraudsters came out in droves to get a piece of the free-flowing cash – Bloomberg

Love this mix of high & low from the Times, which balances out voyeuristic tendencies with some high-brow literary observation – NYTimes