The U.S. government came up with $2,000,000,000,000 (or $2T) seemingly overnight in the form of the Coronavirus, Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act. That is a lot of zeros - an incomprehensible amount. Understanding how the government was able to do this is a reminder that while the headlines are scary and we are living in unprecedented times, there are many things that are responding exactly as needed and intended. 

While we are not technically in a recession until there have been 2 consecutive quarters of slower than usual or shrinking growth, many believe we are in fact at the end of a very long bull market. More than that, COVID-19 can be characterized as a black swan - an unexpected, hard to predict event, outside the normal range of possibility, that will cause a severe contraction in the global economy.