Is it a u . Maybe its an l. Or perhaps its a z. Or maybe its a w. Or a nike swish. We keep hearing people argue about the shape of the recovery. But this whole debate misses the point. The defining question of this market is very simple. Will we have a depression . Anything that makes a depression less likely causes stocks to explode higher thats what yesterdays rally was about. Even though we gave up some of the gains today, im calling it a consolidation day no matter what dow sinking, nasdaq dipping 5. 4 when you have a bag r big rally yesterday and it us diddant give up everything because of a Late Afternoon sell off, it is a of a kelgs. The issue is not whether well have a rapid v, recovery u, bounce the w, l shape, i dont know the l, of course, is the house of pain for ages maybe we havent started talking about the swish because of the Michael Jordan series. The market slows down dramatically all the people fretting about the shape of the recovery are getting ahead of themselves. Forget the recovery. We need to know the shape of the decline. Will it be a bad recession or fullblown depression . Thats whats on the table until last week the depression scenario was pretty much the only thing on the table f not in my mind the very likely scenario even if the fed and Treasury Department moved aggressively to cushion the economy, there was still a possibility we were headed for bread lines and massive homeless encampments in major cities i have a food line near me in brooklyn that stretches as far as the eye can see there is a real chance the Great Depression redux whatever is happening here its entirely possible the economy hasnt yet bottomed. I think we probably have, but its not going to shock me if we have millions more layoffs and i could certainly see the stock market going lower, not out of the question. However, yesterday the market exploded higher because we got several positives all at once. You sure didnt get that impression if youlisten to the questions the senate lobbed at fed chief powell and secretary mnuchin. Our senators dont seem to believe anything changes for the better some of them were downright rude, i thought. I thought it was confusion the treasury and fed have been instrumental in steppimming the decline. The source of the confusion . None other than the stock market [ bell ] the opening bell when you study the Great Depression as i have, gratuitous thing selfaggrandizing study the Great Depression, its always framed by the stock market after the Great Depression the great crash of 1929, stocks just got hammered for years. All sorts of Great American companies with incredibly elevated stocks, the rcas, Radio Companies of america, much more than what we have now, thats right, they were much more elevated than now. Went under in no time flat and even the ones that survived saw their share prices get vaporized. During the depression the stock market itself was the fabulous metaphor for the broader economy. It told the tale, and it told the truth about what was happening in real america. They were in sync. This time its very different. See, this time the market is much less representative of the u. S. Economy you have International Companies built on fabulous secular themes the cloud, the internet of things, 5g, data center. These things kept working in the middle of a covidinduced economic catastrophe many do better when people are forced to work from home such as the cramer covid19 index which will be updated the day after memorial day in case anyones caring. There was nothing like this in the early years of the Great Depression i wish people understood, you have to go look at the time frame of when people were focused on the stock market and on the economy, what they said over and over again was, wow, did you see how bad the stock did, did you see how bad that did . No, now we just have to focus on employment forget the depression. Theyre not even trading like the storks acks are in a recessn its remarkable. Some of them are out and out winners. Facebook thanks to the new Small Business i think its a fabulous idea if you ask me. Microsoft because of its Cloud Service division, netflix because people were desperate for Home Entertainment amazon, deliver right to your door no mask. Lets drill down on amazon for a minute because its emblematic of the Great Depression people talked about, Radio Corporation of america, exact opposite in the depression there were no amazons. We had legions of bankrupt communications and retailing companies. Particularly retailers, they didnt have enough shoppers because they were simply well, there wasnt enough money. This time even with 30 Million People losing their jobs we had a safety net including programs put in place after the Great Depression and the governments multi trillion dollar rescue package without the Paycheck Protection Program and the 1200 checks per person, and especially the massively expanded unemployment benefits, we would be in much worse shape. They didnt have any of that in the 1930s. This safety net generated enough demand to boost Companies Like amazon or walmart that reported today, it was a stellar quarter. Number powered by 70 growth in its ecommerce division. Its giving you another chance to buy because it sold off at the end of the day the relative strength of the stock market has obscured the depths of this i ceconomic meltdown stocks arent behaving like were headed for a depression. Still, that was very much the case, at least until very recent in the last seven days weve gotten remarkable revelations. The state started reopening for business, realized no pent up demand despite rates of joblessness. We heard from home depot and Walmart Business got stronger, april was the bottom as things looked pretty darn bottomless 18 days ago oil bottomed a terrible barometer of the economy. Wall street disagrees with me. When crude plummeted to negative 37 a barrel that terrified people it gives hedge funds more confidence more importantly at these levels, Oil Producers can pay their bills which is huge for the banks that lent them money you get big credit card defaults coupled with oil defaults, they are cancelling Dividends Oil has come back with a vengeance. Oil credit card liquidity is surprisingly low unlike the Great Depression, the Banking System remains intact even as i continue to hate the stocks in there. Then when you look over all the debt issued, it wouldnt be issued under normal circumstances. No one would buy it anywhere near the levels it came out. Companies would have gone bust come on, carnival was struggling to survive, desperately trying to find financing. Stock down to 8. Offering death rattled terms no one would lend them money except the Federal Reserve promised to buy the bonds of spiraling companies. Every time every single airline, every one would have gone under if it werent for the Treasury Department they had no business and they had no business being in business without the government they would have folded with truly catastrophic layoffs that would have extended to boeing and 2 Million People who work for it and boeing supply chain companies. Treasury secretary saves these companies. He saved them. Are you kidding me thats how you really get into a depression even after all these interventions we have a lot to worry about. There was one more missing piece of the puzzle. We need to have some hope for a vaccine. Not the vaccine, some hope when you look at the major pharmaceutical companies, they all say next year, thats a long time yesterday moderna released preliminary data, very, very, very preliminary data that suggests they might have something by early next year or late this year that gives us hope although the hope is partially repealed today when people started poking holes in modernas press release. Moderna was careful about what they told us yesterday which was not a lot. Somebody blew the preliminary data point out of proportion the company sold stock at the opening seemed to think that the subsequent stock sales were both illadvised. Look, im not saying this markets done going down there is always the possibility we get more sell offs like we did at the end of the day. Youll hear more about that as we go off the charts bottom line, even if the moderna we needed remedial statistic lessons. I know that class was hard the fact is weve taken depression off the table thats more important than which letter of the alphabet the market resembles it does mean we wont be revisiting the markets lows because of all the not as bad as feared news that permeates the market how about darren in florida. Darren caller booyah, jim booyah, darren. Caller want to give a quick shout out to my pop, brother and buddies ricky and ryan i want to talk about salesforce, great track record i currently own it and walking taller on the spike up today im extremely bullish on it in the short term, though value on the stock and high 190s to low 200s. I want to double my position leading into no, no, come on what would ricky think that was one of his friends. I dont want you to double you have a really nice run here. If anything, look, i would rather sell than double here you have a really great gain my Charitable Trust owns it. We look at it every day and say we thank our lucky stars its this high, but we would not double down here and, yeah, just tell ricky to be cool all right. Lets go to michael in california, please michael. Caller great big booyah to you, mr. Cramer. Giant size booyah back to you. Whats up . Caller thank you for taking my call. Im a huge fan of yours. Got my dvr filled with cramer mad money. There you go. Caller im calling on clovis oncology, Ticker Symbol clvs i have to tell you, i have always liked clovis. I think its a great spec. You have to understand my sister lives in boulder. I say buy clovis it is a spec if you put more than a tenth of your money in this, michael, you shouldnt be dv what are you doing . Dvring me, whatever youre doing. Its too speculative i do like the idea lets go to ian in michigan. Ian. Caller hi, jim here is ian weinberg caller i took a play back in april 32. Is it time to take some profits, buy more shares or hold on whats the stock, ian longer term i like trade desk, ian, very much im going to give you that you have horse sense trade desk sis the alternative t google it allows your customers to be where ever they should be, all over the web, the internet whatever and i think thats a really good call but it is a hard stock for ian to own i would have preferred for ian to say that he liked, say, netflix. That would have been easier. All right. Here we go the depression, well, last couple days seems like it might be off the table and thats one of the most important factors in this market. Its one of the reasons we rallied so hard until stat put out the moderna story which said what moderna said. We dont necessarily have anything other than encouraging data theyre not going to put out a release saying, we solved covid. On mad money tonight, you heard it many times before Small Business is the backbone of the economy, so how are you getting creative under quarantine things that could leave a lasting change im going off the charts with what she thinks about the current setup with corporate offices closed due to covid19, more people are accessing corporate systems from home so Ping Identity, find out how its allowing access while keeping your data secure so stay with cramer. Announcer dont miss a second of mad money. Follow jimcramer on twitter have a question . Tweet cramer madtweets. Send jim an email to madmoney cnbc. Com. Or give us a call at 1800743cnbc miss something head to madmoney. Cnbc. Com. Tempurpedics mission is to give you truly transformative sleep. So, no more tossing and turning. Because only tempurpedic adapts and responds to your body. So you get deep, uninterrupted sleep. During the tempurpedic summer of sleep, all tempurpedic mattresses are on sale during the tempurpedic summer of sleep, were committed to making college more affordable. , thats why were keeping our tuition the same through the year 2021. [student] i knew snhu was the place for me when i saw how affordable it was. [narrator] find your degree at snhu. Edu. I geh. Common bird. E. Ooh look over here something much better. There it is. Peacock, included with xfinity x1. Remarkable. Fascinating. Very. It streams tons of your favorite shows and movies, plus the latest in sports news and. Huh run the newest streaming app has landed on xfinity x1. Now thats. Simple. Easy. Awesome. Xfinity x1 just got even better with peacock premium included at no additional cost. No strings attached. Just say peacock into your voice remote to start watching today. I know youre sick of it youre sick of hearing that Small Business is the backbone of the u. S. Economy, but just because its a cliche doesnt mean its not true you know why its true because Small Business spends a lot of money they spend on hiring, on physical build outs, on commerce big business, on the other hand, has been trying to cut costs for years. Exceptions in tech theyre always treyger ying to m their payrolls, they were proud of restructurings. They raised the earnings per share investors want to badly. Buy, buy, buy Small Businesses dont have public shareholders. They own restaurants or bars or luncheonettes. They create. However the flip side is they tend not to be well capitalized. As we discovered during the pandemic, most of them are not essential. According to fed chief j. Powell, 20 Million People lost their jobs these jobs overwhelmingly come from Small Business. These companies are the backbone of our economy we got a serious spinal injury going. When you see the fabulous numbers from walmart or home depot today, those numbers came at the expense of Small Businesses that were forced to stay closed. Because the stock went down doesnt mean the numbers werent great. Treasury secretary mnuchin worked out a plan with congress to keep people who work for Small Businesses stay employed you dont fire your workers, those loans turn into grants my restaurant took money from the payroll Protection Program and its the difference between closing or staying open. Were not supposed to have restaurants in new york, why not shutdown p. P. P. Gave you a reason for being. Unfortunately i have a nagging feeling the Paycheck Protection Program is not enough. Im worried many restaurants wont be able to keep going even after they take the money. The new social distancing rules means more restaurants are dependent on take out and delivery not enough seats to survive. Not enough people can make money that way does that mean the backbone of the economy is being ripped out . Nope, its not being ripped out. But it is shifting from brick and mortar towards your house or your garage or your apartment. Whats happening is people are creating things, making things, baking things, selling them online in businesses powered by etsy welcome to the ones selling handmade goods that cannot be bought at the god forsaken mall. In a world of layoffs and quarantine and heartless landlords who own buildings and therefore dont need the rent money so they dont see a need to cut you a break or owned by reits who dont want dividends cut, theyre thriving using wix to develop websites that look no different from the big boys. Using adobe, using square as a register and take pay pal. They can zoom you a registration as the economy reopens lots of people are terrified of going to a store they can flag specials with tulio. Get it fast with uber eats, post mates, grub hub or door dash they cant replace the substantial bar and eco system that used to be a hiring machine. It says something that with brick and Mortar Companies struggling to survive, Small Businesses are springing up online see your handy work . Explore etsy scroll instagram its amazing its a celebration of Small Business creativity unleashed by the pandemic and it is not going away stay with cramer are we coming out of the woods . This market spent the last two months chugging its way higher after yesterdays phenomenal rally stocks are trading like a new normal, or at least they were until 3 00 today. We need to be careful. This is still a very uncertain moment we dont know if well be able to safely reopen the economy without causing a second wave of covid infections we dont know how the economy can recover. At times like this i like to take my emotions out of the equation and go with a more quantitative approach. I hope things get better i obviously thought we could be heading to a severe depression i fear they might not get better as fast as many think. We need to put that to the sidant thats why were going off the charts with the brilliant technician who owns the fibonache queen website and happens to be my partner, Carl Quintanilla and i go back and forth. The thing you need to know is she nailed the crash we checked in with her in early february she warned the market was vulnerable to a major downside correction when we spoke to her again in early march she cautioned the averages probably hadnt bottomed yet if you took her advice you could size up one of the worst declines in history. How does she f