The only V-shaped recovery after coronavirus will be in the stock markets | Larry Elliott

Central bank intervention reassured the financial system, but the real world outlook is bleak - just ask M&S workers in the UK

It is business as usual on Wall Street. Forget that the US economy shrank by almost a tenth between April and June. Forget that the official unemployment rate is 11%. The only news that matters is that the stock market has topped pre-crisis levels.

That's not only true in the US. The Financial Times index of global shares is almost back to where it was in the happy days when only a few health experts had heard of Covid-19. There is much talk - almost all of it the product of wishful thinking - about a V-shaped recovery from the pandemic. The one place it is certainly happening is in the world's bourses.

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