Welcome to Axis ProRata, where we take just 10 minutes to get you smarter on the collision

of tech, business and politics.

Presented by Bridge Bank. Be safe. Venture wisely. I'm Dan Permac. On today's show, private

equity goes to court in the year's biggest retail bankruptcy. But first, the sorry state of small business.

So this morning we learned that nearly three million Americans filed for unemployment last week,

which brings the two-month total to a staggering Great Depression level, 36.5 million people.

But the reality is that those numbers are probably even worse because they often fail to include

the tens of millions of small businesses without any employees, sole proprietorships or small

family shops.

Overall, around half of U.S. small business only had an average of 15 days of cash buffer

before the pandemic.

Just two weeks.

That's according to research from the JPMorgan Chase Institute,

which has access to transaction and account summary data for over one million small businesses.

The Institute also found that the average cash buffer was even lower in majority black and

majority Hispanic communities. And those communities, those are the same ones where we have learned

that small businesses often had a tougher time getting federal bailout loans in the first phase of the paycheck protection

program.

And again, just to reiterate, that buffer, that 15 days, that's before the pandemic, when

things were running as usual.

If small businesses today are still paying rent and utilities and employees or just one of

those things, it's hard to imagine

...