Hi, I'm Dan Pramak, and welcome to Axios Recap. Today's Monday, May 24th. Stocks are up,

the number of U.S. COVID cases is way down, and we're focused on America's small business comeback.

Normally this show dives into one topic per day, but this week we're doing something different,

because the topic of America's small business recovery is so big, so important, so complex,

that we didn't think we could do it justice in a single episode. So instead we're doing six,

running through this Saturday. Today's show, our opener, will be a bit longer

than usual, and we want to kick off with an interview that sets up where small business

stood heading into the pandemic, where it got hit hardest, and where it's rebounding first.

Later in the show, you'll hear stories from a single shopping center in Allen, Texas,

from both its small business owners and its landlord.

But first we're joined by Chris Wheat, co-president of the J.P. Morgan Chase Institute, an internal

think tank that looks at anonymized credit card data from millions of individuals and small businesses.

Let's go back pre-pandemic a bit. Big picture. What was the state of American small business,

say, in February 2020? I'm glad you asked because we've had a lot of conversations about what's

happened since then, but the context is super important. Look, I mean, hats off to small business

owners for working so hard under such hard conditions in the normal times. They run their

business and they run it well,

but they run it on not a lot of cash. And they were always exposed, I think, to disruptions,

unexpected events, be it sort of with customers or suppliers, whatever the case is. They

typically worked on a really, really limited cash buffer is the way we think about it. Usually

running somewhere,

you know, two or three weeks of cash in their bank accounts to sort of deal with unexpected

...