Part of the stock-marketization of the definition of how the economy is doing to many citizens attentive to public affairs is this: Wall Street and the credit rating agencies really do not care, in the sense of affecting their behavior in any way, whether the US unemployment rate is 5%, or 9%, or 13%.  From their point of view 9% unemployment is not necessarily even a problem, although few of their officials speaking on the record are dumb enough to say that publicly.

Individual firms get rewarded by investors for laying off scores off employees--it improves their profit picture. Employee compensation is (Marjorie Kelly, in her outstanding book The Divine Right of Capital makes, and elaborate, on this point) a profit-depressing cost, often the single largest and most manipulable one for companies.  What Wall Street and credit and securities-rating analysts are looking for (among other things, of course) is companies finding or creating new promising markets for what they sell, and dealing aggressively to cut their costs.  At least these are my strong impressions.  destor follows this stuff for a living and I hope if he sees this he can confirm or disconfirm.

The only way high US unemployment potentially could be a problem from the point of Wall Street and the credit ratings agencies is if they think it is high enough to cause or threaten any serious political destabilization that would impact the US-based investment climate, including [some progressive changes it would consider dangerous and left wing] policy changes, in a direction that could negatively affect the profit outlook.  

Neither can really imagine what political destabilization potentially problematic for it would look like in this society.  Wall Street and the credit ratings agencies don't include the health of the US as a society, and the people who live in it, as a relevant factor to look at.  It is assumed to be a non-factor.  So, if the US government is about to cut SS and Medicare, this can be bad for people but is seen as reducing overall US debt, possibly reducing taxes to pay for these programs especially over the longer run as public support for them declines, and as opening up new potentially profitable markets (SS privatization).  

In the Wall Street view of the world, US markets are seen as one among a range of possible investment venues, each of which has varying degrees of legal protections and more, or less, friendly rules.

Which would not necessarily be a problem if Wall Street did not have such an outsized influence over the US economic and political systems, to the point where so many citizens who have money invested, who vote and who may contribute to candidates, if they see Wall Street doing well and bullish, think that thereby the US economy is "doing well" along the dimensions that mainly concern them.  Unemployment enters into the picture only on a personal level, if they or someone they know loses their job and can't find another comparable one.  Or if the community they live in is deteriorating.  

But much of the true "investor class" whose expansion is at the core of the vision of the "ownership society" advocates, live in well-off suburbs or private enclaves where community deterioration, if it hits, is likely to come long after it hits other less affluent communities. High residential segregation by income levels further contributes to the disconnect between the minority "investor class" in our society and the vast majority not, or only in a minor way, part of it.  Not seeing or experiencing directly the deterioration, the investor class believes there is none.  Or at least none to be overly concerned about.

I don't get the sense Wall Street lives by Say's Law--that supply creates its own demand (which Keynes believed, and believed he showed to be, false.).  But neither does it seem to recognize slack aggregate demand in the US as something that points, or should be allowed to point, in a policy direction of anything other than tax cuts and more deregulation.  If there aren't buyers in the US, it figures, maybe there will be enough buyers elsewhere.