CNN’s Jim Acosta compared Monday’s Dow drop — which analysts are considering to be a bull market correction — to the 2008 financial crisis.
Acosta noted on Twitter that White House spokesman Raj Shah touted the “fundamentals of this economy” on Monday while the Dow dropped, which is similar to a statement made by Sen. John McCain in September of 2008.
WH spox Shah today: ” the fundamentals of this economy are very strong and they are headed in the right direction, for the middle class in particular.”
McCain in Sept. 2008… “I think, still, the fundamentals of our economy are strong.”https://t.co/gmdrIizswu— Jim Acosta (@Acosta) February 5, 2018
McCain was mocked for that statement because the U.S. was in the midst of a financial crisis wherein one large bank declared bankruptcy and another sold itself to Bank of America.
Of course, the difference in Monday’s drop is that very few analysts are touting it as a reason to panic or be worried about the strength of the economy. Rather, they have explained it away as a normal correction on a record-breaking market.
Clare Sebastian, a CNN correspondent, noted that many thought a market “correction was long overdue” because investors would start to worry about inflation on a fast-growing economy.
“The crazy thing for everybody listening at home is that we got some really good economic news on Friday,” Rana Foroohar, a CNN global analyst, said. “Wages are finally going up after many years of that not happening. Ironically, markets don’t like wage likes because that makes interest rates go up. It is typically what came down.”
“The underlying economy is pretty strong,” Foroohar confirmed.
MSNBC’s Ali Velshi also argued that “we don’t have any signs of the economy weakening. It’s strengthening, building on a strong economy that the president likes to take credit for all the time.”
“But we’re not seeing weakening and we’re not seeing weakening signs anywhere else in the world,” Velshi continued. “We’re not there yet. We don’t have a lot of telltale signs, the velocity of the sell-off. We don’t have panic. You don’t have reasons for this. Earnings are still strong. The economy’s good.”
On CNN International, Jeremy Seigel agreed that the market was in need of a correction.
“There’s really nothing fundamental except that the market had overrun fundamentals earlier and I think it’s now coming back to a much more realistic level of prices,” Seigel said.
