Fox Business host warns against the federal government reacting to the coronavirus market crash
David Asman: “What really scares me the most is if politicians think they have to do something”
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From the March 9, 2020, edition of Fox News' America's Newsroom
DAVID ASMAN (FOX BUSINESS ANCHOR): What gets me is all the politicians telling us not to panic when they are the ones -- what really scares me the most is if politicians think they have to do something, looking over there I'm seeing Jon Scott he's nodding yes, you and I have seen that before. We've seen it before, remember in 2008, 2009 when there was a lot of overreaction to what was happening, as bad as that situation was. Sometimes politicians can go overboard in trying to make things better and sometimes the best thing to do is just to wait for markets to calm down and see what'll happen.
... ASMAN: We have experiences with viruses, worldwide viruses before, and I think back to SARS which was far more deadly. I think it had a -- you may not want to -- you may double-check this, but it was far more deadly. I was going to say 20% mortality rate, but it was very high, SARS. This is much lower than that. Possibly less than 1% mortality rate. It is very contagious, however. That's the thing I think when you ask any of the traders that are getting their information from the medical experts on TV, what scares them most they say is the fact that the contagion element of this particular virus is much greater than we've seen before. The amount that -- the quickness with which it spreads does scare traders. And that, that -- because what that means is it would put a lot of people out of work, very small mortality rate when you look at the overall, but still, people would have to stay home. You already see congressmen and senators self-quarantining themselves as a result --
SANDRA SMITH (CO-ANCHOR): Ted Cruz.
ASMAN: What's going to happen if more of that goes on in the Capitol? Well a lot of traders say maybe it's better if the Capitol doesn't do any work. But the point is the people who are at work, and as this thing begins to spread among factories and so forth, what does that mean about the industrial output of America? It's going to slow down, and does it slow down to the point of a recession? I think probably not that much, but when you look at what's happening in the world, there may be pressures from the outside forcing our economy to go down even more
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ASMAN: One final thing, word of caution. I would mention, it is an election year.
SMITH: Yep.
ASMAN: And we have politicians in an election already promising the moon. Imagine how much more they'll promise and that scares me a little bit because we may go too far in our promises.