Leave your feedback Share Copy URL https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/as-u-s-fiscal-woes-persist-lawmakers-pledge-more-aid Email Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Pinterest Tumblr Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Transcript The U.S. economy continued to falter as markets sank sharply Thursday for the second consecutive day. A chief investment officer and a journalist discuss congressional plans to craft a stimulus package later this month and weigh efforts by lawmakers to assist troubled industries. Read the Full Transcript Notice: Transcripts are machine and human generated and lightly edited for accuracy. They may contain errors. JEFFREY BROWN: Two straight big drops on Wall Street, and plenty of post-election action in Washington. We start with the markets, and Hugh Johnson, chief investment officer at Johnson Illington Advisors.Well, Hugh, two bad days in a row. What are the markets seeing? HUGH JOHNSON, Johnson Illington Advisers: Well, I think the problem is, is that, now that we've gotten past the election and all the good feelings about the election, investors, Jeffrey, are focused back, refocusing on what really matters the most to them, and that's, of course, what's the economy doing? What are earnings doing?And when you look at the October economic numbers that we've seen so far, automobile sales and retail sales, when we look at reports on manufacturing, reports on the non-manufacturing sector of the economy, they're nothing short of very, very dismal.So the numbers, the economic numbers we're seeing that kind of tell us what the economy did in the month of October are very, very poor. JEFFREY BROWN: You're saying for the markets — and I guess now for the rest of us — it's kind of OK, oh, yes, all that's still out there, right? HUGH JOHNSON: Yes, that's all that's out there. And it's probably maybe a touch worse than I just described it, although I don't want to describe it as much worse than I already have.But there's also indicators that are in these reports — that are embedded in these reports that tell us not where the economy went in the month of October or what it did in the month of October. It tells us where the economy is headed. They're leading indicators for the economy.And they say, not only things were bad in October, but they're not likely to get any better for the remainder of this quarter and probably the first quarter of 2009. So it's kind of dismal out there. JEFFREY BROWN: And what sectors, what stocks were most hit — hardest hit, I should say? HUGH JOHNSON: Well, yes, you know, Jeffrey, what we've been seeing is it's actually fairly broad-based, but certainly the financials have been hurt a lot. We saw the price of oil decline because the expectation is that demand is declining, demand for oil is declining fairly sharply.And, of course, automobile stocks, very, very sharply, consumer stocks, anything that has to do with consumer spending declined very, very sharply.