Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is “not worried” about the stock market despite a crushing week of losses on Wall Street.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell by approximately 3% this past week, and the S&P 500 and Nasdaq also dropped before slightly rebounding on Friday. Bessent dismissed concerns about the markets while on NBC News’s Meet the Press on Sunday, summing the changes up to healthy market corrections he wishes would have happened to avert past financial bubbles.
“I’ve been in the investment business for 35 years, and I can tell you that corrections are healthy. They’re normal,” Bessent said. “What’s not healthy is straight up, that you get these euphoric markets. That’s how you get a financial crisis.”
“It would have been much healthier if someone had put the brakes on in ’06, ’07. We wouldn’t have had the problems in ’08. So, I’m not worried about the markets. Over the long term, if we put good tax policy in place, deregulation, and energy security, the markets will do great,” he added.
When asked by host Kristen Welker whether people should be concerned about their retirement savings, which are generally invested in the stock market, Bessent asked people to consider a big-picture outlook.
“One week does not the market make. As Warren Buffett says, ‘Over the short term, the market is a voting machine. Over the long term, it’s a weighing machine.’ And again, Kristen, it would have been very easy for us to come in, run these reckless policies that have been happening — happening before,” Bessent said.
HOWARD LUTNICK SAYS ECONOMY WILL ‘BE HUMMING’ IN FOURTH QUARTER
“We’ve got these large government deficits, 6.7% of GDP. We’ve never seen this when we’re not in wartime, not in recession. We are bringing those down in a responsible way. We are going to have a transition, and we are not going to have a crisis,” he added.
The Trump administration has attempted to quell concerns about the markets, with Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick saying last week that the economy would be “humming” by the fourth quarter.
