The White House reacted Monday to another sharp plunge in the stock market.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 800 points on Monday after worse-than-expected reports of inflation last week were compounded with reports the Federal Reserve would continue tightening monetary policy aggressively.
The S&P 500 closed below what it did on Inauguration day, wiping out all of its gains since Biden took office on January 21, 2021, and entering into a bear market.
The president previously bragged in January that the stock market had hit “record after record after record” on his watch, up 20 percent in a year.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Biden was “monitoring” the stock market but did not report any specific response.
“As you know we are watching, we are watching closely,” she said during the White House press briefing. “We know families are concerned about inflation and the stock market, that is the something that the president is really aware of.”
Jean-Pierre repeatedly blamed inflation and stock market losses on “Putin’s price hike” and the “once-in-a-generation pandemic,” arguing that Biden’s multi-trillion-dollar spending agenda had only made the economy stronger.
“The way that we see this is that the American people are well-positioned to face these challenges because of the economic historic gains that we have made under this president in the last 16 months,” she said.
When asked about whether Biden’s radical spending were responsible for creating historic inflation, Jean-Pierre disagreed.
“No. That is not how we’re seeing the American Rescue plan,” she said, referring to the partisan $1.9 trillion spending bill signed by Biden.