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At This Hour

Stock Market Major Selloff in Opening Minutes; French President Honors Americans Who Helped Stop Train Massacre; Friend of Hero Airman Spencer Stone Describes Him. Aired 11-11:30a ET

Aired August 24, 2015 - 11:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[11:00:00] POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: How will things end? Full coverage on CNNmoney.com. Full coverage here. Team coverage from the New York Stock Exchange.

I'm Poppy Harlow. Thanks so much for being with me.

AT THIS HOUR with Berman and Bolduan starts right now.

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: Hello, everyone. I'm Kate Bolduan. John Berman is off this morning. We want to welcome our viewers here in the United States and around this world.

A lot going on at this very hour. Let's get straight to that breaking news. The stock market trying its very hardest to bounce back here in the United States after a major sell-off in the opening minutes. Here is a live look at the big board. The Dow right now down 340-some points. That is -- that looks sunny and rosy after an epic 1,000-point plunge into the minutes right after the bell. This roller coaster we've been seeing is tied to a global sell-off triggered by stocks crashing in China.

With me here to discuss now is "CNN Money" correspondent, Cristina Alesci, at the New York Stock Exchange, with perspective from there. With me is, also here, chief business correspondent, Christine Romans; and host of "Quest Means Business" on CNN International, Richard Quest.

Great to see all of you.

Cristina, you're on the floor. What are you hearing from investors this morning?

CRISTINA ALESCI, CNN MONEY CORRESPONDENT: Certainly fear took hold this morning. You referenced that 1,000 point drop. That was a tense moment on the floor. Things have calmed down quite substantially. We're down 300 points. What's going on here as far as the traders and investors that I'm talking to are saying, that there is a new dynamic at play now. Everyone has, you know, been talking about how we've had a bull market since 2011. Even longer than that. And now it seems like investors are hitting the reset button just a bit and really questioning the prospects for global growth. Specifically that means China, which has really been the engine for economic global growth, and that stock market crashed, and it started really accelerating last week and into this morning, and that's when investors woke up to. So China's slow down is really causing a lot of questions. Then you have two other factors that are really playing a big role here. One is oil and the crash in oil prices or the slump in oil prices. You know, this is something that, again, raises questions about emerging markets. We have rested on emerging markets for growth for the last several years. Now investors are saying, what happens when those emerging markets aren't growing at those same rates?

RICHARD QUEST, CNN HOST, QUEST MEANS BUSINESS: And also --

(CROSSTALK)

ALESCI: And then the whole question --

(CROSSTALK)

BOLDUAN: Absolutely. One big question now is, why today when we've been watching China for so long?

Cristina, stick with me.

Richard and Christine Romans are here with me.

Why today, Richard?

QUEST: There were some numbers out of China last week that showed manufacturing the worst it has been --

(CROSSTALK)

BOLDUAN: Could a manufacturing number out of China do this?

QUEST: Well, once people get a whiff of fear, that's what this is really all about. There is no -- never a single reason why everybody suddenly decides to head for the door, but it only takes one person to shout "fire" and everybody else starts to look for the smoke. And, yes, if you look at the global economy at the moment, there are most definitely signs of smoke and signs of worry. They're not in the United States, but in a global economy, you will start to feel the effects.

BOLDUAN: Put it in perspective what we're looking at here today.

CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN CHIEF BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: We have seen six years of double digit percentage increases in stocks. Your 401K has gone up, up, up. For a long time. People didn't think stocks could go down.

(CROSSTALK)

ROMANS: Now stocks coming down and you can see how ugly it looks. Richard, you showed the Dow 30 because the 30 stocks that make up the Dow Jones Industrial Average, every one of them is lower.

QUEST: It's fascinating when you look at what we've got here. BOLDUAN: This looks like a whole lot of "I don't know what's

going on." Maybe they don't either.

(CROSSTALK)

QUEST: Well, it is the 30 stocks that are in the Dow Jones Industrials. You have DuPont at the moment, which is the lowest, down some 4.3 percent, but it's broad-based, this sell-off. If you take Goldman Sachs, it is off 3.25 percent. Morgan is off, JPMorgan down 3.2 percent. The only people ironically that are bucking -- not bucking the trend but at least holding their own, Apple, down 1.6 percent. Now, that was creamed last week on the back of China.

ROMANS: And if you bought Apple or any of the tech stocks anytime this year, you're under water now. This is really ugly.

QUEST: Look at Intel and Microsoft, also not as badly off.

BOLDUAN: What do you make of the fact that analysts say this is a correction in the U.S. markets, which has been a long time coming. Is that just this?

ROMANS: It has been a long time coming. That's one day. Let's look over the past year. So even with all of these losses, Kate, you're still back to where you were last fall, last November. That just shows you how dramatic the rises have been in the stock market and now there's a feeling that it doesn't deserve to be at this level with all of the things that are happening around the world.

[11:05:02] QUEST: But we do get these tantrums. We had one in 2013 with the question of tapering. You had this one around here.

(CROSSTALK)

BOLDUAN: They don't feel good with a 2-year-old and they don't feel good in the stock market either.

(CROSSTALK)

ROMANS: This is the S&P downgrade. This was self-inflicted right there.

QUEST: And it was Ebola and Europe. You do quite occasionally get these sorts of moods in the market. What you have to look for is the wider picture. If you look at the global markets, this is deeply worrying.

(CROSSTALK)

QUEST: Shanghai down 8.4 percent. That feeds into Europe. So you've got London down 4 percent, and then ultimately that then feeds --

(CROSSTALK)

BOLDUAN: Obviously the U.S. markets, we have hours to go, but what are we going to be looking at then tomorrow because the damage internationally seems to be where --

(CROSSTALK)

ROMANS: You want to see at what point investors around the world say, hey, wait a second, the U.S. has a housing market that's getting better, a job market that's growing, a stable financial system, it does have a stable legal system. Maybe this is the place where we put our money. Money is going right now into the Treasury market. That means interest rates are going down, which means refinance your mortgage, please, if you can --

(CROSSTALK)

(LAUGHTER)

BOLDUAN: Christine Romans says -- Richard, real quick on this.

QUEST: This is the open. This is your 1,000 points. But what we've clearly now got is, thank you, what we've clearly now got is an area --

(CROSSTALK)

BOLDUAN: Not going to work. You can't draw on the big board.

QUEST: I can't draw on the big board. It's broken.

BOLDUAN: It is illegal to draw on the big board.

(LAUGHTER)

QUEST: What you clearly got is the market that is now -- has found a moderate level of equilibrium around about 350 to --

(CROSSTALK)

ROMANS: Just above 16,000 on the Dow.

(CROSSTALK)

QUEST: Oh, our chartist has returned. Our chartist has returned with 16,000.

(CROSSTALK)

BOLDUAN: Technical analysis with Christine Romans. Give us another few minutes and we'll see how this continues.

The big question is, is the situation in China worse off?

Will you stop trying to draw on the board.

(LAUGHTER)

We're revoking Richard's drawing ability. It's changing minute to minute and we'll be on it all morning. Thanks, guys.

Richard, move away from the wall.

Coming up for us, three men that saved my life. One witness talks about the terrifying moments she heard gunfire on a train and then hid under her seat. We're going to talk to her next.

And a military jet slams into cars on a very busy highway. The deadly crash all caught on tape as a crowd of people watched in horror.

And the 2016 guessing game continues, folks. Is Vice President Joe Biden in or is he out? New details after a very important and eyebrow-raising private meeting with a very influential Democrat. That's ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[11:11:03] BOLDUAN: We are back now with the breaking news. The markets bouncing off the bottom really after a major sell-off this morning. Take a live look at the big board. The Dow down 450 points at this point, but that is after an epic 1,000-point plunge in the opening minutes this morning.

Chief business correspondent, Christine Romans, is here with us again. And as well, joining us now is Jonathan Golub, chief U.S. market strategist at RBC Capital Markets.

Jonathan, thanks so much for joining us.

So what do you make of this?

JONATHAN GOLUB, CHIEF U.S. MARKET STRATEGIST, RBC CAPITAL MARKETS: Well, I mean, what you have is a global growth scare. You have China is exhibiting much greater economic weakness than before, and while everyone likes to think that lower oil prices is good, it obviously creates strain on many countries and companies, and that's spooking investors, but the more important thing is I think the fundamentals, especially here in the U.S., remain quite solid, and once we work through this, I think we'll be on much better footing.

BOLDUAN: Christine, you said similar this morning.

ROMANS: Home prices are increasing, Kate. You have a job situation those slowly but steadily improving. 5.3 percent unemployment, and for people who have a job, there's actually some hope that there's going to be wage increases somewhere down the line, and the fed until a couple days ago felt strongly enough about the American economic outlook that it was ready to raise interest rates, a signal that we were back to normal again in these years after the crisis. So it's really an external problem, he's absolutely right. External problem that's causing all these worries, but stocks have been up double digits for six years. People forgot stocks could go down. When you started to get big international signals converging, it was a pile on this morning. If you're just tuning in, you're saying, oh, my god.

(CROSSTALK)

ROMANS: If you've been watching for two hours, you're saying, oh, thank goodness because it was down --

(CROSSTALK)

BOLDUAN: Exactly. It's all perspective. That's exactly right.

An important piece of the perspective Christine has been trying to offer this morning, Jonathan, is it's not a time to panic. What are you telling investors?

GOLUB: It's really interesting. Whether it be, you know, an individual investor or a larger institutional investor, when you see, you know, like a thousand points on the Dow or you turn on the TV and you hear this kind of discussion, it makes you more concerned. I think there's two things. If you liked the market yesterday, if you were a long-term investor then, you should be comfortable and willing to put more into the market. Now, the question isn't whether, you know, you're going to pick the exact point of the bottom, but really in two or three or six months from now, will you have be been pleased you were able to pick up securities you already liked or invested in your portfolio at a 10 percent discount, and the answer is probably yes.

BOLDUAN: Christine, but when you see this, if you wake up to this, this morning, and you see world markets down, it is scary. What are you keeping an eye on as we move through the rest of today and especially internationally through tomorrow? Because the situation in China, while a lot of folks haven't been focusing on it, it has been a long time coming.

ROMANS: I want to see if there's more selling through the rest of the week or you start to see this grinding sideways where some investors are coming in saying I haven't been able to buy Apple this cheap in a long time. Walmart is down I think 30 percent from its most recent high. You look at Disney, Netflix, all of these names are down big time. Even Tesla had a really bad couple days. These are some names people have been interested in. They couldn't get in. Well, now they can get in. I'm also interested to see what the word is from the fed and these people who are on the fed who are giving speeches, the Federal Reserve. Are they going to say maybe they're not --

(CROSSTALK)

BOLDUAN: Does a day like today change their perspective on if they were going to raise interest rates or not?

ROMANS: I talked to a couple pretty plugged in people who say they think not September for a fed interest rate hike because there's too much uncertainty in the global arena. But for you out there, if you're just now trying to find out what your 401K log in is, it's too late. The market has already moved. What you can do is refinance your mortgage because rates are still very, very low and are eventually going up. Gas prices are going to keep going down so there's going to be more savings for you. Figure out if you want to spend or save it. There are some things that are really important personal finance things people should be thinking about, not necessarily selling after there's already been a 2,000 point move. That's just silly.

[11:15:22] BOLDUAN: Quick final note, Jonathan?

GOLUB: I mean, while we're talking about weakness outside of the U.S., we're talking about weakness in China, the U.S. is better positioned than any other country in the world. We actually do less trade than any other country given the scope of our own economy. So we're far better off being here than you would be in Europe or Asia or in an emerging economy.

BOLDUAN: Some sage words as people keep a wary eye on that big board.

Hope you slept in. That's all I'm saying.

(LAUGHTER)

Great to see you both. Thank you so much.

Coming up, the French president plays tribute to the brave Americans who stopped a massacre on board a train in northern France. Plus, a closer look at the suspect and what his motivation might have been. There's seems to be quite a discrepancy there. That's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[11:19:36] BOLDUAN: New today, three American heroes and a British man, who stopped a suspected terrorist on a speeding train, they received France's highest recognition, the Legion of Honor. The French president said these men were the incarnation of what is good when faced with an evil called terrorism. You see part of the ceremony right there. 23-year-old U.S. Airman Spencer Stone, he was on vacation traveling with his two childhood friends from Amsterdam to Paris when they heard gunfire. Then they saw a man with an AK-47 slung over his shoulder. Stone, National Guardsman Alek Scarlatos, and a college senior, Anthony Sadler, they worked together to take the man down rushing him, beating him, choking him, and eventually hog- tying him, his hands and arms together.

Listen to how people who know them reacted to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ALEK SCARLATOS, HELPED STOP GUNMAN: It wasn't really a conscious decision. We just kind of acted. There wasn't much thinking going on.

SPENCER STONE, HELPED STOP GUNMAN: Alek hit me on the shoulder and said, let's go, ran down, tackled him. We hit the ground. Alek came up and grabbed the gun out of his hand while I put him in a choke hold.

ANTHONY SADLER: HELPED STOP GUNMAN: I saw Alek get up and those are my close friends, so I just like couldn't let them go alone, so that's totally the whole reason I got up out of my seat.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BOLDUAN: The three men right there reacting to and kind of laying out what happened to them and how it all played out.

Nic Robertson is joining us right now from Paris with many more details.

Nic, these definitely appear to be humble heroes bucking that moniker but they sure received quite a hero's welcome by the French president today.

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Absolutely. I mean, we've been hearing tributes paid to them from people on the street talking to us. We've seen them clapped and applauded when they've been out on the streets here briefly. What the French president said was he wanted to honor them and he wanted to give them this honor, this highest honor in France before they went back home. Excuse me. But he also said when he made this very, very clear, that but for their actions, them risking themselves, risking their very lives, he said there could have been absolute carnage on the train. He said this gunman has more than 300 bullets in his weapon. There were more than 500 people on the train. So he painted a picture of just how dire the situation could have been. He said these men should be an inspiration to others. He did say that the French were going to sort of have a look at the security on their train network, but what he said these men provided for people here is a reminder that they also have a responsibility. He says we're not weak in the face of terrorism, that if you stick together like these men, you can do something. If you're in a moment of crisis, and here he was quoting Anthony, quoting him directly, "If you're in a point of crisis, really you can do something." The message from the president, honoring these men and holding them up as a shining example for everyone else about what can be done in the face of a dire situation or terrorism like this, Kate. It was a very, very big honor for them to be here to meet the president, and when he uses their words to tell the nation how the nation should respond, it doesn't come much of a higher honor than that -- Kate?

BOLDUAN: It sure doesn't. Also receiving a call from President Obama. I'm sure there's a lot of people who would like to speak with them right now, but quite an amazing honor and well deserved clearly.

Nic, thank you so much. Great work out there as always.

So the families of these young men, they say they, though, are not so surprised by their heroism on that train. They spoke out to CNN about their life-saving actions. Listen here.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) BRIAN STONE, FATHER OF SPENCER STONE: It was like there was an

opening made for them to be in their seats at that time for this event. Not a lot of 22-year-olds have the wherewithal to take action, and I'm glad that Spencer did.

EMANUEL SCARLATOS, FATHER OF ALEK SCARLATOS (voice-over): Alek comes back from Afghanistan unscathed and they go on a vacation in Europe on a train and that's when the real action happens for them. I'm so proud of everybody, and I feel grateful that everything turned out well, that no one got killed.

TONY SADLER, FATHER OF ANTHONY SADLER (voice-over): Parental pride started kicking in and we were proud of him before this, and certainly an event like this can make a parent proud.

EVERETT STONE, BROTHER OF SPENCER STONE: Pride is not an accurate enough word to describe how proud I am of him. I expect nothing less from my brother. He's a hero. It's awesome.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BOLDUAN: He is awesome.

So joining me now is Airman First Class Sean Murphy, a friend of Airman Spencer Stone. He served as a medic with him.

Airman, thank you so much for joining me.

You heard it from some of the loved ones of these men. Spencer Stone has been described as a hero, a warrior, extremely courageous and much, much more. How do you describe him?

SEAN MURPHY, AIRMAN FIRST CLASS & FRIEND OF AIRMAN SPENCER STONE: Thank you for having me. I describe him about the same obviously. We're all very proud of him here. His actions were -- spoke volumes about his character. He's a natural born leader. He's always -- I wasn't surprised at all that he did what he did, but I was definitely in shock like most of us here.

[11:25:02] BOLDUAN: I think everyone probably was in shock to know anyone who did -- took these actions and stopped an attacker in the face of that danger. What did you think? You say you were shocked though not surprised. What did you think when you heard -- when you found out that he had been part of this?

MURPHY: I was pretty dumbfounded honestly, that he did it. First, I was worried. Of course, he's been good friend. I was worried about his injuries at first. But then I was just really, really proud. I can't tell you how proud I am of him.

BOLDUAN: It takes a really special person to kind of run towards danger obviously when so many others are not. What do you think it is about your friend that made him stand up?

MURPHY: I think he's just always -- he's a type a type of person. He's going to take initiative. He's not going to wait back for the help. If he can do something himself, he's going to get out there and he's going to do it.

BOLDUAN: This also seemed like a pretty long planned trip for him. I know you have kind of spoken out about this. He had kind of talked to you about some of his plans to make this trip to Europe. Was he excited about it? What did he say about those plans?

MURPHY: He has been stoked since he got here that he's so close to Europe, and he's been planning this I think before he even got here. He knew he was going to go to Europe. He was very excited for the trip. He had a basic itinerary but he was going to do the whole Euro trip and see where it takes him.

BOLDUAN: I read you both have been talking about -- had both been talking about wanting to become firefighters or paramedics once you leave the air force. It's clear not only he but you also have had a lifelong draw to serve and protect other people. What more can you tell me about those plans?

MURPHY: Yes, ma'am. We both are trying currently to get into the air force. They have a paramedic program, and my dad has been a fireman, so I have always known that's what I wanted to do. I know Spencer. He had a neighbor who he looked up to who was also a fireman. So we both had similar, you know, we wanted to be the same goals. We're just hoping, you know, to go to paramedic school, and obviously Stone, his actions, right away he knew what to do to stop the bleeding for that guy. It speaks volumes about him. He's a medic definitely.

BOLDUAN: And I heard that you have had a chance to speak to him. I know there are a whole lot of people that would like to speak to him after this has happened. Tell me about that conversation.

MURPHY: I got to speak to him Saturday after everything kind of died down. He actually face-timed me and two of my other friends in my dorm room. He was in very high spirits. He was just his go-easy type attitude. He's in high spirits. I know he showed us all his injuries. It's pretty crazy. But everything is supposed to be fine.

BOLDUAN: I'm sure he was pretty surprised by all the attention that all of this has gotten, but thank goodness he was there and thank you very much for joining us.

Airman Sean Murphy, it's great to meet you. Thank you.

MURPHY: Thank you for having me.

BOLDUAN: Thank you.

Coming up next, we'll talk with a woman who was on board that train, what she saw and how she feels about it now.

Also breaking news on Wall Street. We're continuing to follow that after the Dow plunges more than 1,000 points right after the opening bell. We're going to have more details on that ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)