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Quest Means Business
Reviewing President Obama's Press Conference; Jobs Report Examined. Aired 4-5p ET
Aired October 02, 2015 - 16:52 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
(SIMULCAST OF OBAMA PRESS CONFERENCE ON CNN DOMESTIC)
[16:52:24] RICHARD QUEST, CNN INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR AND REPORTER HOST OF "QUEST MEANS BUSINESS" SHOW: The President of the United States speaking
for the best part of an hour and answering questions -- a long news conference.
I'm going to give you just barely the headlines. He describes Russia's policy in now bombing in Syria as getting Russia into a quagmire.
He calls it a disaster. He says Russia's not successful, it's just getting attention. He describes the battle between the U.S. and Russia. He says
Syria is not going to become a proxy war between Russia and the United States.
On the gun question following the shooting in Oregon, the President for the first time now directly referring to the NRA, the gun lobby.
He says the gun NRA needs to reflect on what's happened and they've been effective in what they do by scaring politicians and organizing the
campaign.
He says there's nothing more he can do other than to talk about it to change people's minds.
And finally, on the economy, since it was such a broad-ranging news conference, the President said the debt ceiling is too important and he's
not going to negotiate over an increase to the debt ceiling.
We'll talk about the U.S. job situation in a moment.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
QUEST: Let me show you what's been happening on the markets on what was a busy day. The market was very sharply lower. It was down most of the
session. Then suddenly halfway through - right the way through the middle - up it goes by more than 200 points.
[16:55:08] The jobs report came out. It was a disappointing number. Take a look at how the jobs report reflected and you'll see exactly what
happened.
Only 142,000 jobs were created in September. August's number was revised downwards as well. Down overall, no more 200,000 jobs.
Joining me to put some perspective Bricklin Dwyer, the senior economist at BNP Paribas. The only question I have for you, sir, on that jobs report is
does that now take an interest rate rise off the table for the rest of this year?
BRICKLIN DWYER, SENIOR ECONOMIST, BNP PARIBAS: So we think that the move today was quite surprising - shocking - very disappointing as you
mentioned. And we think that interest rates are going to remain lower for longer because of this report.
QUEST: But this - but why was this report so bad?
DWYER: Why wasn't it bad? Everything was bad about it. We got --
QUEST: But what are the factors?
DWYER: -- we got bad service hiring, we got bad manufacturing hiring, we've got bad oil-related hiring. It was bad in - you know - even retail
hiring was pretty weak. Wholesale hiring, professional hiring.
QUEST: So there's no technical factors here? You're talking about fundamental underlying economic weakness?
DWYER: Absolutely. Broad-based weakness across the board.
QUEST: Now, that would suggest - well, not suggest, it says outright - that you've got - so you've inflation that's below target, so that's an
anti-rate hike, you've now got the jobs situation deteriorating. Then when do you now think they'll move?
DWYER: So, typically when we see this weakness, it's only over a couple of months. But usually things get better in a couple of months - you just
wait it out.
So right now our base-line views - this is a soft patch. It'll end, things will get better and then we'll move on. That's a typical scenario but
what's worrying is that this could be the symptom of something much worse to come.
QUEST: So, I'm going to thresh (ph) you on this - when do you think the rate hike - I mean, we're not - we're clearly not looking at October and
we're now clearly probably not looking at December. Are you now into 2016?
DWYER: 2016. Our base case is for March. But, you know, low conviction, you know. We could - we couldn't (ph) get pushed out further. It would
take a lot for us to keep it in December and really have that happen this year.
QUEST: Thank you for waiting, sir. We needed to hear your perspective tonight, but obviously the President spoke a lot longer than anybody
intended.
Thank you very much indeed.
DWYER: All right, thanks.
QUEST: That's both the news agenda and the business world, and that's "Quest Means Business" tonight. I'm Richard Quest in New York. Whatever
you're up to in the hours ahead, (RINGS BELL) I do hope it's profitable.
We're in Peru next week.
END
