Dow Jones Drops With 2000 Points Creating Huge Record Dropping

U.S. stocks plunged again Monday on fears of a global economic slowdown on the heels of the coronavirus outbreak combined with an oil price war led to the Dow Jones Industrial Average losing 2,000 points at closing, its largest ever single day drop in points, as progressives called on the government to prioritize the interests of working people over the 1%.

"The folks who suffer most in a market crash are not the traders on Wall Street," said Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.). "It is ordinary people losing their jobs, getting their pay cut, or losing their pensions."

"Our focus should be on helping working people," Omar added.

The Dow's drop of 2,000 points was a decline of 7.79%; the S&P 500 fell 7.60% and the Nasdaq dropped by 7.29%.

Warning that the economic hit from the outbreak "will come fast" when it arrives and "hit lower-wage workers first and hardest," Josh Biven of the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute said it will be crucial for the government to introduce a swift and targeted response.

Biven called on the government to make a plan for "rapid direct payments to individuals" just as was done by President George W. Bush in 2008—when one-time checks of $600 for individual tax-filers and $1,200 for joint tax filers were issued—in order to stem the bleeding from the financial crash that year.

"We could use this model but do even better this time," said Biven, suggesting  $1,000 for each individual and $500 per child.

"Besides needing money to tide them over when they can't work," he explained, "low-wage workers could also use protection against being let go by employers when they can't show up to work due to their sickness (or the sickness of family members)."

The decline evoked memories of the 2008 crash, according to the New York Times, as Monday's drop "was the worst for stocks in the United States since December 2008, when the country was still reeling from the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the housing crisis that dragged the economy into a recession."