Stephanie Ruhle Warns Slowing Economy ‘Is Our Reality’ After Dismal Jobs Report

MSNBC senior business analyst Stephanie Ruhle painted a grim picture of the economy after Friday’s dismal figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

It was the first jobs report since President Donald Trump fired Erika McEntarfer, the former chief statistician of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and the numbers weren’t good.

Just 22,000 jobs were added in August, much fewer than the projected 75,000.

Both Ruhle and CNBC host Andrew Ross Sorkin agreed that an interest rate cut may be on the way while talking with Morning Joe Host Jonathan Lemire.

“It’s like bad news is good news, good news is bad news,” Sorkin began. “You have the stock market for the most part, the NASDAQ and the S&P 500, actually going up on the back of what is genuinely bad news.”

Sorkin continued:

Look at this employment report. It’s hard to say this is great news in any way. And yet, the market is going up, in part because there’s a view now that the Federal Reserve is finally going to lower interest rates. And, in fact what happened today is not just that the market’s expecting an interest rate cut to come in September, this month, but also that there will be two more rate cuts this calendar year. So the the chances of that happening in terms of the way the market is handicapping that have gone up, and as a function of this sort of “bad news is good news” situation, you have the stock market cheering this.

Lemire then asked for Ruhle’s take on the state of the economy.

“We are going to get a rate cut, which is what the market wants, which is what the president wants, because it makes borrowing costs cheaper. Yes,” Ruhle said. “But the reason we’re getting a rate cut is because the economy is slowing, and that is our reality.”

Watch the clip above via MSNBC.