Right now, the Dow is settling down somewhere in the down 2300 range, ending a grim day on Wall Street today.

At one point, trading was even halted because of such a quick drop, we're gonna go over to chief business Correspondent Rebecca Jarvis was here with me right now to try to make sense this all Rebecca, we saw this circuit breaker kick in this morning.

Trading resumed.

It doesn't seem to have helped a whole lot.

And then we gotta move by the Fed as well.

I know there's a lot to unpack there, but let's just start by what you make of this closing.

Well, this is a historic closing down 10%.

We have not seen that for a very long time in the markets.

It will be the worst day this year, but the worst day for many years for stocks and what Wall Street is contending with right now is the reality that is unfolding before all of America.

And that is the stark choices that are being made in communities across the country between public health and the economy and public health has to win.

And in these choices, time and time again, there is that blow.

The economic blow of shutting down the N B A and games for the foreseeable future.

The economic blow to cruise lines that are saying we will no longer take passengers.

The economic blow of people canceling travel of airlines, saying that they're seeing business down dramatically.

And while there were things that the government has announced that it can do in the near term to help cushion that blow which, by the way, have yet to be passed while there are various things that can be done in the near term, the bigger question and this is what you're seeing reflected on Wall Street is the longer term question of the industries and the businesses that have a lot of debt right now.

And there were record amounts of corporate debt right now, those industries, as they weather through this and by the way, every economist believes that America will eventually weather through this.

The big question is what will be casualties businesswise look like, and there is a feeling that there will be job losses and there will be business casualties before things get back to where they started, and it's such a great point.

And I just want to reiterate it, especially since the the closing bell was ringing as you were saying it.

But that what is the best interest on the economy is not always what's in the best interest of public health, but long term, those two areas do.

Cross businesses want to protect their consumers.

The N B A.

Wants to protect its fans, right?

So we have to make these decisions now and hope that in the long run it does help keep these businesses afloat.

Exactly.

And Dr Jen has talked a lot about flattening the curve by flattening the curve.

You keep fewer people in the hospital system.

You don't overtax the hospital system all at once.

That in and of itself has positive economic effects.

I mean, look, we're talking about people in humans here, and I don't want to lose that in this conversation.

That is number one, and it should be number one.

But when it comes to the economic impact of all of this, we have to remember that these very, very drastic measures do have drastic economic consequences, but at the same time they also keep life consequences from happening.

And they also have their own potential for creating other problems.

You know, if the Corona virus were to spread rapidly and if we were to have that impacts the actual viral impact on our economy, that opens up a whole new can of worms.

Right?

And then the Fed tried to sort of intervene.

It seemed, at some point in the middle of the day, what happened there.

Well, we've seen the Federal Reserve step up a handful of times now at this point looking at different ways that it can help with the economy.

I mean, that's ultimately it's job to make sure that the economy isn't running too hot or too cold.

Unfortunately, today, the Fed buying back some Treasury securities was not enough to stop the selling.

And I do think when I talk to analysts and market watchers, I do think a lot of that has to do with this key question about various industries, how they're going to weather through this when the actual disease itself and the severity of the disease is gone.

How are those business is going to be.

What what position are those business is going to be in 34 months from now.

It seems like a lot of this hinges on uncertainty.

Markets hate uncertainty.

We all know that.

So is there a light at the end of the tunnel in that we don't know a whole lot about this right now, but we we will.

As time evolves, we will.

And and some of this also is the fact that Wall Street works in economic models.

Excel, spreadsheets filled with numbers.

Every single number in those spreadsheets is changing right now because of the Corona virus.

So everything that you might have thought coming into the year 2020 has dramatically changed.

And by the way, we don't know where it's going at this point, when Wall Street feels collectively that it has a firmer sense of what those numbers will look like in the future, that could be where the market settles, where it bottoms.

There's language on Wall Street.

You might hear it do.

Are we in a V shaped recovery or a U shape?

Recovery of the shape is where the market goes down and shoots right back up.

That's not what we're seeing right now.

The market has gone down and it's gone down for a few days now.

That's more of what's known as a U shaped recovery.

It goes like this.

But the question is, when does that?

You start melting back up.

And that's a question that people who are in the day to day action of trading are trying to answer to their own benefit financially from you and me and everybody else who's watching.

The key thing is the economy.

It's how is this economy going toe?

Look in three months in one year from now?

And I have to say I commend the businesses out there that have done really stark and this difficult things to protect customers and employees.

But I think that there will continue to be even more of that.

And again that does have near term economic consequences.