Pelosi Says Congress Can’t Worry About Impeachment’s Effect on Markets
Pelosi Says Congress Can’t Worry About Impeachment’s Effect on Markets
(Bloomberg) -- House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Congress should pursue an impeachment inquiry of President Donald Trump regardless of its impact on financial markets.
Pelosi also said the markets will do what the markets will do, regardless of who Democrats pick as their 2020 nominee, and who wins the presidential election. She said she wouldn’t blame Elizabeth Warren if markets reacted negatively to her possible nomination.
“I said to the members, we cannot be undermining the markets here, but you can’t be the United States of the markets. It’s not that. It’s the United States of America,” Pelosi told a roundtable with Bloomberg reporters and editors on Friday.
Pelosi’s comments came the day after the House voted to formalize the impeachment inquiry of Trump. The president, who often brags about market performance during his tenure, said impeachment is “hurting our Stock Market.”
Despite Trump’s claims, impeachment proceedings haven’t shown up in stock prices. Better-than-expected gains in U.S. jobs in October and signs of progress in trade talks with China Friday sent the S&P 500 almost 1% higher to a fresh record.
Pelosi dismissed this theory.
“The markets have their own strength and their resilience,” Pelosi said Friday. “If the president of the United States wants to say the market is up or down because of what you’re doing, so be it for him.”
She also said she’s aware of the importance of financial markets, understanding that stock price is “built more on performance of companies.”
“I’m a big market person, you can ask the left of my party,” Pelosi said. “They’re unhappy with me for not being a socialist or something.”
To contact the reporters on this story: Jenny Paris in New York at jparis20@bloomberg.net;Anna Edgerton in Washington at aedgerton@bloomberg.net;Jenny Leonard in Washington at jleonard67@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Kevin Whitelaw at kwhitelaw@bloomberg.net, Jenny Paris
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