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. >> joining me now is cnbc senior economic reporter steve liesman and jarod burnstein, former chief economist to vice president biden. good morning. steve, the immediate worries people need to have when they hear about this and they're coming back after a weekend off and hearing the news this monday morning. what does the downgrade mean for the american people right now? >> i think it means go back on vacation. it's certainly a better place than what's happening right now on wall street. skip the good and bad and go right to the ugly. we're down, you showed the numbers, i'll give you percentages, between 3% and 4% all the way up to the nasdaq. essentially, i think the concerns are what happens to your stock portfolios. there's another concern that's a little more controversial about interest rates. when you look at what's happened to u.s. government debt, remember, that's the thing that was downgraded. those yields have fallen. interest rates have declined there as you have essentially a flight to safety. so, despite the s&p downgrade, the united states debt is still seen as a place

cnbc's steve liesman joins me live. good morning. is this about what you expected? >> yeah, it's in line. we were down a little bit more in the 250, 260 range. came back a little bit. but we had a poor open and close in asia, europe did not do well. the one asset that's doing well is the asset that was downgraded, u.s. sovereign debt, ten-year notes were right -- we're doing pretty well. that was the opposite of what you might think. but at the end of the day what you have is a flight to safety. the ricochets keep coming. s&p also downgraded some other financial institutions that they say are reliant upon the u.s. sovereign debt. >> they're not backing off on -- they said they would do it again, but treasury secretary tim gooet near over on cnbc, he is absolutely furious with standard & poor's. let me splay a clip of what he had to say. >> i think s&p's shown really terrible judgment. they handled themselves very poorly and showed a stunning lack of knowledge about u.s. fiscal math. i think they drew exactly the wrong conclusion from this budget agreement. >> is tha