Detained U.S. Sailors Altered Planned Course
BERMAN: Breaking news. Ew. That is the sound coming from Wall Street. The Dow is down nearly 400 points so far. 375 points so far. It is on track for the worse month period since 2009.</s>BOLDUAN: Take a look at this big board. Chief business correspondent, Christine Romans, is here as we're looking at it. It's down and slightly back up. Going to go back down probably.</s>CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN CHIEF BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: It's fear. Fear spreading around the world. Today, the reason there's more fear is what's happening in the oil market. Oil is down 8 percent. Steep drop in oil this month and that decline continues. Look at oil prices a year and a half ago. They're down 70 something percent. That's a good thing action right. You put it in your tank and take all this money and spend it in the economy.</s>BERMAN: I feel like there's a "but" coming up.</s>ROMANS: But too much of a good thing is a bad thing. That's because the countries are in free fall, essentially. Currencies are being pressured. China is a big consumer of oil, largest imported oil. You add this together and there's concerns about the financial markets and ramifications of destabilization. So it's good for drivers. Good for American consumers. Now, we're worried about slowing China and this drop, this crash in oil prices is going to hurt what is a stable U.S. economy.</s>BOLDUAN: The problems in China sure don't seem like a quick fix or its going to get better any time soon. What are we going to do?</s>ROMANS: When you look at China, rapidly growing GDP growth, maybe it's growing 5 percent, 6 percent, 7 percent. That sounds good but it's a slow down in the economy. Concerns about the transparency, concerns about the rather small stock market there. People in China are exposed to the stock market. We've seen crazy stock markets there. All that is feeding into the fear of how will China affect the rest of the world. On the front page of the "Wall Street Journal" this morning, sort of summed up all the angst in the global market. The U.S. economy is relative strong and stable. It's the healthiest in the neighborhood. But will these other problems around the world, will they knock on our door, and how soon?</s>BERMAN: Increasingly lonely island as we see the market dropping. Christine Romans, tough start to the New Year.</s>ROMANS: Yes, it sure is.</s>BOLDUAN: Also more breaking news. According to the U.S. defense officials before the sailors drifted in Iranian water and were detained by Iran, they had changed course.</s>BERMAN: This is new information just coming in to our Pentagon correspondent, Barbara Starr, at the Pentagon. Barbara, what are you learning? This changes the picture a little bit.</s>BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: It does. Good morning. This is all under investigation. The 10 sailors are being debriefed. The Pentagon still putting the pieces together. All of this could change at the end of the day in some fashion. But two defense officials tell me that the latest information indicates, at some point before they wound up in Iranian waters, the crew made the decision to alter course. They were supposed to go basically up the middle of the Persian Gulf on their transit and stay in international waters, no problem. For some reason that is not clear yet, they decided to alter course. They wind up in Iranian waters. What we don't know at this point yet is, did that course take them into Iran and they did not realize it, or did something go wrong with their GPS and they drifted further and they wound up in Iran? What is increasingly becoming clear, according to defense officials, is the crew made a series of decisions. This was one of them. And as they were experience what we know now as engine trouble, they were focused on trying to fix their mechanical problem and didn't perhaps put their heads up, look around and see where they were. Apparently, the indications are it caught them quiet by surprise they were in Iranian waters. So the crew making a series of decisions not the best. Again, we have the emphasize all of this still under investigation. No firm conclusions yet.</s>BOLDUAN: Which means this could be changes but this is interesting details and developments you're picking up from your sources. Barbara, thank you so much. Great to see you.</s>STARR: Sure thing.</s>BOLDUAN: Coming up, one of the most outspoken members of Congress, who also happens to be a New York native, joins us live to respond and discuss Ted Cruz's comments about New York values. Republican Congressman Peter King coming up next. Plus, is Sean Penn fearing for his life? New this morning, the actor breaks his silence. Why he says he's in the cross hairs plus Donald Trump set to take the stage any minute. We're watching it live and we'll take you there.