Rough Day for Investors in China; Fiat-Chrysler Slapped with Massive Fine
BLITZER: It's been a very rough day for investors in China. The Shanghai Index, the Chinese equivalent of the Dow Jones, it plunged 8.5 percent today, the biggest one-day drop since 2007. And with such an influential market dropping that much, it will be felt around the world. Let's bring in Paul la Monica from New York. He's "CNN Money's" digital correspondent. China's markets have been struggling for a while now. The Chinese government has put a lot of effort into making sure they didn't fall off a cliff. What's going on?</s>PAUL LA MONICA, CNN MONEY DIGITAL CORRESPONDENT: What's going on is that it appears there's renewed skepticism schism about the health of China's economy because you had some lousy profit reports from big Chinese industrial companies. That seems to be scaring investors. Chinese stock market had rebounded in the past week or so because of the big steps the Chinese government has taken to prop up the stock market and stem the leading but now it looks like everybody is worried once again.</s>BLITZER: It's a big story. We'll stay on top of it. What about the markets here in the U.S.? How are they doing today?</s>LA MONICA: Fortunately, the markets in the U.S. are not down that much, but the bad news is that we're down again and this is often a bad week last week. So the trend for the past week or so has been having stocks in the red and they're definitely following China down today.</s>BLITZER: Yeah, the Dow Jones down 140 points. Paul, thank you. Fiat-Chrysler has been slapped with a record $105 million fine. U.S. federal safety regulators say the automaker mishandled 23 recalls involving some 11 million vehicles. Our government regulation correspondent, Rene Marsh, is with us right now, has the latest on what's going on. Huge numbers.</s>RENE MARSH, CNN AVIATION & GOVERNMENT REGULATION CORRESPONDENT: This is huge. Federal regulators are coming out hard against the automaker saying it failed in several ways. It failed to protect American drivers, regulators also say it failed to come up with effective remedies to fix defects on its vehicles and it failed to give the government information it need to make sure that drivers were safe. Now, this is a record fine. $105 million. This stems from the mishandling of 23 recalls involving 11 million vehicles which included but not limited to the Jeep Grand Cherokee, 1993 to 2007. The Jeep's faulty gas tanks, they had this potential leaking that could cause a fiery exPLOsion if there was a rare impact. Now people who own those cars, they can trade in the SUV for above-market value or they can get cash to fix it. Also owners with vehicles that have defective suspension part which is can lead to loss of control of the vehicle. They can now sell their vehicle back to Fiat-Chrysler. Besides the hefty fine, we know Chrysler will be under the watch of a third party auditor. So that is something else that they'll have to submit to.</s>BLITZER: So what's the automaker saying about all of this? Obviously, safety concerns are critical.</s>MARSH: Right, they reached out to CNN with a statement and acknowledged the consequences. They acknowledged the violations. And they say that they will be moving forward to make sure that they have the consumers' safety in the best interest. So they're not denying all the claims here and that -- again, that's the largest fine we've ever seen from the federal regulator. So they want to correct this problem quickly.</s>BLITZER: All right, Rene Marsh, thanks very, very much. We'll stay on top of those stories as well. Coming up, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry honors CNN for its Freedom Project, an effort that has helped raise awareness of the tragedy of human trafficking worldwide. Much more on this story coming up.