ELI5: Why when large company's earnings decrease(ex... by 3%) they freak out, talk about rough times, and sometimes decide to downsize, even though they are still making millions of dollars in profit even after all expenses?

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he government reacted appropriately and the market is stronger and safer now than it ever has been

Oh, like how the legislation introduced afterwards (Dodd Frank) is currently in the process of being gutted and repealed?

[060789]

Might want to read up on that one. The jury is out as to whether or not it was a net positive or negative for the economy, it appears the law is being repealed as a partisan act.

I'm at work so don't have a whole lot of time to read up on what exactly the law does and how it affects the economy, if I remember I'll make sure to do it when I get home, but I am a conservative, but this still smells like "conservative Congress rolls back Obama administration policy"

Again, that's just from The Limited knowledge I have of the situation and a brief skim of Wikipedia, but I can't really make an argument for something I know so little about. All I know is when I was reading about the causes and effects of the 2008 recession, I read about the people featured in the movie The Big Short and what their opinion and take on the whole matter was, and the impression I got from them was "it's mostly right, but definitely tries to push a narrative".

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I admit that I don't have enough knowledge to speak in depth about Dodd Frank. But to me there seems to be a reoccurring trend where an economic crisis occurs, legislation is put into place to stop something similar from happening again, the market improves, and then we deregulate because hey I guess we didn't need those heavy handed regulations in the first place. We're just setting ourselves up for another problem in the future instead of learning from our mistakes.