Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich says President Obama is steering the country into a “second, deeper Depression.” 

The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped more than 500 points today, a “worrisome” signal according to Gingrich.

“As long as we stay with Obama’s bureaucratic socialism and we stay with Obama’s class warfare, we’re going to have a very bad economy,” Gingrich said earlier this evening during an interview with Radio Iowa. “And what we have to worry about is when you have a president who’s undermining jobs and the economy, if we get a serious shock from Europe or the Middle East, you could see us go into a second, deeper Depression, and I think that’s very worrisome.” 

Gingrich suggested the recent resolution of the debate in D.C. over the nation’s long-term debt didn’t calm the markets.

“I think what the market is telling you is that nothing that was done in this entire soap opera makes any difference to the long-term trajectory. They don’t believe the numbers. They don’t believe the agreement,” Gingrich told Radio Iowa. “It was probably good to have avoided default, but it didn’t accomplish anything positive. It accomplished the negative achievement that we didn’t default and I think that’s a real challenge.”

Gingrich advocates repealing the new regulations President Obama approved for the financial services industry and a dramatic increase in American energy production. He’d also get rid of the Environmental Protection Agency, replacing it with a more business-friendly “Environmental Solutions Agency.” 

“My message all this weekend’s going to be that every American should say to their congressmen and senators, ‘The number one thing you need to do when you go back in September is work on jobs for real,'” Gingrich said this evening, “not just p.r. gimmicks and bus tours.” 

President Obama is scheduled to go on a bus tour of Midwestern states in mid-August.

Gingrich campaigned in Iowa today, speaking to a group of supporters who gathered in former Congressman Greg Ganske’s backyard in Des Moines tonight.

Radio Iowa