Marketplace

If what's past is prologue, we're in for a change of mood at the White House. French President Emmanuel Macron's on his way out of town, after what you can only call a very warm reception from President Donald Trump. German Chancellor Angela Merkel shows up on Friday. The two European leaders are pushing the same agenda, but they're going to be greeted much differently. Then: CFPB head Mick Mulvaney said last night he wants to take the agency's database of consumer complaints offline, out of public view. We'll explain what's going on. Plus: A visit to Guangzhou, the south China home of the world's biggest trade show, Canton Fair. 

Quick: Are rising interest rates good or bad? What about oil prices? Home prices? It's kind of a trick question. Those are all signs of an economy that's growing quite nicely — when wages are going up. That's where we're starting today. Then: If you're talking about wages, it's worth mentioning that some of the biggest companies in this country are sitting on mountains of cash: $102 billion at Google's parent company, more than double that at Apple. So what are companies doing with all that money? We'll explain. Plus: Back in the '60s, traffic in Los Angeles was so light you could get across town in 20 minutes. We know firsthand that's impossible now. So what happened? And what's that say about the economy?

We begin today with a number, a relatively simple number that brings with it meaning for everybody in this economy who has debt: 3 percent. That's the interest rate that the government's 10-year Treasury note is getting really close to, for the first time since January 2014. In isolation, it's not a huge deal, but in the context of the low-rate environment, it's really something. We'll start today by explaining all the hype. Then: What you need to know about French President Emmanuel Macron's visit to Washington, and a follow-up to that hefty fine the government hit Wells Fargo with last week. Plus: Horror movies are back from the dead, making big money on small budgets.

Wells Fargo will pay the federal government a billion dollars to settle charges of misconduct in its car and home loans. That's a lot, but only a small percentage of the banks' recent profits. It's also the biggest bank fine imposed by the Trump administration and the first by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau under the direction of Mick Mulvaney. He's no fan of the agency he's now in charge of, and he's still Trump's budget guy, so we had him on today to talk about all of it. Then: We'll talk over the interview with our friends on the Weekly Wrap and take a look at where all that money's going. Plus: unpacking Trump's tweets about OPEC.

Sometimes you've got a plan for reporting out a story, then circumstances change your mind. That's what happened to Marketplace Weekend host Lizzie O'Leary, who's in Puerto Rico this week. She was in the middle of reporting an update on how the island is recovering after last year's hurricanes, then the lights went out ... everywhere. We got Lizzie on the phone today to talk about how things are going. But first, the latest on the AT&T-Time Warner trial — and reminder of what's at stake. Plus: the business of a royal wedding.

American consumers can be a fickle bunch, and companies spend billions to make that fickleness break their way as best they can — especially in a crisis. Bloomberg calculated that Starbucks' upcoming shutdown for racial bias training is gonna cost $17 million in lost sales. But what do Starbucks customers think of last weekend's incident in Philadelphia, where two black men sat down without buying anything and left in handcuffs? That's where we're starting today. Then, another Trump tweet fact check: Are bilateral trade deals really better for the U.S. than big pacts like the Trans-Pacific Partnership? Plus: More on brand loyalty, and why disgruntled Facebook users are still relatively happy with its subsidiary, Instagram.

It was supposed to be Tax Day in America, but thanks to computer issues at the IRS, everyone gets another day to file. Taxes were still on the docket at the Supreme Court today though — the justices heard South Dakota v. Wayfair Inc. At issue is whether the online retailer and others like it should collect sales tax. We'll follow the money. But first: Starbucks is closing down all 8,000 of its company-owned stores for one day next month to give its 175,000 workers racial bias training. The move comes after two black men were arrested at a Starbucks in Philadelphia when a manager called the police because they were sitting in the cafe without buying anything. We'll talk about it. Plus: President Donald Trump is meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe this week, and trade's on the table. Japan's one of several American allies and 2,200 companies looking for an exemption. We'll look at who else is on the list. 

It's a bit of a musical episode today, from Beyoncé's mammoth Coachella performance to... the new Fed appointments? We'll explain. None of our trading partners were hit with a currency manipulator label in the latest report from the Treasury department last week, but decisions by the president's own government often don't dissuade him from tweeting what he believes, like "Russia and China are playing the Currency Devaluation game." We'll talk about it. Plus: We're just past the point of maximum pressure for a lot of high school seniors. College admissions are a roll of the dice, but early-decision admissions are getting a closer look from the Justice Department, possibly for antitrust violations, and that's not the only complaint people have with it.

President Donald Trump has gone back and forth on the Trans-Pacific Partnership the past few days, and you might be looking for a refresher. What exactly is in the thing? We'll get you up to speed today and talk a bit about the Farm Bill, too. Then: The president has kicked things up a notch in his fight with Amazon over the U.S. Postal Service. He's ordering a task force to dig into the operations and finances of the post office, which he says is on an unsustainable financial path. But is a task force gonna fix that? We'll look into it, but first, the Weekly Wrap.

Much like health care, it seems global trade is a harder nut to crack than the White House thought it might be. In a meeting today, Presdient Donald Trump said he's told his top economic and trade advisers to look at getting the United States back into the Trans-Pacific Partnership. It's not really a surprise. The president hinted at it in Davos, and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin flat out said it in an interview on this program. That's where we're starting today, plus the latest on bank earnings and Disney's move to streaming. Also: A lot of science fiction tech has become reality. Now some companies are settling into stacks of sci-fi to find the Next Big Thing.

We got the most recent Federal Reserve meeting minutes. The key takeaways: Trump tax cuts and increased federal spending will give the economy a short-term boost, but all the deficit spending and retaliatory tariffs carry long-term risks. Speaker of the House Paul Ryan won't have to worry about any of this soon. He announced today he'll leave Congress in January. We'll talk about the ripple effects of that departure. Then: Mark Zuckerberg's second day of testimony saw the Facebook CEO answering more questions about his company's business model: A lot of it comes down to the Like button, that little thumbs up that may well be the most powerful tool in social media. We'll explain. Plus: More from our "How We Changed" series.

If you were listening to Mark Zuckerberg's testimony in front of the Senate, you missed the sort of bewildered smile on the Facebook CEO's face as he explained to Sen. Orrin Hatch how his company makes money. Zuckerberg was still answering questions as we taped the show this afternoon, but we brought in Marketplace Tech host Molly Wood to talk about the story so far. Then, we'll look at another striking moment from this afternoon, when Zuckerberg said Facebook isn't a monopoly as it stares down regulation, here and abroad. Then: Toys R Us filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy last year, with more than $5 billion in debt on its books. But soon afterward, it asked the bankruptcy court for permission to pay big executive bonuses. That sounds remarkable, but it's actually pretty common. We'll look at why. Plus: One in three American families has trouble affording diapers. We'll look at why.

It's been a while since we've started this program by dissecting a presidential tweet. But with a whiff of trade war in the air, there's some good economic context to be had from that exercise today. At 6:03 in the morning, the president said, "When a car is sent to the United States from China, there is a Tariff to be paid of 2 1/2%. When a car is sent to China from the United States, there is a Tariff to be paid of 25%. Does that sound like free or fair trade. No, it sounds like STUPID TRADE - going on for years!" Believe it or not, the most important part of that whole thing was the last two sentences. We'll explain. Then: It's often said that if you aren't paying for a product, you are the product. The past few weeks at Facebook have been a stark reminder of that. So, with CEO Mark Zuckerberg set to testify before Congress tomorrow, we'll explore this model, other companies that use it and whether Facebook has any alternatives. Plus: Kai ended the trade war! He lost.

Today's jobs report was underwhelming, no doubt. But after putting up huge numbers last month, we're still adding 200,000 jobs a month this year. What we should really be worried about is The Ghost of Jobs Reports Yet to Come, because this run of economic growth is getting very long in the tooth. We'll talk about it, plus the latest Russian sanctions from the Trump administration. Then: Why on earth is Netflix looking to spend $300 million on a billboard company? But first, we'll talk about all the economic news of the past seven days in the Weekly Wrap.

The trade deficit — all the goods and services we buy from overseas, minus what other countries buy from us — is President Donald Trump's key economic irritant. He's cited it when threatening to raise tariffs and tear up trade deals like NAFTA. We just got the February trade report this morning from the Department of Commerce, and for the sixth month in a row, our trade deficit has grown, despite Trump's promises to shrink it. It may not be his fault though, and we'll explain why. Then: Yesterday we talked to several Americans about what the potential trade war between China and the U.S. would mean for them. Today we're headed to the streets of Shanghai, where the perspective is a little different. Plus, it's opening day for minor league baseball. While MLB players can pull eye-popping salaries, their counterparts down the ladder are making peanuts — with no raise in sight.

We should be clear from the jump: China and the U.S. are trading specific, escalating threats of tariffs, but none have actually gone into effect. So you could call it a "trade war," but it really isn't ... yet. Still, you all have a lot of questions about what might happen if this cold trade war heats up. We'll start today's show with the economic fundamentals, then do our best to answer those questions. There's even more on Marketplace.org. Plus: A look at what will happen to America's agriculture industry if no one blinks in this macroeconomic game of chicken.

The 12 regional banks in the Federal Reserve are ostensibly equal, but in reality the New York Fed leads the way on regulation of Wall Street and other bits of monetary policy. Today, the central bank announced John Williams (no, the other one) will run it. We'll talk about what that means for the Fed and what you need to know about Williams. Then, the latest from the so-called red-state teacher rebellion, playing out now in Kentucky and Oklahoma, West Virginia previously. Plus: Tiger Woods has been off his game in a very big way for years now. But after a string of personal struggles and four back surgeries, he's back and playing pretty well. Turns out, what's good for Woods' game is good for golf. We'll look at the Tiger Effect in 2018. 

Wall Street finally reacted to the escalating tariffs between the U.S. and China today, and sliding tech stocks contributed to what was a pretty manic Monday for markets. We'll kick off the show with everything you need to know. Then: We'll zoom in a bit on Amazon, which took fire from President Donald Trump's Twitter account again today. Is it true that USPS is giving Amazon a sweetheart deal? (No.) Plus: Restaurant workers are pushing for their own #MeToo moment.

... but Molly Wood is here! Walmart is looking to acquire the health insurance giant Humana, which is valued at $37 billion. If approved by regulators, it'll be the latest in a string of big health care mergers. Plus: More and more people are playing HQ Trivia for more and more money, but who's winning? We talked with Neal Pollack, a former "Jeopardy!" champion who just made $25,000 playing a mobile trivia app. But first, of course, we'll talk about the headlines of the past seven days in our Weekly Wrap.

... about who controls it or where it all goes. OK, that's not great poetry, but it is a pretty good business model. Even Facebook couldn't get enough. The embattled company was getting consumer data from outside brokers until this week, when it announced it won't let advertisers use them. We'll kick off today's show by explaining the world of data brokers, along with the latest news from the latest White House Infrastructure Week. Plus: It's opening day for Major League Baseball, so we're looking at fines in sports. Sometimes they're peanuts, sometimes not so much. Who decides?

The South Korea trade deal we were talking about has finally gone through, and there's a lot in there: cars, currency manipulation and steel. South Korea gets out from under the steel tariffs that went into effect last Friday in return for limiting how much it sends here. The "here" in this case happens to be just 6 miles from Marketplace headquarters in Los Angeles. We went to Hannibal Industries, where 300 employees use imported steel to manufacture pallet racks you see at places like Costco. They're used to some instability, but new tariffs could be a "worst-case scenario" for their business. Then: The latest on Facebook's privacy fiasco. Plus: What's that thing we're always saying? Listen to the bond markets.

It goes something like this: "Politicians use economics the way a drunk uses a lamppost: for support, not illumination." It's what Princeton economist Alan Blinder is exploring in his new book: Why can't economists and lawmakers seem to understand each other? First though: The Department of Commerce says it's going to ask people about their citizenship in 2020. Several states are suing, and critics say it could keep some folks from talking to census takers. Today we'll look at the potential consequences of undercounting. Plus: Mark Zuckerberg said he'd testify before Congress about the Cambridge Analyitica scandal, but he doesn't plan to talk to the United Kingdom Parliament. We'll look at the European perspective on Facebook's latest controversy.

Cambridge Analytica allegedly leveraged a personality test taken by 270,000 people to scrape data from 50 million Facebook users in its effort to influence elections. The quiz was based on a popular test used for modeling what’s called the “Big 5” personality traits. We had Kai Ryssdal take the personality test and talk to cybersecurity researcher Stephen Cobb about how these tests can be used as a message-targeting tool. Also on today's show: South Korea has become the first nation to be permanently exempted from the steel and aluminum tariffs. But it has also accepted quotas reducing the quantity of steel it sends to the U.S. Lastly, we take a look at "opportunity zones," programs in the new tax law that are trying to bring private investment to low-income communities. Such programs have proven ineffective for nearly 40 years, so why try again?

After threatening to veto it this morning, President Donald Trump signed a $1.3 trillion plan to fund the government through September. Where did it leave DACA? Nowhere. The spending bill doesn't include a permanent solution for people brought into the country illegally when they were children. We follow up with a few young undocumented immigrants who remain in limbo. Also on today's show: tariffs. Trump’s decision to impose tariffs on more than $50 billion worth of Chinese imports has brought a swift and firm response from China. But there’s also been talk of possible trade compromises. And steel and aluminum tariffs go into effect today, except for European Union nations. They are temporarily exempted, but that doesn’t mean there won't be tariffs in the future. We also run through the week's news with Rachel Abrams of the New York Times and Catherine Rampell of the Washington Post.

Early last year, before Cambridge Analytica was making headlines for their use of Facebook data, Parsons School of Design Associate Professor David Carroll filed a legal claim in the United Kingdom against the company. He used a British data protection law to request the data that Cambridge Analytica had gathered on him. Though he received some data from the company about a month later, he says it was incomplete. Now, Carroll is suing Cambridge Analytica; we ask him why. Also on today's show: We talk to television writer, producer and director Nell Scovell about her new book “Just the Funny Parts” and about giving women a seat at the table in Hollywood.  Plus, our last installment of Kai's interview with Ben Bernanke, Hank Paulson and Tim Geithner.  You can catch the full interview in a bonus episode by subscribing to this podcast!

Your regular episode of Marketplace is coming later today, but for now we have something special. It's an interview a decade in the making: Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, Federal Reserve Chair Ben Bernanke, and President of the New York Fed Tim Geithner, who later served as Treasury Secretary under President Obama. In 2008, they worked together to coordinate an unprecedented response to the financial crisis, often racing to do so against the clock and public opinion. For the first time they've been together in public since crisis, Bernanke, Paulson and Geithner sat down with us to discuss Bear Stearns, the government takeovers of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, Lehman weekend and the fear they felt as they struggled to stop the financial crisis spreading from Wall Street to Main Street. They talked about their biggest regrets and why they wished they'd done a better job explaining their actions to the American people. Then, they looked ahead to talk about our ability to fight the next financial crisis and why a functioning Congress is so important to solve crises before they start. This interview is part of Marketplace’s coverage of the ten-year anniversary of the financial crisis called Divided Decade, a year-long project exploring what happened, why it matters now and how the aftermath will continue to have an impact on Americans’ economic future.

The new guy on the monetary policy block had his first press conference today. His first rate hike, too. Jay Powell's been in the big chair at the Federal Reserve six or seven weeks by now. Job No. 1 today was to not upset the economic apple cart. He didn't, and the economic news helped. That's where we'll start today. Then: Facebook. First we'll get an update from Marketplace Tech's Molly Wood about the latest turn in the site's data privacy controversy, and then we'll look at what the rest of us can do about it. Delete our accounts? Not so fast. Plus, more of our conversation with the first responders to the economic crisis.

In the first part of our conversation with Ben Bernanke, Hank Paulson and Tim Geithner yesterday, we talked about how Bear Stearns was saved, at first, by the Fed and JPMorgan. That was 10 years ago this month. Today we'll pick up with another bank that wasn't so lucky: Lehman Brothers. We'll also talk about the politics of managing a crisis like the one we faced in 2008 and why, at least according to Geithner, these three men "saved the economy but lost the country." Then: The head of the World Trade Organization said recently that if it weren't for the WTO, a trade war would already have begun. We'll unpack that a bit. Plus, the latest on Facebook's misused data.

That is, former Fed Chair Ben Bernanke, former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Timothy Geithner, former president of the New York Federal Reserve and former Treasury secretary. We sat down with all three of them at Yale University last week to talk about what they saw 10 years ago as the economy collapsed, and what worries them now. We'll bring you bits of that conversation throughout today's show, with even more in the coming days. Then: Facebook shares dropped 6.77 percent on the big news from this weekend that Cambridge Analytica hoovered up data on 50 million Facebook users and used it to aim messages favoring Donald Trump. As lawmakers call for testimony and regulation, we'll look at how this could affect Facebook's business model. Plus: The latest on tariffs. 

If the legal machinations of giant corporate mergers are your thing, next week is gonna be a good one for you. The U.S. v. AT&T and Time Warner heads to Federal court Monday. The Justice Department is trying to block the $85 billion deal, and the companies are fighting back. The case has a lot to do with the changing media landscape, of course, but it also says a lot about big mergers in the Trump era. First though, we have to deal with the week that was: Trade, sanctions and toys. Plus, why do we associate mint flavor with cleanliness? You've always wondered.