Marketplace All-in-One

From the BBC World Service: The Taliban government in Afghanistan is appealing for more international support as the country struggles to cope with yesterday’s devastating earthquake. The European Union is expected to approve Ukraine as a candidate for membership of the bloc. And French President Emmanuel Macron has lost his majority in parliament, so what next for his economic agenda?

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Sell-offs in the market for cryptocurrencies like bitcoin and ethereum continued this week. The rout followed another shock in May, when the value of terraUSD, a popular “stablecoin,” crashed. Stablecoins are supposed to have stable value tied to the U.S. dollar, which is why crypto traders use them to move money around this volatile market. But when terraUSD crashed, it wasn’t just traders who were hurt. Thousands of small investors were caught up in the meltdown, including people who put their money in Stablegains — a now-defunct crypto savings account company that promised returns of up to 15%. Marketplace’s Matt Levin recently spoke to some of those people. He told Meghan McCarty Carino they’re not the typical crypto investors you might think of and explained why they put their money into crypto in the first place.

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Recessions are on lots of people’s minds these days, including Jerome Powell’s. The Federal Reserve chief told Congress on Wednesday that a recession is a “possibility” as the Fed tries to tame inflation. So today, a listener wonders whether recessions are inevitable in our modern economy. We’ll break it down. Plus, we take more of your questions about the effectiveness of gas boycotts, why the Sunshine State — Florida — isn’t leading on solar energy and Kimberly’s favorite cocktail ingredient, bitters!

Here’s everything we talked about today:

Keep sending us your questions. Email us at [email protected] or leave us a voice message at (508) 827-6278 or (508) U-B-SMART.

Let’s state the obvious: The pandemic is definitively not over. But plenty of larger companies are rolling back COVID restrictions and signaling the end is near. Today, we delve into how corporations make those decisions and how they shape the public’s pandemic mindset. Plus, the future of commission-free stock trading, the ripple effects of pilot shortages and the incarcerated youths who fight wildfires.

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The agriculture industry is feeling the effects of a heat wave making its way across the country. China correspondent Jennifer Pak provides another update from Shanghai, which is shaking off the effects of a long COVID lockdown. Meta and the Department of Justice have reached a settlement regarding its housing-related advertising.

A recent report shows that tech companies – many who have been at the forefront of climate action – could actually be aiding the expansion of the fossil fuel industry through their significant bank deposits. Bill McKibben, a longtime environmental activist and founder of the new climate advocacy group Third Act, helps us dive into what this means. President Biden is officially supporting a three-month suspension of the federal fuel tax to ease the pain at the pump. A group of renewable energy developers is ready to buy $6 billion in solar panels … if they’re American made.

From the BBC World Service: As its economy falters, Turkey welcomes the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman for the first time since the 2018 murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul. As the world gears up for the soccer World Cup in Qatar, a migrant worker who helped build its infrastructure speaks out about his treatment. And the Glastonbury Music Festival is back for the first time since the start of the pandemic.

Of the futuristic technology we see in movies and television, few have the appeal — and the sense of being tantalizingly close — as self-driving or autonomous vehicles. Today, we have cars and trucks with some autonomous or driver-assist features, but they aren’t quite the promise of the driverless cars we see in science fiction. The conversations about this mostly revolve around passenger cars navigating in cities, which still depend on a person who can take the wheel in case the computers crash and the technology fails. But perhaps we are a bit closer to that futuristic scenario when it comes to self-driving semitrucks. Marketplace’s Kimberly Adams speaks with Christopher Mims, a tech reporter at The Wall Street Journal. He recently wrote about the specialized technology behind autonomous big rigs.

The stakes are high for the Federal Reserve as it hikes interest rates in its effort to tame rising prices. Getting it wrong could spawn a recession. But different economists use different models to predict the likelihood, magnitude and timing of an economic downturn — so estimates are all over the map. Later on today’s show: a breakfast table breakup, competition among real estate agents and lessons from pandemic-era career shifts.

Inflation is the economic story of the day. And, even though it’s been percolating for over a year, last week the inflation story kicked into high gear with the Federal Reserve making big moves to get rising prices under control. So what changed, exactly?

For starters, a combination of reports showing the worse of inflation isn’t over and that consumers expect inflation to keep rising.

“And so, that was one of the reasons why we saw the Fed do, a bigger rate hike than they were originally expecting, said Victoria Guida, who covers the Federal Reserve for Politico. “It wasn’t just because they wanted to get interest rates up faster, it was also sort of a message to the American public: ‘Hey, we’re really serious about getting inflation back down. So, you know, don’t get it into your heads that inflation is going to stay this high forever.'”

On the show today: How the Fed miscalculated inflation, and why we may not know how well the Fed navigated this moment until years down the road. Plus, we’ll answer a couple of your inflation questions.

Later, we’ll discuss how companies are responding to inflation and the scale of China’s surveillance state.

Then, if you have a hard time remembering the weather in Celsius, a listener shares a hack that’ll make you sound smart in front of your friends. And an answer to the Make Me Smart question that has many of us nodding along.

Here’s everything we talked about today:

Join us tomorrow for Whaddya Wanna Know Wednesday. And if you’ve got a question you’d like us to answer in a future show, email us at [email protected] or leave us a voice message at (508) 827-6278 or (508) U-B-SMART.