Marketplace All-in-One

From the BBC World Service: As Australians head to the polls this weekend, new data says unemployment is its lowest since the 1970s, but inflation and youth unemployment remain major focuses for voters. Also, Sri Lanka defaults on international debt and the BBC visits a “secret school” defying the Taliban to continue teaching Afghan girls.

Your donation powers the journalism you rely on. Give today to support Marketplace Morning Report.

This week, Congress held a public hearing on a topic that hasn’t been discussed openly in a congressional hearing in decades: unidentified flying objects. Yes, UFOs, or as the Pentagon is calling them, unidentified aerial phenomena, or UAPs. The hearing follows a report from the director of national intelligence released in June that said there were over 140 recorded sightings of UAPs that the military, like the name implies, could not identify. Chris Impey, a professor of astronomy at the University of Arizona, has been following these developments. He explained the significance of the hearing and the report to Marketplace’s Kimberly Adams.

Your donation powers the journalism you rely on. Give today to support Marketplace Tech.

A thousand-point drop from the Dow is scary, but it wasn’t entirely unexpected either. Inflation cut into retailers’ earnings, spurring a huge market sell-off. The Federal Reserve wants the economy to cool, and the stock market may be taking the hint. We’ll talk about it all on today’s show. Plus: signs of a normalizing housing market, the legacy of California’s board diversity laws and more from our interview with former Fed Chair Ben Bernanke.

Ferdinand Marcos Jr., son of an ousted dictator and whose mother Imelda was known for her legendary collection of footwear, is poised to become the next president of the Philippines. To help us parse what this could mean for the rest of the world and how the Philippines got to this point, we spoke with the BBC’s Howard Johnson. Additionally, we have the latest on breaking news this morning that the U.S. Soccer Federation and its players have a landmark deal to guarantee equal pay for the men’s and women’s teams. Also, the latest on the effects of sanctions on Russia. Plus, we dig into the changing dynamics of the housing market. And, Susan Schmidt joins us for our discussion about market activity.

Your donation powers the journalism you rely on. Give today to support Marketplace Morning Report.

The price of crude oil is down about 13% since hitting roughly $130 a barrel in early March, when Russia invaded Ukraine. At the same time, the price of gasoline at the pump keeps rising, reaching new records every day. What’s going on? To help explain, we spoke to Javier Blas, a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering energy and commodities. Plus, the U.S. subsidiary of one of the world’s largest financial services and insurance companies has agreed to pay more than $6 billion in fines and restitution for a fraud scheme that led to the collapse of a group of investment funds. And, in Shanghai, COVID numbers are dropping, but restrictions on residents are still tight.

Your donation powers the journalism you rely on. Give today to support Marketplace Morning Report.

From the BBC World Service: U.K. inflation jumped to 9% in the 12 months to April, up from 7% in March, as higher energy bills hit millions of households. Also, could Chevron get the green light to re-start work in Venezuela? And Spain’s government proposes new laws around abortion rights.

Your donation powers the journalism you rely on. Give today to support Marketplace Morning Report.

The 18-year-old man accused of the racist rampage at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York, Saturday followed a pattern becoming disturbing familiar for such attacks: online radicalization. The suspect allegedly wrote and posted a 180-page document before the mass shooting, citing various racist and anti-Semitic memes and conspiracy theories from websites such as 4chan. Federal officials are paying attention to this growing threat. President Joe Biden’s latest budget allocates $33 million for the FBI to investigate domestic terrorism. Jared Holt, a resident fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab, spoke with Marketplace’s Kimberly Adams about how the Justice Department has shifted efforts to address online extremism in the United States. He noted that it still has progress to make.

Your donation powers the journalism you rely on. Give today to support “Marketplace Tech.”

Cryptocurrency has been having a rough couple of months lately. From bitcoin to ethereum and Coinbase, hundreds of billions of dollars have evaporated in crypto markets. But things got really bad last week, after a coin that’s supposed to be stable turned out not to be.

All this is having consequences. People who jumped into crypto during the pandemic, amid the rising visibility of celebrity endorsements and crypto influencers on TikTok, are losing real money.

On the show today, Ramaswamy explains what’s behind the crash and what it means for the future of cryptocurrencies. We’ll also provide a mini-explainer on “stablecoins.”

Later, good news about little kids and COVID vaccines, and will Russia and the West break up their energy relationship?

Plus, “Make Me Smart” fan art, and why you may be wrong about fly-fishing!

What’s the best way for the Federal Reserve to tackle decades-high inflation? For former Fed Chair Ben Bernanke, the answer’s in the past. Today, Bernanke discusses what previous Fed chairs got wrong, why the Fed’s credibility is critical and how the central bank can manage inflation expectations. Plus, understanding the strength of the dollar, the extension of the public health emergency and the state of U.S. coal production.

Help is on the way for the baby formula shortage, but it’s going to take some time. Plans are underway to reopen a plant in Michigan that, when it was in operation, was the largest formula producer in the United States. However, the process of restarting the plant and producing enough formula to start filling empty spaces on store shelves will take weeks upon weeks. A program that helps people pay for heating now has to pivot to concerns on the other side – air conditioning. We look into some of the dynamics behind condo prices, which remain high.