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Does your business need a loan? Banks aren’t your only option.

Increasingly, small and medium businesses are taking out loans with hedge funds or investment firms, which can have fewer restrictions than banks and might be more flexible on loan amounts. In this ep

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ACA insurance sees record sign-ups

About 20 million Americans enrolled in Affordable Care Act health insurance plans this go-round — the most since ACA marketplaces started enrolling people in 2013. Open enrollment for 2024 coverage en

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Gretchen! Stop trying to make recycled IP happen!

Mean Girls — a movie based on a musical based on a 2003 movie — comes out today. It's not the first or the last time Hollywood has recycled a beloved plot and characters for a new audience. What makes

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Not so fast, CPI!

The last consumer price index came out today. In short? Prices ticked up a bit more than expected. We'll dig into two major line items: the cost of shelter (and why it's a lagging indicator when it co

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What Alan Greenspan got right and wrong at the Fed

Alan Greenspan served as chair of the Federal Reserve for 18 years, cooling inflation in the 1990s and demonstrating that the Fed was independent from politicians. But he also made mistakes that helpe

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What are we gonna do with all this empty space?

Nearly 20% of office spaces across the U.S. are vacant, new data shows. Many companies solidified their back-to-office policies in the past year, so why are buildings emptier than ever? And in Shangha

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According to my Magic 8 Ball …

It's a new year, and that means experts — and nonexperts — have lots of guesses about what 2024 may hold. In this episode, we'll talk about some of those predictions. Will inflation hit to 3%? Will co

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In? Ice cream. Out? Cookies.

In/out lists are, like, so in right now. On social media, they're a way to forecast what trends people will and won't be fans of in the new year. So for this episode, we asked economists to predict wh

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This isn’t the old normal

Nearly four years since the pandemic began, the labor market seems to be returning to pre-COVID trends. But just because the numbers look similar doesn't mean the landscape of work hasn't evolved. In

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After incarceration, inclusion matters

Nearly half of all Americans have a family member who's spent time in jail or prison — the economic effects of which are far-reaching. In this episode, we'll hear from sociologist Reuben Jonathan Mill

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How will the markets fare in 2024?

2023 was full of uncertainty. What will 2024 bring? We asked some experts how the year could go, economically speaking. Spoiler alert: There wasn't much consensus. In this episode, how geopolitical te

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New year, new minimum wage

Almost 10 million Americans just got a raise. More than 20 states are ringing in the new year with a higher minimum wage than they left 2023 with. In this episode, who will benefit most and how far we

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Medicare’s New Year’s resolution? Bring down drug prices.

One in seven Medicare beneficiaries surveyed reported not filling a prescription due to high cost. The Inflation Reduction Act was meant to change this by allowing Medicare to negotiate the prices of

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The very hungry web crawler

The New York Times has sued OpenAI and Microsoft for allegedly using the newspaper's content to train ChatGPT, the artificial intelligence chatbot. The outcome may answer some pressing questions about

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The 2024 election cycle is gonna be a pricey one

A new report predicts that the 2023-24 U.S. election cycle will be the most expensive ever, with more than $10 billion spent across platforms. We'll dig into who's providing those funds and how the fi

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The inflation blame game

After the past couple of inflationary years, some consumers have come to accept that things cost more these days. But now that the inflation rate has come down, when will everything stop being inflati

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Eating out is gonna cost you

Though overall food inflation has slowed, the latest consumer price index shows the inflation rate for food away from home is higher than that of purchases from the grocery store. What mainly accounts

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Extra to spend, extra to save

Some good news out of today's personal consumption expenditures report, which tracked consumer spending in November. Disposable personal income rose, as did the personal savings rate. And some prices

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All I want for Christmas is same-day shipping

With Christmas Day falling on a Monday, online shoppers are cutting it close if they haven't ordered all their gifts yet. As consumers grow accustomed to same-day or next-day shipping from Amazon, Tar

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All aboard the Marketplace time machine

The beleaguered housing market is showing signs of improvement, but how will things look in 2024? We decided to step into the Marketplace time machine with a few industry experts and report back from

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Sending money home

When workers send money to their home countries, it can have a huge impact on local and national economies. Remittances to low and middle-income countries were up this year, and the U.S. was the bigge

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Allow us to explain

When it comes to economic talk, inflation is a major topic these days. But the word for getting inflation to slow down a bit isn't as well known. In this episode, we'll talk to economists who tell us

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On the road to 2%, stay “patient, cautious and resolute”

As 2023 comes to a close, some economists would say we're ending the year in a better place than they would have predicted in January — inflation has come down quite a bit and the economy is chugging

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Can we ever get good news?

In the last week, we've seen some solid labor and retail data. Unemployment is low, job availability is high and consumers are spending more than they did last year. But in an economy that's hyperfocu

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What’s the Fed’s word of the year?

The Oxford English Dictionary's word of 2023 is rizz — as in charming, skilled at wooing, Not a concept most people would apply to monetary policy. In this episode, economists weigh in

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How’s everyone feeling?

Tracking how folks feel about the economy is always tricky. Recently, consumer sentiment hasn't lined up with the mostly positive data on inflation. And while small-business owners are anxious about s

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food is a global issue

Food chain resiliency is a central topic at COP28 — the U.N.'s global climate conference. So far, countries have pledged $3 billion to address the issue. In this episode, why agricultural sustainabili

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Choo-choo!

The Biden administration announced it's putting $8 billion toward expanding the U.S. rail system. Travel by train is than flying or driving, and in parts of Europe and Asia, it's co

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Higher ed got its credit report card, and it’s not straight A’s

Fitch Ratings issued a warning this week that U.S. colleges and universities are likely to encounter economic headwinds — bond investors beware. Declining enrollment, higher wages for faculty and staf

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How the podcast bubble burst

Podcasting took off in a big way in 2015. But just eight years later, waves of layoffs and cancellations have made the future of the medium uncertain. In this episode, we'll explore why podcasts are t

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The ghosts of debt ceilings past

Despite all the angst over the national debt limit, extensions and last-minute compromises aren't unusual — since 1960, Congress has fought over the debt ceiling 78 times. Although the U.S. has never

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Whaddya mean capital got “more expensive”?

Mean Girls — a movie based on a musical based on a 2003 movie — comes out today. It's not the first or the last time Hollywood has recycled a beloved plot and characters for a new audience. What makes3