Marketplace

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.

Your regularly scheduled episode of Marketplace is landing in your feed later today, but for now we have something special. Make Me Smart with Kai and Molly is back with brand-new weekly episodes, wading into the big topics we want to get smart about. This week we're looking at the fall of Wall Street bank Bear Stearns, exactly 10 years ago. Plus, Kai and Molly talk with Ai-jen Poo, an advocate for domestic workers who accompanied Meryl Streep to the Golden Globes this year. She's using her Hollywood moment to make sure #MeToo is working for everyone. Subscribe to Make Me Smart and join the conversation.

Yesterday we examined the financials that lead to the fall of Bear Stearns, and now we're going to look at the human side: A couple of unlikely Wall Street workers who met and eventually got married at Bear's headquarters. We'll trace their relationship through the bank's collapse and catch up with what's happened since. First though, we'll talk about the latest Russian sanctions here and abroad. Plus: A closer look at the National Rifle Association's scorecard, a powerful grading system that candidates run on — or run from.