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market for. Los.

1:01

Angeles on Jar rebel it is

1:03

Monday today the thirty June. Good

1:05

as always the of your long

1:07

everybody. As the Federal Reserve thinks

1:10

about interest rates which it will

1:12

do Tuesday and Wednesday next, Jerk

1:14

Powell and the Gang or of

1:16

course wearing the data That's what

1:18

they tell us all the time.

1:20

They're also looking for signs that

1:22

the place they've put their main

1:25

interest rate the Federal Funds rate.

1:27

It's called a bit above five

1:29

percent right now. They

1:31

want to make sure that that's actually doing

1:33

what they wanted to do, slowing the economy

1:35

without stopping it. That's. Weak

1:37

spot in turn depends on what in

1:39

normal times would be the interest rate

1:42

at which the economy's not run into

1:44

hot but also not running to called

1:46

it's called the neutral rate and as

1:48

marketplace a suburban assure explained by way

1:51

of get this go on the neutral

1:53

rate as bit tricky to nail down.

1:56

Imagine. a world where inflation is fully

1:58

under control the a The economy is

2:00

growing at just the right speed, not losing

2:02

steam, not overheating just right. The

2:05

interest rate that would keep all

2:07

those things in balance is called

2:09

the natural or neutral rate. The

2:11

neutral rate is the Fed's kind

2:13

of guiding compass. Matthew Peñati

2:15

is a senior analyst at Capital Advisors Group.

2:17

If you are trying to sail north, you

2:19

might have to steer east or west sometimes,

2:21

what with currents and wind, but your compass

2:23

will help you get back on track. It

2:25

is the same for the Federal Reserve. And

2:28

for the Fed, over the long run, the short-term interest

2:30

rate might deviate from the neutral rate in the long

2:32

run, if that is what we want to get to.

2:35

Sometimes things happen. Inflation flares up and the Fed

2:37

has to slow the economy down, or there is

2:39

a financial crisis and the Fed has to get

2:41

the economy moving. Joseph Gagnon is a senior fellow

2:43

at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. And

2:46

when they want to slow the economy down, they

2:48

raise the rate above the neutral rate. When they

2:50

want to speed the economy up, they lower the

2:52

rate below the neutral rate. There is

2:54

one problem with this north star, this shining

2:56

perfect interest rate on a hill. You

2:58

cannot measure it directly. It's

3:01

theoretical. There is no simple formula that will

3:03

spit it out. But

3:05

in hindsight, over

3:07

time, you can see roughly

3:09

where it is. If you

3:11

look back in time and the economy

3:14

was stable, then whatever interest rate it

3:16

had was probably the right one. The

3:19

error around the estimates, because the neutral

3:21

rate is not observable, the error bands

3:23

for these models are very wide. David

3:26

Rogel is a fixed income portfolio manager

3:28

at BlackRock. Right now, the Fed believes

3:30

the neutral interest rate is 2.5 percent.

3:33

That is a lot lower than the 5.5 percent

3:35

we currently have. So one

3:37

day, when inflation is fixed, the idea is

3:40

we will get back down 2.5 percent, which

3:43

would affect new mortgages and car loans and credit

3:45

cards. But I think

3:47

what you're hearing from the Fed, the communications,

3:49

is that there's less certainty about that. The

3:52

mystical Goldilocks neutral interest rate can

3:54

change depending on a lot of factors

3:56

population growth, productivity, federal spending, and

3:59

it may be changing. changing now. Again, Matthew

4:01

Paniari, a Capital Advisors group. I

4:03

think that there's a lot of good evidence that's rising.

4:06

For starters, we've had high interest rates for

4:08

a year now, and the economy has barely

4:10

battled ash. No recession, no slowdown. So maybe

4:13

the normal times interest rate of the Fed's

4:15

dreams is actually higher than it used to

4:17

be. But also, maybe

4:19

not. In New York,

4:21

I'm Henry Benishaw for Marketplace. Shining

4:24

interest rate on a hill. I kind of

4:26

like that one. On Wall Street to start

4:28

this week, a little up, a little down,

4:30

stasis of sorts, ahead of

4:32

the big May jobs report coming to us on

4:35

Friday, we will have the details when we do

4:37

the numbers. The

4:59

thing about the neutral rate that Sabri was just

5:01

telling us about, and what the neutral rate itself

5:03

is telling us about how much the Fed is

5:05

actually putting the brakes on this economy, is

5:08

that the price of money, which is just another

5:10

way to think about interest rates, trickles

5:12

down through every moving part in this

5:14

economy. Today's case in point, spending

5:17

on construction. We got new

5:19

numbers from the Census Bureau this morning on

5:21

construction spending for the month of April, basically

5:23

flat from March. And going back

5:25

to the start of this year, it's barely budged after a

5:28

healthy 14% run up in spending

5:30

last year. Why

5:32

the slowdown? Marketplace's Daniel Ackerman

5:34

took a look around the construction economy to

5:36

find out. This year's flat

5:38

line in construction spending was kind

5:41

of inevitable, said Anubhan Basu, CEO

5:43

of Sage Policy Group. I think

5:45

that interest rates finally started to

5:47

catch up with this industry. The

5:49

Federal Reserve started raising interest rates back in 2022

5:52

to stem inflation. Basu says

5:55

at first the higher borrowing costs didn't

5:57

really affect builders. signed

6:00

contracts that made decisions to move forward.

6:02

And it takes a while for those

6:05

higher interest rates to interrupt the economy.

6:07

But he says that interruption may have

6:10

arrived. Spending on the construction of

6:12

commercial buildings was down in April,

6:14

along with multifamily housing. What

6:16

we're seeing right now is the end of

6:18

an apartment building boom. Robert

6:20

Dietz is chief economist at the National

6:23

Association of Home Builders. He

6:25

says last winter saw one million

6:27

apartments under construction. The highest

6:30

unit count since May of 1973. Now,

6:34

though, that number's down by more than a

6:36

third. He says in part because developers are

6:38

having a harder time financing new buildings. But

6:41

not all construction is so sensitive to

6:44

borrowing costs. If you've flown in any

6:46

airport lately, you've seen a lot of

6:48

construction. Katherine Thompson is

6:50

CEO of Thompson Research Group. She

6:52

says transportation infrastructure from air to

6:55

rail to roads has taken off,

6:57

thanks in part to recent federal

6:59

legislation. Also being built,

7:02

water systems and industrial construction

7:04

like factories. They're workatically pretty

7:06

boring categories up until now.

7:09

She expects factories to keep getting built,

7:11

even if overall construction remains flat for

7:14

a while. I'm Daniel Ackerman

7:16

for Marketplace. We've

7:38

been reporting on this program for years

7:40

now that home prices in many parts

7:42

of this country are at record highs

7:44

and with interest rates being where they

7:46

are, 7% ish, home

7:49

ownership is only getting harder for a lot of

7:52

would-be buyers. The tax

7:54

code has been of some help.

7:56

The mortgage interest deduction has

7:58

made it easier for some homeowners. The swallow

8:00

the purchase price of a new home.

8:02

It is kind of a classic tax

8:04

expenditure than interest deduction. A tax break

8:06

to the government uses to incentivize certain

8:08

behaviors like. In. This case homeownership

8:11

question is does it actually do

8:13

what it is supposed to do?

8:15

Marketplaces, Grimly Adams has that story. On

8:20

a rainy day about an hour outside

8:22

of the seas Real So Wendy Right

8:25

is prepping for an open house. Sabrina

8:27

take our shoes off as a into

8:29

the house says is is and well

8:31

say it's clean so for everybody comes

8:33

through Right is a real sir with

8:36

Keller Williams metro Center in Virginia, but

8:38

she's on the other side of the

8:40

Dc suburbs setting out balloons and bottles

8:42

of water at a five bedroom for

8:44

and a half baths home. This.

8:47

Is brand new construction built

8:49

and Twenty Twenty one see

8:51

sat on the back of

8:53

a hell of a full

8:55

master bedroom or primary bedroom

8:57

as a color. Today's. The

9:00

home is listed at almost nine

9:02

hundred thousand dollars, but unless the

9:04

buyer pays and tasks interests will

9:06

make the house cost several times

9:08

that over the life of a

9:10

typical thirty year mortgage. So the

9:12

government tries to help. Mortgage

9:14

interest deduction was there is much

9:16

faster as a way to try

9:18

to help but the gold helping

9:20

folks How more tangible homeownership. Garrett

9:23

Watson is a senior policy analyst

9:25

at the Tax Foundation. Though.

9:27

It does reduce the costs for on

9:29

Mars to do climate the does thomas

9:31

a trade off. For. Example: You

9:34

can only take the mortgage interest

9:36

deduction is here though. one tax

9:38

payer in nine who itemizes on

9:40

your tax returns, and if the

9:42

mortgage interest you pay is more

9:44

than the standard deduction of just

9:46

under thirty thousand dollars for married

9:48

couples filing jointly this year, The.

9:51

Average to doc. Some usually goes

9:53

to people earning one hundred to

9:55

over two hundred thousand dollars a

9:58

year. Muhammad. Alamo. is

10:00

a policy associate at the Turner Center

10:02

for Housing Innovation at UC Berkeley. He

10:05

says it's wealthier people who both

10:07

itemize and pay enough interest to

10:09

get the deduction. For people

10:11

earning over $200,000 a year, this reduces their taxes by

10:14

$5,300. While

10:19

people earning $100,000 or less see an average deduction of

10:21

about $300. The

10:27

2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act,

10:29

the Trump tax law, changed how much

10:31

of a mortgage is eligible for the

10:34

interest deduction. It used to be

10:36

a million dollars, it became $750,000. But

10:40

points out realtor Wendy Wright, nowadays.

10:43

At higher interest rates, your

10:45

interest on your mortgage is

10:48

higher. Hence, you're

10:50

probably taking more of a deduction

10:52

at a lower price point because of the

10:55

interest rate being higher. Still,

10:57

the vast majority of people don't

10:59

benefit from it. And many

11:01

economists argue there's not much evidence

11:03

that the mortgage interest deduction actually

11:06

gets more people to buy homes

11:08

instead of renting. It just makes

11:10

homes more expensive. Plus,

11:12

says Garrett Watson at the Tax Foundation,

11:15

all of those deductions for

11:17

big, expensive houses going primarily

11:20

to wealthy people, they cost

11:22

the federal government money. Every

11:24

year about $30 billion. And

11:27

if that deduction were pared back further

11:29

or eliminated, that revenue could be used

11:31

to lower rates elsewhere or to go

11:33

and fund other priorities. And

11:36

the hit to federal revenues from the

11:38

mortgage interest deduction is set to jump

11:40

at the end of 2025, when the

11:43

provision in the 2017 tax

11:45

law expires, unless Congress changes

11:47

or extends it. In

11:50

Washington, I'm Kimberly Adams from Oregon. Thank

11:55

you. Dan

12:17

Ackerman was talking a minute ago about

12:19

flat construction spending for April. We

12:21

got a different big spending data point

12:24

last Friday, consumer spending, which softened a

12:26

little bit in April, that

12:28

after holding pretty steady for three

12:30

months. So with signs that the

12:33

consumer might be slowing down a

12:35

bit, we decided to give two

12:37

of our retail regulars a call. Hi,

12:39

my name is Larry Groves and I am

12:41

the co-founder of the Growing Groves Plant Shop.

12:43

My name is Ricky Barossa and I'm also

12:46

a co-founder of the Growing Groves here in

12:48

Davis, California. Business

12:52

is good, I think. The

12:55

shop is doing well. It's interesting now

12:57

to be open for two years and

13:00

kind of navigate the current

13:03

economic climate. The

13:06

month that we're in is a very

13:08

interesting time because, you know,

13:11

we're in a college town and a

13:13

lot of graduates are going through commencement

13:15

ceremonies right now. Our slow

13:17

season definitely is like when people are

13:19

graduating, like summer, and then we ramp

13:22

back up back in September. During

13:27

early spring, we kind of sit down with

13:29

each other and talk about things that like,

13:32

you know, what can we do to supplement,

13:34

you know, the income loss? We just start

13:36

talking about, oh, should we,

13:39

you know, start, you know,

13:41

raining back our expenses? That's

13:44

always the hardest conversation. Because

13:48

as the one who controls the finances, I'm like, okay, let's

13:50

do it. I love his

13:52

ideas, but sometimes you have to rein them in.

13:55

I'll bring up an idea. Hey, I think we

13:57

should get this for the store. Okay. We'll

14:00

think about it maybe in a couple

14:03

months. And I'm like, I already ordered

14:05

it. So I think that's when my

14:07

corporate side comes out. And I'm like,

14:09

okay, let's bring up a Google sheet

14:11

and have everything outlined and see if

14:13

we can do it. But it's fun

14:15

to go through that together. Yeah. The

14:23

biggest challenge for me personally is burnout.

14:27

I think that I

14:29

really hit a wall kind of like

14:31

early spring where I was just constantly

14:34

going. One way that

14:36

I tried to combat that is just wake up

14:38

every morning, come to the store and just write

14:40

out a to-do list. Because it

14:43

just for a while felt like I wasn't

14:45

getting anything accomplished. Yeah, I think seeing him

14:47

go through all this as

14:49

my other job, my main job ramps up.

14:52

I don't have enough time to help him

14:54

as much as I can or I

14:56

want to. When we do

14:58

have a day together, we're like, oh my

15:00

God, we can rest. And

15:03

then it's like, we just talk about the store all

15:05

day. I'm just feeling

15:07

like, okay, well, we could try this. But the days

15:09

where we can just do nothing and... They're

15:12

amazing. It's amazing, yeah. My

15:18

goal for this year is

15:20

to really work on content

15:23

and branding and I just

15:26

want things to run more smoothly. Like

15:28

I want like our everyday, we

15:31

have an SOP that we follow, we

15:33

have like calendar dates that are readily

15:35

available for everyone. Yeah, I think we

15:37

have a better understanding of what it

15:39

means to run a business and

15:42

the balance that you need to have to

15:44

keep running the business. Future

15:48

Outlook, I think is

15:50

positive. So we'll see

15:52

what happens. Larry

16:02

Groves and Ricky Barossa running the

16:04

Growing Groves Plant Shop. They

16:26

had the ability to crank

16:29

out a reinvention

16:31

of the peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

16:35

$1 billion worth,

16:37

but first let's do the numbers. The

16:41

Dow industrial is down 115 points today, about 3.10% finish at $38,571, and

16:43

as that gained 93.6% close to $16,828. S&P

16:53

500 added 5 points, about a 10th percent, 52%, and 83%. GameStop

16:59

soared 21% today. The

17:01

meme stock rose after a social media post from

17:03

Keith Gill, the investor known as Roaring Kitty on

17:05

Reddit. It appeared to show that he had 5

17:08

million shares of video game retailer. Meme

17:11

stock AMC jumped 11%. Both

17:13

stocks were hit by a technical glitch, by

17:15

the way, in the New York Stock Exchange

17:18

earlier that showed incorrect prices for a number

17:20

of stocks, including Berkshire Hathaway A shares. BRK

17:22

is the ticker today. Down

17:25

6.10% at the end of the day, at one point this morning,

17:27

shown wrongly as being down That

17:32

my friends would have been a bargain. BRK

17:35

A trades today at $631,000 a share.

17:39

That's by two, huh? It's about

17:42

a five. Turned up 5.2%, 3rds%

17:45

today after announcing a premium subscription price

17:47

hike from July, 2nd raise in a

17:49

year for the streaming service. Bond

17:51

prices were up, yield down the 10-year T-note fell to 4.39% you're

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things came to be for many

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Black Americans and the truth that

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must come before any reconciliation can

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yield dash account. This

20:41

is Marketplace. I'm Kai Rizdahl. It is going to

20:44

get hot out here in parts of the West

20:46

this week, 120 degrees hot in some of

20:50

the deserts. It's the first big heat wave

20:53

of what is expected to be another abnormally

20:55

hot summer in most of the country. This

20:58

year was, as you know, the hottest on record

21:00

as well as the deadliest. Some

21:02

jobs can be especially risky. Construction

21:04

farming, logistics, to name just a

21:06

couple. Marketplace's Megan McCarty-Carino

21:09

has more now on shoring up

21:11

workplace protections for heat. More

21:13

than 400 workers died due to

21:15

exposure to heat between 2011 and 2021, according

21:17

to federal

21:20

records. The Occupational Safety and

21:22

Health Administration has been crafting new

21:24

heat-specific rules at the direction of

21:26

President Biden since 2021. We

21:29

don't know exactly what those rules will

21:31

be, but they would likely trigger things

21:33

like required rest and water breaks when

21:36

the heat index reaches certain thresholds. Nobody

21:38

disputes that overexposure to heat is

21:41

a hazard. Mark Friedman is

21:43

vice president of workplace policy at the

21:45

U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which is pushed

21:47

back against early proposals. He

21:49

says current general guidelines for rest, water

21:51

and shade are effective if OSHA sets

21:53

stricter thresholds to, say, a heat index

21:56

of 80 degrees. He

21:58

says businesses with heat generating is equipment

22:00

would find it difficult to maintain temperatures.

22:03

Such a regulation could really impose a lot

22:05

of costs on employers and

22:07

in some cases, perhaps jeopardize their

22:09

ability to stay in business. The

22:12

agency appears to be close to releasing

22:14

its final proposal, says Debbie Berkowitz, who

22:16

was at OSHA during the Obama administration

22:18

and is now a fellow at Georgetown.

22:20

But they have many, many steps they

22:23

have to go through. It could take

22:25

another couple of years. It takes an

22:27

average of seven years for OSHA to

22:29

create a new national standard. Five

22:31

states have created their own and several

22:34

more are close to adopting them, says

22:36

Anastasia Christman of the National Employment Law

22:38

Project. Part of it

22:40

is workers have found their

22:42

voice and their power in the last,

22:45

say, decade and have really started

22:47

to understand that the best way

22:49

to address these problems is to

22:51

speak out about them together. But

22:53

Texas and Florida have preemptively banned

22:56

local jurisdictions from enacting new rules.

22:58

And in California, the first state

23:00

to regulate heat in the workplace,

23:02

a long planned extension of protections

23:04

to indoor sites, has stalled over

23:06

uncertainty about how much it will cost the

23:08

state. I'm Megan McCarty-Carina. Consider

23:34

the peanut butter and jelly sandwich, a

23:36

staple of the elementary school lunchbox and

23:39

a great snack for adults everywhere, a

23:41

classic that needs no improvement. Well,

23:45

maybe. But if you want to build a brand,

23:47

you got to innovate. So enter the

23:49

uncrustable, a PB&J with, just like

23:51

it sounds, the crusts cut off.

23:54

More than 25 years old and on the cusp of

23:57

being a brand worth 10 digits.

23:59

Clint Raney wrote about it the other day at Fast

24:01

Company. Clint, welcome to the program. Hey, guys. Thanks

24:03

for having me. Uncrustables, basically

24:06

a peanut butter

24:08

and jelly sandwich of sorts, is

24:10

going to be a billion dollar brand? Are you

24:12

kidding me? It's pretty nuts

24:14

to think about, isn't it? Yes.

24:17

What? How? I mean, I think

24:19

that this is one of those

24:22

great success stories. You have

24:24

a company Smucker that has

24:27

for over 100 years, like 125 years,

24:29

been producing these basic pantry staples,

24:34

peanut butter, coffee, baking

24:36

mixes, shortening, and realized at

24:39

a certain point that

24:41

they had jelly, they had peanut butter,

24:43

they could probably figure out bread. And

24:45

if they just put those things together,

24:47

they had the ability to crank

24:50

out a reinvention

24:52

of the peanut butter and jelly

24:54

sandwich that appealed to not just

24:57

parents for kids' lunches, but

24:59

athletes who are looking for a

25:03

quick way to refuel. Yeah.

25:05

We'll get to the athletes in a second. So we should

25:07

say, first of all, Smuckers did not

25:10

invent the Uncrustables, but

25:12

they did launch it.

25:16

They've been around for a long time. It's not like Uncrustables are

25:18

new, right? They've been around for 25, 26 years. Right.

25:21

Right. And so the reason that I wrote this

25:23

story was that these things were just starting to

25:25

pop up everywhere. I was seeing them on social

25:28

media. I was seeing them at

25:30

halftime shows, Charles Barkley coming on

25:32

during a basketball game, talking about

25:34

how he stocks them in his

25:37

freezer. So Smucker purchased

25:39

the brand from two dads in

25:41

the Midwest in 1998. They went

25:44

straight into cranking away on these things.

25:47

And the expansion of

25:49

the brand and the growth of

25:51

the product has been almost entirely

25:53

organic. So organically, people were snatching

25:55

these things up, but there was

25:57

no marketing behind it yet. Well,

26:01

and look, you don't need marketing when Charles Barkley

26:03

is talking about him in a halftime show and

26:05

Travis Kelsey, for crying out loud, is saying he

26:07

needs more of them than anything else. I mean,

26:09

this thing has... Look, I get that it's convenient

26:11

and all that, but fundamentally, it's peanut butter and

26:13

jelly sandwich, right? No kidding. And I think it

26:16

sort of became... I

26:18

don't want to call it an inside joke, but

26:20

I mean, sort of, right? Like there was some

26:22

reporting that the Baltimore Ravens ate 7,500 of these

26:24

things last NFL season.

26:27

And it's sort of become this cultural artifact,

26:29

especially in professional sports where

26:31

it's something everybody can kind of

26:34

laugh about. Here's

26:37

the kicker question. Have you tried one of these

26:39

things? I have, and I will

26:41

admit with some level of embarrassment

26:43

that I had not before I started writing

26:46

the story. But I went out, I live

26:48

in New York City, and there's a lot

26:50

of things that are difficult to find in

26:52

New York. I did not struggle to find

26:54

Uncrustables. I

26:57

had advance warning that they were

26:59

going to be in the frozen section, which I

27:02

was told by multiple people at

27:04

Smucker is a source of confusion

27:07

for consumers. They don't necessarily think we'll

27:09

make a beeline for the freezer aisle.

27:12

Are you supposed to microwave them to Thaum or what do you do?

27:16

Apparently absolutely not. But

27:18

there is an entire

27:20

cottage industry on Reddit

27:23

and other forums online of people

27:25

who are suggesting ways

27:28

that you can improve

27:30

them. And that involves air

27:32

fryers and microwaving. And

27:34

it's insane. But

27:37

some people want to remove the

27:39

tiny little crimped edges that... Oh

27:42

no! I know. You're

27:44

uncrusting the Uncrustable? Come on, man. It's insane,

27:46

right? I mean, at that point, you have

27:49

to assume it just oozes out the side.

27:51

But that I didn't try, so I can't

27:53

swear to it. Peter

27:55

Bonner and Jelly. It is ripe for

27:57

disruption. Clint Raney, he's a contributing writer.

28:00

fast company talking about uncrossables. Quint, thanks a

28:02

lot, appreciate your time. Thanks so much,

28:04

Quint. This

28:21

final note on the way out today,

28:23

another entry in the private equity buys

28:25

up an iconic American company file. CNBC

28:28

is reporting today that Skydance, which is

28:30

a consortium backed by, among others, KKR,

28:33

has come to terms with Paramount on

28:35

a takeover. It's an $8 billion

28:37

deal, give or take, waiting only on a

28:40

sign off from Sherry Redstone, who's

28:42

holding company National Immunumins, owns

28:45

Paramount. Our daily

28:47

production team includes Andy Corbin, Alizia Hassan,

28:49

Maria Hollenhorst, Sarah Leeson, Sean McHenry,

28:52

and Sophia Terenzio. I'm Kai Rizdal, we will

28:54

see you tomorrow, everybody. This

29:10

is APN. Hey

29:13

everyone, it's Rima Grace, host of This

29:15

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