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NPR. This

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is The Indicator from Planet Money. I'm Darian Woods

0:14

here with Weilong Wang. It's Friday!

0:17

It is indeed. And making a most

0:19

glorious return to The Indicator, Planet Money's

0:21

very own Jeff Guo. Oh my gosh.

0:23

I'm so excited to be back, guys.

0:27

Well, Jeff, you're back in time because

0:29

it's Indicators of the Week. We

0:32

are here, as always, to bring you

0:34

the most fascinating snapshots from the week

0:36

of economic news. And

0:38

today we're digging into the embattled company

0:40

Boeing. We're going to look at a

0:42

bank jilted by built. What are

0:44

these words you're saying? And just to continue

0:47

the jargon, we're going to learn about our

0:49

investments in Nancy and Cruz. You'll

0:52

learn all about this word salad after the break.

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2:02

of the Week, let's start with Waylon. My

2:05

indicator is three. That is

2:07

the number of negative news events that

2:09

plagued Boeing this week alone. I

2:12

think at this point calling the company

2:14

embattled is a major understatement. I

2:16

saw that their CEO got grilled on Capitol Hill

2:18

this week. That is right. That

2:20

is negative news event number one. Outgoing

2:23

CEO Dave Calhoun answered questions from

2:25

senators on Tuesday. It's

2:27

the first time he's gone before Congress since

2:29

that January incident where the door plug got

2:32

ripped off an Alaska Airlines flight. And

2:34

when I say answer questions, they were

2:36

questions like this one from Republican Senator

2:39

Josh Hawley of Missouri. Why

2:41

haven't you resigned? Senator

2:43

I'm sticking this through. I'm proud of having

2:45

taken the job. I'm proud of our... Proud

2:48

of this record? ...safety record. And I am very

2:50

proud of our Boeing people. You're proud of this

2:52

safety record? I am proud of every

2:54

action we have taken. Every action you've

2:56

taken? Wow. Wow. There's

2:59

some news for you. Like whenever you

3:01

need some spicy type from C-SPAN,

3:03

it is Josh Hawley who will

3:05

provide it. That was just Tuesday.

3:07

And here is some more news for you.

3:10

You might remember that there were 737

3:12

MAX crashes in Indonesia and Ethiopia back

3:15

in 2018 and 2019. 346

3:19

people were killed. Some

3:22

of the victims' families were at the hearing

3:24

to confront the CEO. And then the day

3:26

after the hearing, an attorney representing the family

3:28

sent a letter to the Justice Department. This

3:31

is negative news event number two. According

3:34

to news reports, the letter called for, quote,

3:36

aggressive criminal prosecution, end quote,

3:39

a Boeing. And it said Boeing

3:41

should be fined over $24 billion. I'm

3:44

almost scared to ask what negative

3:46

bad headline for Boeing number three

3:48

is. So we learned

3:50

this week that two NASA astronauts

3:53

have to extend their stay at

3:55

the International Space Station because of

3:57

problems with the Boeing Starliner spacecraft.

4:00

That sounds like the plane delay from hell. Oh,

4:03

I know. I mean, their mission was

4:05

only supposed to be about a week

4:07

long, and it's turning into longer now

4:09

because the Boeing spacecraft they're using for

4:11

this round trip had problems while docking

4:13

at the station. Now Boeing and

4:15

NASA engineers have to figure out what went

4:17

wrong, so they make sure the journey home

4:20

is safe. They're not trapped, but

4:22

they just can't go home yet. They

4:25

can't go home yet, but they're veteran astronauts.

4:27

I think they know what they're doing. All

4:30

right, so from a more than embattled

4:33

company to a flesh

4:35

wound for a bank, Jeff. My

4:37

indicator this week has to do with this

4:39

credit card that has this unique additional feature

4:41

where you can use it to pay your

4:43

rent, and there are no fees for doing

4:46

this. There are no fees for you or

4:48

for your landlord. In fact, this card, it

4:50

gives you points on your rent payment. Oh

4:52

my gosh. What is the APR on

4:55

it, though? It's like 10 million percent.

4:58

Well, it turns out that someone is

5:00

losing money on this card, built card,

5:02

the I.L.T., but it is not the

5:04

renters, it's not the customers. Interesting. It

5:07

is the bank behind this card, Wells

5:09

Fargo. Oh no. According to the Wall

5:11

Street Journal, they reported this week that

5:13

Wells Fargo is losing like $10 million

5:15

a month on this card.

5:18

A month? Oh gosh. And that is

5:20

my indicator. I mean, how did they

5:22

get this wrong? Well, as you know,

5:24

there are two main ways that credit

5:26

cards bring in money, right? One is

5:28

they charge fees on every transaction. Those

5:30

are called interchange fees. The stores usually

5:32

pay for that. But credit

5:34

cards typically make a lot more money

5:36

off of their customers, off of interest

5:38

payments from people who carry balances on

5:40

their cards. In this case, I think

5:42

Wells Fargo was hoping they would make all this money

5:44

back on all the new customers they

5:46

could attract, some of whom might be carrying a

5:48

balance. Okay, so they like

5:51

they just underestimated how many people

5:54

would sign up. Like it was like almost too

5:56

successful. It seemed like they were hoping to get

5:58

a lot new customers. And they

6:00

were using this rent situation

6:02

scheme thing to attract a lot of

6:05

new customers, especially young customers, because who

6:07

pays a lot of rent? It's young

6:09

people who don't own homes. And

6:12

so that's what they were trying to do. And

6:14

then they were hoping once you get the customers

6:16

in the door, maybe some of them will carry

6:19

a balance and you can charge them interest

6:21

or some of them will get upsold on

6:23

other Wells Fargo products or whatever. But in

6:25

any case, none of that actually worked out

6:27

according to their calculations. It's funny this

6:29

is Wells Fargo, right? Wells Fargo, whose name

6:32

has also been thoroughly trashed by scandal. It's

6:34

true. In the last few years, we were

6:36

just talking about Boeing and it's like, well,

6:38

couldn't have happened to a more scandal-ridden bank.

6:42

This is what I think is so

6:44

funny about this particular situation, right? Because

6:47

Wells Fargo, you just associate their name

6:49

with all of these ethical scandals, all

6:51

of the billions of dollars in fines

6:53

that they've had to pay over the

6:56

years. Now it's like, you

6:58

know, the tables have turned. Now the customers are

7:00

the ones that are, you know, pulling one over

7:02

on the bank almost. Amazing. Darian,

7:05

you want to bring

7:07

it home with a big reveal here? Yes,

7:10

indeed. My indicator is $1.10.

7:12

And that's how much we

7:14

have added pre-tax to

7:16

the plant money investment fund. I

7:19

didn't know what you were going to say,

7:21

but I thought it was going to be higher than what

7:23

you just said. Dollars, you said a dollar-tay. So

7:25

for a week, Waylon hasn't been that long. That's

7:28

pretty good. No, but it was a good week

7:30

in the market. With a

7:32

$65 investment. In percentage terms, what was it?

7:34

Yeah, so I'll run through this. And

7:36

just to get listeners caught up, this is from

7:38

our episode earlier in the week where Waylon

7:41

and I each invested in two

7:43

funds that tracked how members of

7:45

Congress trade stocks. Right. The

7:48

funds use data from a guy called Unusual

7:50

Wales. That's not his given name. That's like

7:52

his nickname. He partnered with

7:54

a company called Subversive that made the

7:56

funds. And we had this friendly

7:59

rivalry. I invested in the fund. the trades

8:01

done by Republican party members and their families.

8:03

And Darien, you invested in the Democratic one.

8:06

Yeah. So there was the

8:08

excellently named Cruz Fund, K-R-U-Z, for

8:10

the Republican trades. And

8:13

mine had the ticker N-A-N-C. We

8:16

should be clear, we got a note from

8:18

the portfolio manager after the episode aired. And

8:21

now we know this should be pronounced Nancy.

8:23

Ah, like Wally. You

8:25

got to pronounce the last letter. It was

8:27

too cash. It's the appropriate gravitas for this

8:29

ETF. Now

8:32

how did each of these funds perform, Darien? So

8:34

continuing the recent trend, Cruz

8:37

did okay, but not amazingly.

8:39

Waylon, you made 25 cents

8:41

from your nearly $30 investment

8:43

as a percentage that was

8:45

under And

8:48

that is considerably below the overall

8:50

stock market performance. Yeah, I'll say.

8:52

The stock market did really well

8:55

in the last week. During

8:57

that time, the S&P 500 rose a very high 2.2%. You

9:02

must have done a lot better than I did then. Yeah, so

9:05

my funds did very well. Nancy rose 85

9:08

cents from my roughly $35 investment. So

9:10

that's 2.4%, which beat the S&P 500 by a little. And

9:16

that's because Democratic lawmakers, they're more heavily invested

9:18

in tack on a tear this week?

9:21

That's a lot of attention and excitement,

9:24

rightly or wrongly, about the investments and

9:26

promise of artificial intelligence. Democrats

9:28

are more weighted towards these stocks. What's

9:30

powering all this is Nvidia, which claims

9:32

the title is the biggest company in

9:34

the world this week. Oh, and

9:37

by the way, we're going to take a look at Nvidia

9:39

on the show next week. We'll have to

9:41

be sure to disclose our massive holdings

9:43

in video via

9:46

these ETFs. If

9:49

our listeners have been feeling flush with the

9:51

rising stock market over the last week, we

9:53

have Merch for Sale. There is a

9:55

very special t-shirt with the alligator swimming through

9:57

the beige book that I highly recommend. Love

10:00

that t-shirt. You can

10:02

go to shopnpr.org/indicator. Yeah,

10:05

Jeff, you gotta get in on this. Wait, I don't

10:07

get a free one? This

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