David Brancaccio

U.S.

Treasury bonds up sharply.

The 10-year interest rate down at 4.24%.

Now from markets to the real economy in which we live.

It's from my drive down a stretch of Route 66 in the southwest to see what the economy looks like 100 years after the storied highway from Illinois to California came into being.

We are now living through ferociously fast technological change, which is hitting and sometimes missing towns along this route.

At the biggest Route 66 town in New Mexico, I experienced what many experts call our K-shaped economy.

One leg up, one down.

To stop that get-your-kicks-on-Route-66-playing-on-repeat-in-my-head-while-on-the-long-road, little Neil Young does the trick.

In search of fried eggs, the Yelp app gives top marks to a place called Ancora Bakery and Cafe in Albuquerque.

It's got eggs, chorizo, and surprise, job training.

Trained as baristas in food service, Dominic Cagliostro is one of the founders of this non-profit cafe and recovery program.

It's a 501c3 non-profit and cash flow is not easy.

For a time recently, the cafe part of the recovery center went on hiatus and we found Google Maps listing it as permanently closed.

But wrong, it is back open and there was a solid breakfast and an excellent latte.

Donations, philanthropists, me and my wife, we collaborate with other places.

Contributing to the operation is Ancora's work moving surplus restaurant food out to unhoused people in and around the neon corridors of Route 66, called Central Avenue in Albuquerque.

In a moment, a different side of a city flush with AI, science and tech money, but not flush with big private tech companies.

At Albuquerque's Museum of Nuclear Science and History, six blocks from Route 66, there's a loop of President Truman's big announcement in 1945.

A lot of that work was done in this region, which is now home to three national labs, Los Alamos, Air Force Research, and Sandia.