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Chapter 1: What recent changes have been made to SNAP benefits?
Would you bet that this artificial intelligence balloon will soar even beyond the stratosphere? I'm David Brancaccio in Los Angeles. First, nervous markets this morning. Silver, the commodity, has lost nearly a quarter of its value over the last five days, although there's a small bounce back at the moment. Gold is up a sliver this morning after its biggest one-day drop since the 1980s.
Marketplace's Nancy Marshall-Genzer is following this.
Part of the pullback from precious metals is a reaction to President Trump's nomination of Kevin Warsh as chair of the Federal Reserve. Warsh still has to be confirmed by the Senate. He's already served on the Fed's Board of Governors. And Warsh has a track record as an inflation hawk, reluctant to cut interest rates for fear of kindling inflation.
Warsh's nomination strengthened the dollar, and that made gold and silver less attractive as a safe haven. Oil prices also slid after President Trump said the U.S. may be able to make a deal with Iran, easing concerns of a disruption in Iranian oil supplies. I'm Nancy Marshall-Genzer for Marketplace.
In effect now, in five states, a ban on using food stamps to buy sugary drinks and junk food.
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Chapter 2: How are grocery stores affected by SNAP restrictions?
More than a dozen other states have similar rules on the way. Marketplace's Samantha Fields has an update.
People who get SNAP have always faced some restrictions on what they can buy, one of the big ones being no hot prepared foods.
You can't use your SNAP benefit for like a rotisserie chicken at Costco, even though it's a really healthy and efficient way to feed your family.
Lily Roberts at the Center for American Progress says these new state restrictions are ostensibly about making sure people spend their benefits on healthy foods.
But I will note that research suggests that the way to get people to But increasingly, states are restricting what people can buy.
Stephanie Johnson at the National Grocers Association says it's proving complicated for retailers to implement.
The good example in Oklahoma is... Granola bars with chocolate chips are in, but granola bars with a chocolate drizzle are out.
That's confusing for store owners and for customers. And Johnson is concerned about what could happen once USDA starts enforcing the new rules. If a store accidentally lets someone use Snap to buy that chocolate-drizzled granola bar.
On your first strike, you get 30 days to correct. On your second strike, you lose your SNAP license.
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Chapter 3: What do experts say about the impact of new SNAP rules on recipients?
That would be a big hit, both to stores, which often rely on SNAP revenue, and to people in their communities who use benefits to buy groceries. I'm Samantha Fields for Marketplace.
An estimated 80% of the rise of the stock market last January through November came from exuberance over artificial intelligence. But even if the technology is the revolution promised, these things are not linear. In the 1880s, building railroads revolutionized the U.S. economy, but many early investors lost their shirts. Dot com from 25 years ago as well.
But is AI now like the dot com boom then bust? Marketplace's Megan McCarty Carino reports from Silicon Valley.
I'm on a busy street in Menlo Park, California, looking for some manholes. Paul Vixie is my guide. So we're just going out in the street.
We're just going out in the street, real briefly.
He's a vice president at AWS Security, but back in the dot-com boom, he was an early internet innovator who helped build fiber optic cable networks under these manholes. Vixie and I were on that street for a history lesson about this current AI boom, with billions being spent on huge, powerful data centers, and whether it echoes the dot-com boom and eventual bust.
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Chapter 4: How did the recent decline in gold and silver prices occur?
This is MFN. This is where I worked. And this one is RCN.
I feel maybe we should move out of the street. We did, after dodging some cars. Back in the early 2000s, when those cables were being laid, telecommunications companies were also spending billions of dollars to build out fast and reliable Internet infrastructure, betting on bigger returns.
That was very much the feeling, is we've got to do everything we can within the limits of the law and the laws of physics because that's how the winners and losers are going to sort themselves out.
And what were the results of that giant building boom of fiber?
A wave of bankruptcies.
The Federal Communications Commission estimated that by 2007, about two-thirds of the 45 million miles of fiber cables were still unused. But years later, that fiber infrastructure supported streaming, social media, and now AI. How would you describe what you saw in terms of how we ended up with, you know, this fiber glut? And does it relate to our present world?
We now have enough fiber that anybody who wants to do something can do it. And I think all of the investments that were made have ultimately paid off, even if, you know, some of the companies represented on these manhole covers had to go through bankruptcy on the way.
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Chapter 5: What parallels exist between the AI boom and the dot-com era?
Yeah, even if in the short term it was too much than they could recoup, ultimately we used it for all kinds of things.
Yes. So the future is effectively unlimited for what can be done with information, with an information economy in the next 50 years.
And that's what today's AI companies are betting a whole lot on. I'm Megan McCarty Carino for Marketplace.
And we try to resist too-clever-by-half marketing, but we failed here. You know, sweethearts, the heart-shaped candies embossed with Valentini lines like Be Mine? This year, a darker turn with a nod to financial insecurity. Sweethearts is mixing in hearts that say things like split rent or share login or carpool. What are they missing?
My crew came up with staycation, dodge taxes, forego health coverage, work three gigs. Of course, nothing says I love you more than live in mom's basement. Doesn't fit on the heart, I suppose. The sweetheart's people call it love in this economy. I'm David Brancaccio, Marketplace Morning Report.
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Chapter 6: What lessons can we learn from the dot-com boom regarding AI investments?
From APM, American Public Media.
For second and third generation kids, holding on to your family's culture can be difficult and expensive. I'm Rima Grace, and this week on This is Uncomfortable, I talk with author and journalist Ayman Ismail about how passing down his Egyptian roots to his kids has become a line item in his monthly budget.
I don't want to have kids who can't speak Arabic or read Arabic. This is the only chance I get to do this, right, when they're really, really young. I won't get another chance to help guide them and help them learn Arabic for the sake of them being connected to this massive heritage that they're inheriting.
Listen to This is Uncomfortable on your favorite podcast app.