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Chapter 1: What insights does R. Scott Gemmill share about 'The Pitt'?
Just because it does bear repeating, the economy does not stop when headlines turn elsewhere, you know. Also, and completely unrelated, we're going to talk a little television on the program today from American Public Media. This is Marketplace. In Los Angeles, I'm Colin Risdell. It is Wednesday. Today, this one is the 4th of March. Good as always to have you along, everybody.
There are some things happening in this economy, ours and globally, that make good sense. Oil, for instance, spiking. We all know why. Gold, though off its highs right after the war started, still up a lot. The U.S. dollar since Saturday morning very much in demand, which means it's been strengthening relative to other currencies.
All of the above are par for the course when geopolitics goes haywire. Where things are getting strange, though, where that flight to safety paradigm that we are so very used to seems to be breaking down is in the market for U.S.
Chapter 2: How does the role of a showrunner influence a series?
treasuries, the safest of safe havens. You would expect investors to want more of them, just like they want more dollars. But no. Marketplace's Justin Ho is on the what the heck is going on here desk for us today.
When investors want to pile into the safety of the U.S. dollar, they have plenty of options.
You could find a money market fund that's a relatively safe place to go to.
Brendan McKenna with Wells Fargo says investors could also park their money in corporate bonds, which you need dollars to buy. Same with mortgage-backed securities. You could park it in just a savings account, right?
And you're relatively safe there.
Investors have been considering these options because they're not exactly thrilled about investing in U.S. treasuries right now.
Sebastian Malaby, senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, says between the president's tariffs, his attacks on Federal Reserve independence, his intervention in Venezuela, and now Iran... You just have this series of ad hoc policies that undermine the idea that there's a stable hand guiding the system.
And when you don't believe that anymore...
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Chapter 3: What challenges do writers face in creating a medical drama?
you're not going to want to hold U.S. government debt because you don't trust the U.S. government.
But Malabi says investing in Europe or Asia is looking risky too, especially since the war is making energy more expensive.
Both the East Asian economies and Europe are big energy importers. So a spike in the cost of energy is very, very bad for them.
Compared to that, the U.S. economy looks relatively more stable. Christopher Vecchio, head of futures and FX with the research company Tasty Lives, says investors are basically just sitting on their dollars.
If you are someone who, for example, is in Europe, and this really is more of a question for foreign investors and traders. I may sell out of my U.S. treasuries and instead of converting the money back into euros, I could just keep them in U.S. dollars.
Vecchio says no matter what investors think of U.S. treasuries, the dollar is always going to be in high demand because the global economy runs on dollars.
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Chapter 4: How does 'The Pitt' compare to traditional medical dramas?
I'm Justin Ho for Marketplace.
On Wall Street today, traders did what they do sometimes. When things go haywire, they're going to ignore anything that's not right in front of their noses. We will have the details when we do the numbers.
Treasury Secretary Scott Besson said today that those tariffs that President Trump announced after the Supreme Court ruling against him a couple of weeks ago, the 10 percent tariffs the president imposed, Besson said today that could go up to 15 percent as soon as this week.
One hesitates to presume the Secretary of the Treasury isn't aware of this, but that tariff bump would be feeding into an economy already dealing with the inflationary pressures that war brings. And we're going to talk about that and some other stuff with Heather Long. She's the chief economist at Navy Federal Credit Union, also comes by on Fridays from time to time. Hi, Heather. Hi, Kai.
What is your inflation spidey sense, if you will, telling you right now?
Well, it's certainly going to be going up. The question is how much. I certainly noticed the gas prices on my drive into work this morning are already up about 20 cents, and we're all wondering what's next. And you just mentioned these tariffs that are now going to be hiked, presumably at the end of the week, to 15%.
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Chapter 5: What economic themes are explored in the series?
And a lot of the confusion that's going on around the world about whether there will be some exclusions for Europe or UK or Australia or... Are these still our friends or not? You know, but look, the general sentiment here is there was already a lot of anxiety from American consumers about high prices. And March is certainly not going to help.
So let's talk transmission mechanisms, oil and gas, you mentioned, and we can see that we are seeing that at the pump. Eventually, all of that's going to show up in the cost of goods, right? Not just at the pump.
That's right. We forget sometimes how much those oil prices flow through the entire economy, an economy where we transport goods across the country, whether it's food products or whether it's cars. So That's why when you really start to see oil prices get up, I would say the trigger dollar amount that I'm really watching is do we get to $90? Do we get into the $90 again?
Because that translates to $4 gas. And that's when you really start to see that psychological shift for both consumers and businesses to thinking that this is a higher inflation regime that we're going back to.
Not for nothing, but we're over 80 on Brent.
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Chapter 6: How do real-world medical issues impact storylines in 'The Pitt'?
I mean, you know, it's not far away.
Exactly. Exactly. So we're not there yet. And, you know, I think that's why you've seen this very muted market reaction so far. But, you know, the million trillion dollar question is how long does this last?
Well, let's go there for a minute. And I'm not going to ask you how long this is going to last. But but I I need an expert. And you're the expert in this conversation to talk to me about about the cascading effect. The longer it does last. I mean, the president is talking about four to six weeks, you know.
And that's – I hate to use the word manageable, but every single analyst note in my inbox right now says that if it's four to six weeks, it's a manageable hit to the U.S. economy. It's probably a different calculation for Europe and Asia.
Chapter 7: What is the significance of having medical professionals in the writers' room?
But the question, I think, that begins to transition when we get to something like $90 oil is – you get these feelings that we're back to that dreaded summer of 2022 when inflation really spiked. That's the last time we really saw gas and oil in that $100 a barrel mark.
And so that's, I think, what you're really worried about, whether you're the Federal Reserve or whether you're a corporation trying to assess this, is If we get to a place where companies and consumers really start to change their assessment of what they think the next several months are going to be, it's not happening yet.
Right, right. Last thing, and then I'll let you get back to work. The phrase supply shock is being bandied about because it's not just oil and gas and it's not just the Strait of Hormuz. Insurance for shipping is going up. There's general unease out there. That's a real worry, right? This idea of a supply shock now into this economy.
Yeah, that's a really good point. The flip side of that is that we had an oversupply, arguably, of oil and gas in the market coming into this, and that most other parts of the economy were pretty well supplied. So you're starting from a much better base than, say, what happened in 2022 when we were coming off a period of
Chapter 8: What future developments can we expect in the upcoming season of 'The Pitt'?
where there still wasn't enough supply of cabinets or toasters or auto parts or whatever. But you're right. Again, if this is something that lasts for months, then you're back to 2022.
Heather Long at Navy Federal. Heather, thanks a lot. Always good to talk to you.
Thanks, Guy.
As Heather and I were just talking about, this war is already starting to be felt in this economy. But as we're also talking about, there are things that are going to hit right away and there are things that are going to take a while. On that latter list of things that are going to take a while is the labor market.
The February jobs report comes out on Friday, and we did get something of a preview today. Payroll processing company ADP says private company hiring jumped last month, 63,000 new jobs also, and not for nothing, pay was up about 4.5% year over year. Marketplace of Carla Javier reads the tea leaves on that one.
All this jobs data is really important, says RSM chief economist Joe Brusuelas.
The unemployment rate, average hours worked, average hourly earnings, and what the median duration of unemployment is, those are really key factors to understand the health of the American economy.
He says ADP's numbers reaffirm a low-hire, low-fire labor market and make him want to look closely at health care and private education in Friday's jobs report.
because it's been the primary driver of hiring for the past several months.
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