Chapter 1: Why did gold prices reach an all-time high?
Fun fact to owe the day, one troy ounce is about 10% heavier than one regular ounce. Gold is where we're going to start. From American Public Media, this is Marketplace. In Los Angeles, I'm Kyle Rizdahl. It is Monday today. This one is the 22nd of December. Good as always to have you along, everybody.
It cost you, as of the close today in New York, a record $4,444.60 to get yourself one of the aforementioned troy ounces of gold. That is yet another record high. The safest of safe havens is up 70% for the year, 7-0%.
Chapter 2: What factors are causing the U.S. dollar to decline?
And yes, there is lots going on out there to be seeking safety from. But as Marketplace's Henry Epp reports now to get us going, there is something else in the mix, too. A lot of market analysts think that the Federal Reserve will cut rates at least twice next year. That's based on the direction the job market and inflation appear to be heading.
There are two reasons lower rates could make gold more interesting to investors. The first is straightforward, says Paolo Pasqueriello, a finance professor at the University of Michigan. In finance, when somebody wants to speculate on a financial asset, you want to make a bet on stock or a bond or gold or silver, the way speculators do it is to borrow money in order to make the bets.
Lower interest rates would make it cheaper to borrow money to buy a bunch of gold. The second reason is a bit more conceptual. Instead of buying gold and silver, you could keep money in the bank. And if you keep money in the bank, you'll be earning interest. say in a certificate of deposit or money market account. But if rates go down, the interest you get from the bank often goes down too.
And even though gold doesn't earn you any interest, it could become relatively more attractive. Philip Strebel is chief market strategist at Blue Line Futures. An investor will want to get that money working somewhere else where they believe that they can get a higher yield. So gold has historically been their like go-to commodity on that.
So the expectation that more investors may flock to gold if rates fall could be part of the reason the metals price has been rising. But the level of interest rates is not the only determinant of the price of gold. Campbell Harvey is a professor of finance at Duke.
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Chapter 3: How are ranchers affected by rising beef prices?
Another factor, a lot of countries that have historically invested in U.S. Treasury bonds because they're a safe bet are feeling a bit less sure about them these days. Countries that are heavily weighted in U.S. dollar assets are looking for something else defensive, and gold is at the top of the list. Those countries are buying it up, too, increasing the demand and the price.
I'm Henry Epp for Marketplace. While we're at it, precious metals, that is, silver, platinum, and palladium all jumped today. Oh, and equities? Why, the Santa Claus rally has begun. We will have the details when we do the numbers. The November Consumer Price Index came out last week. Inflation is cooling. Kinda. As you know, the data come with a whole bunch of caveats.
That said, part of that cooling came in a critical category. Food at home. Groceries. But, and you for sure don't need me or inflation data to tell you this, if you've been anywhere near a grocery store recently, the price of beef keeps on going up. Meat in general up 8.9% from a year ago. Ground beef up nearly 16%. Beef roasts up a whopping 21% as we head into a week of holiday cooking.
Marketplace's Kristen Schwab has more on that. We talk a lot about how terrible consumers feel about prices and how many of them, especially upper income households, keep spending anyway. That split is maybe best illustrated at the supermarket, says David Anderson, an economist at Texas A&M.
Everybody goes to the store and we all complain a lot, but we stuck it in the cart anyway and moved on to the next. Despite rising prices, Americans likely consumed more beef in 2024 than they had in nearly 15 years. Some theories, the pandemic coaxed people into cooking more intimidating foods. Protein is very in right now, especially with the growing GLP-1 crowd. It's all juiced demand.
Meanwhile, Anderson says supply isn't keeping up.
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Chapter 4: What challenges do ranchers face in increasing beef production?
We've got the fewest beef cows since 1961. Our total cattle inventory is the smallest since 1951. So we're producing fewer animals. Ranchers are hesitant to expand because of all the risks. There was a smaller beef bubble about a decade ago. Record high prices led to a collapse. Years of drought have made production difficult.
Plus, Daryl Peel, a livestock marketing specialist at Oklahoma State, says borrowing costs are still high. And so there's just a lot more caution on the part of producers and lenders. Also, beef production is a process. It takes several years to increase the size of a herd. And to do that, ranchers have to take heifers, the females, out of production.
So beef production will actually squeeze even tighter as a part of that process. And Glenn Tonzer, an agriculture economist at Kansas State, says imported beef isn't going to help bring prices down because of tariffs. The volatility and the lack of predictability in that has sort of been off the charts in 2025.
So the cost of a burger or a steak will probably keep rising unless Americans demand less and decide beef is not what's for dinner. I'm Kristen Schwab for Marketplace. Move over, cloud architect and DevOps engineer, and here's one for the AI age, prompt engineer. There's a new job title in corporate America, storyteller.
According to data from LinkedIn, the percentage of job postings on that platform with the word storyteller in them doubled this year. Katie Dayton wrote about it in the Wall Street Journal the other day. Katie, welcome to the program. Good to have you back on. An absolute pleasure to be back. What is the job description for these storytellers? What do they do?
It can be a little bit of a mix, but it is kind of like content creation under another name. So we've seen storytellers writing blog posts, but also writing speeches, producing YouTube videos, podcasts, developing, producing various different shows, just sort of taking a real handle on how companies are showing up narratively. It's marketing by another name, kind of, yeah? Absolutely.
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Chapter 5: How is the role of storytellers evolving in corporate America?
It's definitely part of the marketing business. A lot of these jobs sit underneath the marketing heads and departments with just a bit of a sexier name. Yes, just a teeny bit. Here's the thing, though. Companies don't like to spend money and hire people unless they really need to, which is because it's expensive. What's the value add that these folks are bringing?
What can they do that a traditional marketing or communications person doesn't do? Well, there is a theory that right now, because of the lack of press, because of all of these newspapers, magazines closing down and journalists losing their jobs, a lot of these companies that once relied on especially business journalists to tell their stories, they haven't got anywhere to go to now.
At the same time, we have the rise of AI search engines. If you want to type in something about a company, say you're doing some research and you want to look up a retail company, These companies need to make sure that they are on the web and they are in text somewhere on the internet, even if it's not a typical media publication.
And making sure that they have a tone of voice to really stand out because we're expecting this great blanding that's going to come with AI, right? A lot of... A lot of companies are going to potentially sound a lot like each other.
So if they can hire people that have skills in creating a narrative and making a real strong tone of voice, they think that they can win and stand out and ultimately acquire and keep customers. I love the great blending. I've not heard that before, and I kind of love that. But here's the question that follows. Creating a voice is hard, you know?
I mean, it's just not easy, and either you can do it or you don't, so it's kind of hit or miss with these folks. Absolutely. And then you have to question whether, you know, how much of a voice do these companies really want? I mean, they say that they do. They say that this is going to be the way that they remain distinctive. However, they are corporations.
A lot of these companies are public companies. So they have to really kind of toe the line. And there's only so far that I'm sure their legal departments will allow them to do so. I think that's why these companies are sometimes finding a little bit more success in the entertainment space. So some are even producing their own
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Chapter 6: What is the significance of brand storytelling in marketing?
Entertainment, TV shows, podcasts, they're a little bit away from, you know, detached from the typical day-to-day of these jobs at these companies. But it's still entertaining and hopefully don't get them in too much trouble from a legal standpoint. Right. And then just mentioning the entertainment thing and other, you know, social media, it's all about branded content, right? Absolutely.
And there's a few of these YouTube and Instagram and TikTok series, these micro series that are coming out that you wouldn't probably know they were funded by a brand unless you made it all the way to the end titles. So there's that going on.
And it's just a different form of marketing to capture attention and to just make sure that in this world where there's a million brands out there, some brands will know that they're going to be top of customers' minds when they come to make a purchase. Brand is everything. Katie Dayton at The Wall Street Journal. Katie, thanks a lot. I appreciate your time. Thanks. Thanks, Guy.
We generate, we globally that is, a huge amount of electronic waste. According to the United Nations, it'll be 82 million metric tons by the year 2030. That's about 90 million non-metric tons, should you be curious, of stuff that has a plug or a battery. But of course, one person's e-waste is another person's e-treasure. Here's today's installment of our series, My Economy.
I'm Sarai Dunsany, and I am the CEO and co-founder of The Retro Roadshow. And I'm Huxley Dunsany, the CTO and co-founder of The Retro Roadshow. We're based in Alameda, California, and we've been doing this officially for about 18 months now. Yeah, about 18 months. Yeah, we established in May of 2024. And we are the Bay Area's premier pop-up museum of vintage technology.
I think we skipped that part. I started collecting vintage technology when I was a young teenager. I was super eager to get my hands on computers, video games, anything nerdy and electronic. I got this feeling that it was maybe worth holding on to as much of it as I could because there wouldn't be many examples left before long.
So the first time I ever found out about Huxley's collection was when we moved in together.
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Chapter 7: How do product recalls impact companies and consumers?
I think what really brought it in for me was his passion for all of this stuff. So I bought into the, hey, let's go to the yard sale or let's go to a thrift store. Let's see what they have. And it became really fun. It was like a treasure hunt. The idea for starting a pop-up museum was kind of always floating around in our minds, but it really came into existence back in 2019.
A local coffee shop saw some project I was restoring online and invited us to bring the old computer I had fixed over to the coffee shop and set it up in the window. People loved it. And from then we realized that there was an actual audience for what we were into with this.
So we picked the last Wednesday of the month and we would come in and bring in vintage computers and classic gaming consoles. I started thinking, I wonder if this could become a business. I remember pretty clearly the first few times, sir, I brought up the idea. I wanted to be thoughtful. Like I have a day job that keeps me pretty busy and we have a kid.
But at the same time, I freaking love what we're doing. And so I kind of just said, you know, the risk of additional stress is way totally outweighed by the potential of getting to do this really unique, fun thing with people I love. It was a no brainer. I just went to interject. You did notice that he says with people I love. So he still loves me after this. So far, so good.
Quarterly reviews are coming up. As far as profitability, we are pretty much breaking even. But next year is definitely looking very promising for When I decided that I wanted to leave my job and focus on the Retro Roadshow full time, we gave it about five years. You know, it would be a bit of a lifestyle change. Right. And then plus, you know, with Huxley being the primary breadwinner and.
a lot you know that would add a lot of stress onto him i mean he's he's got broad shoulders and it's a lot to carry but it's it's been going really well i i feel like by the time we come to five years i think i'll still be doing the retro road show Sarai and Huxley Dunsany, they run the Retro Roadshow in Alameda, California.
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Chapter 8: What are the consequences of poorly managed product recalls?
Vintage or modern, whatever you do, it's your stories that make this series and honestly, this whole economy go, you know. So please let us know what's going on. Marketplace.org slash my economy. Coming up... It can actually increase brand loyalty. What's old is new again. But first, let's do the numbers. Dow Industrials up 227 points today, almost a half percent. Closed at 48,362.
The Nasdaq ascended 121 points, about a half percent. 23,428. The S&P 500 up 43 points, six-tenths percent. 68 and 78 there. Jay Wellington Wimpy, from the classic Popeye cartoons, was an early proponent of buy now, pay later, when he said, I will gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today. So are those ever-rising beef prices that Kristen told us about.
BNPL for burgers feels almost necessary, right? So, some online price menus for burgers near Wall Street, menus that may or may not be totally accurate. The Spicy Jalapeno Double Cheeseburger, $10 at 7th Street Burger, Financial District.
At the Continental Sports Lounge, you will pay $25 American Smolians for the Wick Burger, described as a brisket short rib blend with dill pickle, smoked pork belly, and Irish cheddar. You are, believe it or not, listening to Marketplace. Today's number segment is presented by Intuit QuickBooks. When it comes to running your business, the numbers tell the story and cash flow is the headline.
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Money Movement Services are provided by Intuit Payments, Inc., licensed as a money transmitter by the New York State Department of Financial Services. This is Marketplace. I'm Kai Risdahl. The U.S. dollar ends the year down almost 10 percent against a basket of other currencies from where it was on New Year's Day.
The first half of the year, especially grim tariffs, of course, the Fed cutting interest rates. Summer and early fall weren't too bad, stable even.
But since mid-November, the greenback's been edging lower once again, and there are some signs it could keep sliding in 2026, which, as is always the case with currency fluctuations and with most other economic dynamics, to be honest, it would benefit some parts of this economy and hurt some others. Marketplace's Mitchell Hartman has that one.
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