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Chapter 1: What incentives are homebuilders offering to attract buyers?
On All of It with me, Alison Stewart, we'll talk about art, music, theater, literature, history, food, well, all of it. Hear in-depth, insightful interviews with authors like Zadie Smith, musicians like Steve Earle, actors like Kate Winslet, and beyond. You never know who you'll hear next on All of It, but it's always worth listening. That's All of It, available wherever you get your podcasts.
I'm Shannon Maldonado, the founder of Jaui, a gift shop that sells handmade artisanal products. I chose Shopify because when I tested the tools, I found them to be one of the easiest to use tools. It was important for me to consider our development in the future. All tools needed for sales, such as storage design, are handy on the dashboard. Start your free trial at shopify.com.
On the show today, signals or not from the new Fed chair, the economy post-Iran deal, and an out-there idea to cool the planet from space. From American Public Media, this is Marketplace. In Denver, I'm Amy Scott, in for Kai Risdahl. It's Friday, June 19th. Happy Juneteenth. It was a big week for the Federal Reserve.
Kevin Warsh's first interest rate meeting as chair, followed by his first press conference, at which he set a decidedly different tone. With me to talk about what we might expect from the new Fed chair and the rest of the week's economic news are Stacey Vanek-Smith with Bloomberg and Jordan Holman at The New York Times. Thanks for joining us. Thanks, Amy. Thanks. Thanks, Amy.
All right, Stacey, let's start with you. What did you make of that first press conference? Anything stand out to you? Oh, yeah. Well, I mean, everyone was watching this press conference to see what Warsh was going to say, if he was going to deliver on what Trump really wants him to deliver on, which is lowering interest rates. And I think the answer is a definitive no.
I think Warsh kind of came out as a hawk in this first press conference. Hmm. We'll talk more about that, but Jordan, what about you? What does the beginning of the Kevin Warsh era look like, just based on these initial statements and appearances? Yeah, you know, I spend most of my time talking to executives.
And so they were also very much watching to see what to make of how they're planning their businesses. And the fact that he did keep the interest rate high, it's kind of more of the same for them, which is more of the same of trying to figure out a complex economy, what's happening with the consumer. And that's just something that's going to continue to play out in this economy.
Okay, so Stacey, one change that we got here was no guidance, basically. Kevin Warsh doesn't want to tell us where he thinks the Fed might be headed on interest rates. But we do have the dot plot, right, that shows where FOMC members anonymously think interest rates are headed.
And as I think you alluded to, the markets really took those predictions to mean that we will see at least one increase in interest rates this year. You know, is that the right read, do you think? I do think that's the right read, yes.
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Chapter 2: How do homebuilders manage to lower mortgage interest rates?
So that is kind of set. I think one of the questions is, does it continue during the summer? Because as Stacey said, Just because we get the deal now, it doesn't mean everything goes back. Prices will still probably be elevated for airline flights, food costs are higher, and then consumers will have to start really thinking about trade-offs.
But right now, what we saw with the retail sales might have been a moment in time with that elevated boost of tax refunds. All right. Jordan Holman with The New York Times and Stacey Vanek-Smith with Bloomberg. Thanks, both of you, for joining us and hope you have a good weekend. Thanks, Amy. You too. U.S.
markets were closed for the holiday, but we'll have some other numbers for you when we get there. The spring housing market can best be characterized as mixed. High prices and high mortgage rates are still keeping many would-be buyers out. And while sales of existing homes picked up in May, the market for new builds is struggling a bit.
We learned this week housing starts, that is new construction, fell sharply last month. And in April, sales declined after steady growth since January. which explains why, according to the National Association of Home Builders, nearly two-thirds of builders are offering incentives. Marketplace's Nova Safo has more.
Kara Lavender at John Burns Research and Consulting surveys about 300 builders monthly. And she says incentives are now averaging about 7% of the asking price for a property, about twice the pre-COVID average.
So incentives can be a range of things, right? Things like design option spend. So getting $50,000 or whatever it may be to spend in the design studio.
Builders will do things like include appliances for free.
So, you know, washers and dryers, dishwashers. They'll do free upgrades on build-to-order homes. So if you want that quartz countertop or whatever it may be, the builder may include that at no cost. just to get you to sign the deal.
Builders might also offer cash for closing costs. And they might, maybe, actually cut the asking price for a home, but only as a last resort, says Robert Dietz. He's chief economist at the National Association of Home Builders.
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Chapter 3: What challenges are hotel housekeepers facing with AI-driven apps?
All of this leaves potential buyers with a bewildering array of options. That is, if they can afford to take advantage of the deals in the first place. I'm Novosafo for Marketplace.
Nonprofits tend to be pretty lean operations. IRS data from 2024 says 97% of them in the U.S. had annual budgets of less than $5 million, and well over half were working with $50,000 or less. How these organizations stay afloat can be tricky, as you'll hear in the latest installment of our series, My Economy. I'm Becca Jurdy, Executive Director of Radio Talking Book Service.
We read newspapers and magazines for folks who are blind, low vision, or otherwise print impaired, and we broadcast those across the state in Omaha, Nebraska. I came to Radio Talking Book Service as a volunteer, but it was involuntary volunteering.
I was convicted of a felony in 2012 and as a result had a fair amount of community service to complete and they paired me with Radio Talking Book Service. In 2015, I wrapped up the hours and the volunteer coordinator approached me and said, hey, we have this part-time office summer gig paid. Would you be interested in applying? And I thought, yeah, why not? I was at a bit of a crossroads.
I was about three years sober. And I interviewed with the director at the time and what he described was not going to be simply part time, nor just a summer gig. Like it was a role that was going to be evolving. And I thought to myself, oh, man, I'm going to have to turn him down because I don't think this is for me.
And he finally got done with his pitch and he looked at me and he said, what do you think? And I said, yeah, sounds great. Back in 2015, we were in that mid $200,000 a year kind of budget. That goes to make sure that we keep the lights on and that we have recording booths here for our volunteers. It pays salaries. We have a small but mighty team of three.
We maintain over 70 subscriptions with 27 newspapers. So that's another big chunk of our cost. But back in 2016, with our endowment, we were relying on it so much. We would have spent it all in five years if we were to continue at the rate we were going today.
I had never written a grant in my life and so I very quickly took an online grant writing course and just taught myself how to do it on the fly, essentially. I am so grateful that every day I am of service. And I forget that sometimes when I'm crunching numbers and trying to check boxes.
And then we'll get a phone call from someone that says, thank you for making the Lincoln Journal-Star available because I was able to find a volunteer position as a low vision person. And they have since asked me to be on their board of directors. And I would have missed that opportunity had you not read that newspaper article. It's just, it's kind of incredible. It is incredible.
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Chapter 4: How is a nonprofit bringing news to blind and low-vision listeners?
Elevators are busy, the car is slow.
It also tracks her progress throughout the day, clocking when she starts and finishes each room. I asked Amadeus about worker dissatisfaction, but no one responded. Roldan is part of a union of 60,000 hotel workers in Nevada. Soon after Hot Sauce was introduced, the union started negotiating more autonomy from the app. In 2022, it won.
Yes, we go with the instructions, but also if we see that a room is available to clean, we can do it.
Unions are in many cases using bargaining to establish basic protections against AI and automation in the workplace. But just 10% of the country's workers are union members, resulting in a patchwork of protection. I met housekeeper Luz Nunez at a resort near Palm Springs in California. She said the app makes her job more stressful. She's not represented by a union.
She has a daily quota, and managers can use Hot Sauce to monitor her productivity. She says if you don't change the bed, they give you 20 or 25 minutes. And if you take longer than that, they'll ask you, why did you take so long? Most days, she logs a 10-minute break but keeps working, fearing she won't reach her quota. Instead, she tries to take it a little easier.
She says she doesn't sit down or anything. Rather, she works a little slower. Then she picks up her pace again, ready for the algorithm to serve up another room to clean. In Palm Springs, I'm Rebecca Plevin for Marketplace. On an unseasonably hot day in Venice Beach, California earlier this year, people were out in force with their beach umbrellas, bright ones, striped ones.
It's a red, white, and blue umbrella.
Popping open for shade.
It was just $5, and I seen it, and I was like, let me go ahead and get this with the chair, and then I thought it would be beneficial to have shade. When you're under the umbrella, that breeze feels nice, and you feel cool.
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Chapter 5: What innovative solutions are scientists designing for climate change?
Right. Other proposals include a shield made up of thin film bubbles or a cluster of solar sails just hanging out, giving us some shade here on Earth.
There's a region of space about four times further away than the moon where objects that are placed there maintain a constant position.
This area in space is known as L1 or Lagrange Point 1. It's where gravitational forces between the Earth and the sun cancel each other, so objects kind of stay put. That would allow continuous shading of the planet.
Think about roughly a 1% dimming of the sunlight. And the climate science that we look to says that would equate to a roughly 1 degree Celsius global average temperature reduction.
This idea is in the early stages. It's a tiny field, mostly researchers talking to other researchers. And there would be risks, like termination shock, the sudden warming that would result if the sunshade failed. A planetary sunshade could affect rainfall in harmful ways. Others say investing in tech solutions like this is a distraction from the real solution, decarbonizing our lives.
Goodwin says a sunshade is no substitute for reducing emissions and removing some of the carbon we've already emitted from the atmosphere.
Even if we do both of those things as aggressively and as well as we possibly can, it still puts us into a climate trajectory that risks catastrophic tipping points. And that's even in those best case scenarios, which we are not on.
A planetary sunshade would also be expensive in the low trillions of dollars, Goodwin says, though the predicted costs of unmitigated climate change are far greater. And Goodwin says the rapidly growing space economy makes a giant sunshade more feasible.
To hear more about that and why many scientists are skeptical of climate interventions like this, check out the latest season of How We Survive, wherever you listen to podcasts. This final note on the way out. We're in the midst of the first World Cup since prediction markets really took off as a new way to bet on sports.
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