A "Marketplace" Home Run

These days, I find myself getting more of my news from the American Public Media program Marketplace, on National Public Radio, than from anywhere else. The show is self-described as "a program which looks at the entire world through the lenses of business, economics and finance." It's not just about money. I pride myself for being a liberal arts major, and I think I managed to take just a single economics course in college way back when. Marketplace puts all those "business" topics into easily understood terms, even for liberal arts majors.

IMO, Marketplace hit a home run on Monday 6/29/09. The entire program was filled with worthwhile, and in some cases, uplifting stories. Even if you don't normally listen to this program, if you have any interest in history or what's going on around us these days, I urge you to either download the podcast or read the text of the stories for 6/29; it will be a half hour well-spent. The link for the show is here. The stories include:

• Victims of Madoff react to his sentence of 150 years in prison
• Toxic assets are still looming in the murk (and some banks don't want to sell them per the Fed plan)
• Fee hikes rise for debit cards
• Nigerian oil production disruptions due to rebel attacks (and why they're not affecting our gas prices very much)
  
• Fireworks shows and how many communities can't afford them this year (this is the uplifting one)
• Michael Lewis on the fall of Wall Street (the author mentions that government watchdogs still haven't actually spoken with the people at AIG who caused much of the chaos)
• Debt wasn't always the enemy (how the GI bill after WWII helped expand the middle class and home ownership in the US)

The article about fee hikes might cause some people to complain once again about those damn banks, but this one is a little different. Seems some folks over the years have treated debit cards less like checkbooks and more like credit cards. Since debit cards are linked directly to your checking account, you're not supposed to use it if you don't have the cash to cover it, and banks weren't supposed to let you use it if you lacked the cash. Seems the rules changed several years ago, and many banks now let you use the debit card even if you don't have the bucks to back up the transaction. Who woulda thunk?! Now, with looming limits on credit card interest, banks are imposing higher fees on those "overdraft" debit transactions. First thought: if you're nuts enough to not keep track of how much cash you have in your checking account, you deserve whatever fees the bank may impose on the privilege of overdrafting with a debit card. I don't have the same kind of sympathy for these people as I do for those being charged 20-30% interest on credit card debt.

The interview with Michael Lewis and what's still wrong with Wall Street includes the assertion that we still have not actually dealt with much of the underlying problem, and that there will be a "greater reckoning down the road" (i.e., more economic collapse before we're done with the Depression/Recession). One of Lewis' main observations is that when he went to interview people, like at AIG (the people who "actually know what happened") he's the first person they've talked to. That is, no one from Treasury or the NYS insurance regulators had "showed." He calls that amazing, I call it nonfeasance at best, and malfeasance at worst.

The 6/29/09 program is here. You can read the segments or listen to the podcast. Either way, these stories are eye-openers.