A sluggish spin cycle

0:28This is the story of the one. Have you ever had a moment where you think, man, someone should really do something about this? Then you realize, maybe that someone is you. Well, with the help of GoFundMe, you can change someone's life. You could start a GoFundMe to help a friend pay for school, fund that new community space, or help a local kid finally get to that national competition. I've seen this myself. Last year, a friend of mine launched a GoFundMe to help with medical bills after an unexpected surgery. It was incredible how fast the support rolled in. People want to help. They just need a way to do it.

1:03And GoFundMe makes it easy. So do you have a dream, a person, or a cause in your life that could use some support? Don't wait for someone else to bring change. You can be the one who makes a difference. GoFundMe is the world's number one fundraising platform, trusted by over 200 million people. Start your GoFundMe today at GoFundMe.com. That's GoFundMe.com. GoFundMe.com. Government data or no government data, we got you covered. From American Public Media, this is Marketplace.

1:49I'm Kyle Rizdahl. It is Monday, today, October the 27th. Good as always to have you along, everybody. If you are one of those who keeps track, this is day 27 of the government shutdown, a day on which the Census Bureau would have given us its latest data on orders for durable goods, big, expensive stuff supposed to last three years or more. Obviously, we in the business and economic press are without said data, but we are not without ideas. So we are looking instead today to a certain Michigan-based manufacturer, Whirlpool, purveyor of some of those aforementioned big expensive things. It meant to last for a while.

2:28Marketplace's Matt Levin gets us going with the home appliance market and what that might tell us about the broader economy. Mackenzie Dahl is the sales manager at Kitchen Kings in Gunter, Texas. It sells major home appliances north of Dallas. She says her hottest items right now are also among her priciest. More of our high-end appliances are going right now. So Sub-Zero, Wolf, Cove, Thermador, those brands are like hotcakes. The less expensive Whirlpools and Frigidares, those aren't moving as much. Dahl has a working theory why a sluggish housing market. I see a lot of people doing remodels instead of buying new.

3:13So, you know, they've got money in their pockets and they are getting the good stuff. Home sales are down from their post-pandemic highs in Dallas and nationally. And the appliance market is married to the housing market. When someone buys a home, they spend about$2 ,700 on new appliances. When someone buys a newly constructed home, they spend even more, says economist Robert Dietz at the National Association of Home Builders. In a year where you've got single-family housing construction down, that's going to be downward pressure for appliance makers and retailers. The housing market is the big reason Whirlpool's net sales have dropped this year compared to last, at least through summer.

3:56You'd think tariffs would actually help. 80 % of Whirlpool's manufacturing is based in the U.S., while leading competitors like Samsung and LG make a lot of their products in Asia. Rafe Jadrasich at Bank of America says those tariffs really haven't changed much. So far, we've not seen major market share shifts. Because tariffs haven't quite forced those giant multinational corporations with other lines of business to raise prices, at least not yet. I'm Matt Levin for Marketplace. Turns out the third quarter was pretty good for Whirlpool. It announced earnings after the bell today. Sales and profits both up.

4:34Elsewise on Wall Street, three more record highs on major indices. We will have the details when we do the numbers.

5:08Another way to get around the dearth of government economic data is by getting on the phone. calling our regulars to get some ground truth out there. Today's lucky winner is Austin Golding. He's the CEO of Golding Barge Line in Vicksburg, Mississippi. Austin, it's good to talk to you again. Hey, Kyle. Thanks for having me back. First question, which I'm sure you know by heart right now, how's business? Business is pretty good. It's steady. We have a little bit of excess barges. We have too much equipment out there right now for a number of internal reasons. We overbuilt 10 years ago, and a lot of those barges are still in the market, and some of their required maintenance has come up and, you know, the government shutdown has affected a little bit of that licensing where we've had some problems with that.

5:48But for the most part, business is very strong and demand is high. The other thing that government shutdown-wise that I was looking at is the Corps of Engineers, which obviously controls the water level on the river, which directly affects how you do your job. Is that a thing now or is the Corps of Engineers still working? How's the water level? What's up with the actual environment of your job? Well, right now the water levels are low. The Corps of Engineers has still been able to maintain all of our waterways from an essential standpoint. But the longer we have this shutdown, the more soft spots are going to get exposed.

6:21You never know what you got until it's gone. And we're slowly figuring out what that is. So, all right, here's a technical question, which as I'm about to formulate it, seems kind of silly, but the lower the water level is, the less stuff you can put in your barges, right? And that also affects your business and your bottom line. No question. Low water affects us much more than high water. The impact of low water is fewer barges in the tow and less cargo on those barges because of reduced drafts. So, you know, it's been a hard run of low water the last five years. So we were headed that way pretty sharply three weeks ago, and we've gotten a little reprieve with this rain here.

7:01But if you look out 30 days, it still looks like we need more rain to maintain a really viable system. How often do you check the weather? Every day. Every single day we check water levels. But our customers are not just checking what's the water doing today. We get updated forecasts about what it's going to do a month out, which affects a lot of their supply chain decisions. So if we're telling them what the weather is today, we're a month late. My competition's probably already let them know. Good point. Talk to me about what you are carrying. It's traditionally been a lot of Petroleum stuff, you're carrying other stuff as well now?

7:35Yes, yeah, a lot of petroleum. That's still about 80 to 90 % of our business in a given year. But lately, we've been moving a lot of rock and limestone and building material. And I'll tell you, Kyle, we are in the data center hotspot of the country. No, really? Oh, that's so interesting. Say more about that. Well, right now we have, just right outside of Vicksburg, we have Meta's largest project here in Louisiana, right across the river, going in. Exxon Mobil is poking around north of us. So we have a lot of construction going on here. And so that requires a lot of material. So the rock business has really taken off and there's a lot of material moving into this part of the country.

8:15That is so interesting. And along those lines, not to cast aspersion on Jay Powell, but you have, I think, a pretty good sense of the macro economy, right? There's a lot of things that influence your business. You keep an eye on a lot of things. How are you feeling short to medium term-ish about your business, but also sort of the larger economy? Well, I tell you, we're seeing, I think, an unreported struggle within the economy. Some of the products we move that go into making plastic materials or paint, those businesses are really off right now. That being said, there's a lot of volume of gasoline and diesel being moved, and we're seeing new materials come online, mainly around construction.

8:56The consumer side, it seems like, is struggling more than some of the larger projects. I did a talk this weekend with a business school professor, and one of the questions from the floor was, you know, how do you think the economy is doing? The question I just asked you. And he said he thinks it's on a razor's edge. He thinks it's really, really finely balanced. And I said, well, sort of more like a dull knife edge. What do you think? I certainly think that there's a lot of people in this country that are doing really well, but I'm afraid there might be more that aren't. And I think the ones that are doing well are carrying us, and the ones that aren't have a different story to tell and are under a lot of pressure.

9:35For our business, it's critical that we're tied into the right products and the right geographic areas and the right customers, because if we're not, there are certain players out there that are not having the type of year that some of our partners are. Austin Golding at the Family Business, Golding Bars Lines in Fixburg, Mississippi. Austin, good to talk to you as always. Thanks for your insights. Thank you, Kyle.

10:21The top three agricultural commodities in the great state of Texas are, in reverse order, dairy at number three, chicken and eggs in second, and on top and going away, cattle. Perhaps related, Texas prides itself on its barbecue, as you might know, with restaurants by the thousands all over that state. So the give or take 15 percent increase in beef prices this year cuts both ways. Pitmasters are dealing with those high prices, while cattle producers are outperforming in the agricultural sector. Marketplace's Elizabeth Troval has more on that one. Brisket, ribs, and sausage are just a few of the staples chef Ernest Cervantes serves at his restaurant Burnt Bean Company in Seguin, Texas.

11:06But the menu has changed. We no longer serve the famous Texas dinosaur beef ribs. You know, we don't do those anymore because of the prices. Brisket has to stay on the menu because this is Texas. But these days, it's not profitable. We tend to make more of our money off of poultry and pork products. So whenever people say, how many briskets do you go through? I cringe because when I see my weekly beef bill, I could buy a car. You know what I mean? About 150 miles east of Cervantes' barbecue restaurant, Damian Turner raises a small herd of cattle outside of Houston. As a small-scale producer, he has to be really careful about costs.

11:50For example, after the pandemic, he struggled to pay for hay to feed his cows. Round bale, the hay was up to almost 200 bucks a round bale, and usually anywhere from 50 to 75. And so you can imagine paying double the price you had for one round bale. Drought made the hay expensive, so selling his cows wasn't profitable. But now hay is cheaper and beef prices are way up. But now it's profitable, pretty much. And so if you go sell a cow now, you still have money left over after you buy feed and things like that. Turner says he gets a 10 to 15 percent profit for each calf he sells. And those numbers are why economist David Anderson with Texas A &M says some ranchers are expanding their herds.

12:31High prices really encourage expanding production. Still, a young heifer born this last spring won't have her first calf until 2027. That calf is not going to get to its final full-grown weight and head to a meatpacker for about 20 months after that. So while high prices will help boost the cattle supply eventually, it's going to take a while. I'm Elizabeth Troval for Marketplace.

13:24There's news of consolidation in the regional banking industry today. Huntington Bank shares based in Ohio is buying Cadence Bank out of Texas and Mississippi for nearly seven and a half billion dollars. It's the latest in a slew of regional deals. And Huntington and Cadence have both already made acquisitions this year, along with Fifth Third, PNC and Pinnacle. Why now the buying spree, though? And what's it going to mean for the people in businesses that use those banks, do you suppose? Daniel Ackerman has that one. The banking industry is changing quickly, says Meg Tyre, head of financial institutions at the law firm Davis Polk.

14:03A lot of banks just need more scale to survive in the next generation. More scale, as in more assets on the balance sheet to invest in new technology, like building fancy apps for mobile banking. Every regional bank needs to make it as fun as Robinhood makes it. And Tyre says consolidation can free up cash to make that happen. Another driver of the recent acquisitions is pent-up demand, says Jeremy Kress, a professor of business law at the University of Michigan. Over the past several years, regional banks were reluctant to merge during the Biden administration, which was seen as unfriendly toward bank consolidation.

14:39Whereas the Trump administration is encouraging it, says Kress. A lot of regional banks are trying to strike while the iron is hot, while the regulatory environment is friendly. Kress says consolidation can allow banks to offer more services and better fraud protection. At the same time... When regional banks merge with the ambition of competing with Wall Street banks, they tend to lose focus on their local communities. Which could make it harder for outside-the-box small business ideas to get loans. Consolidation can also mean less favorable interest rates, says Alexander Yoakum, a bank analyst at CFRA.

15:11There's less competition. That means they can offer you lower rates on your deposits. And then on the other side, maybe they can charge you more on their loans as well. So, I mean, net-net, probably a negative for consumers to have fewer banks. For now, Yoakam says the U.S. still has a healthy mix of national, regional, and community banks. But he says there's likely more consolidation to come. I'm Daniel Ackerman for Marketplace.

16:04Coming up. We've got horror, thriller, true crime. Nope. Nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope. But maybe that's just me. First, let's do the numbers. Dow and Dell shows up 337 points today, 7 tenths percent, 47 ,544. But here's why you got the happy music, the really happy music. NASDAQ up 432, 1 and 9 tenths percent, 23 ,637. The S &P 500 gained 83 points, 1 and a quarter percent, 68 and 75. Daniel Ackerman was just telling us about regional banking. Huntington Bank shares, the acquirer in today's news, gave back two and two-thirds percent. Cadence Bank, the acquiree, pocketed about 4.4 percent today.

16:49Fifth and third, Bancorp slipped four-tenths percent. Pinnacle Financial Partners decreased about one and a half percent. Whirlpool, Matt Levin was telling us about them earlier, nudged up just shy of two-tenths of one percent on the day. Lululemon Athletica announced a deal with the National Football League to issue clothing collections for all 32 teams in the National Football League. The Yoga Wear Company picked up one and eight-tenths of one percent. And bond prices went up. When that happens, the yield goes down. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note, 3.9 or 8%. And you're listening to Marketplace.

17:30This is the story of the one. As a custodial supervisor at a high school, he knows that during cold and flu season, germs spread fast. It's why he partners with Grainger to stay fully stocked on the products and supplies he needs, from tissues to disinfectants to floor scrubbers. All so that he can help students, staff, and teachers stay healthy and focused. Call 1-800-GRAINGER, click grainger.com, or just stop by. Grainger, for the ones who get it done. Have you ever had a moment where you think, man, someone should really do something about this? Then you realize, maybe that someone is you. Well, with the help of GoFundMe, you can change someone's life.

18:11You could start a GoFundMe to help a friend pay for school, fund that new community space, or help a local kid finally get to that national competition. I've seen this myself. Last year, a friend of mine launched a GoFundMe to help with medical bills after an unexpected surgery. It was incredible how fast the support rolled in. People want to help. They just need a way to do it. And GoFundMe makes it easy. So do you have a dream, a person, or a cause in your life that could use some support? Don't wait for someone else to bring change. You can be the one who makes a difference. GoFundMe is the world's number one fundraising platform, trusted by over 200 million people.

18:50Start your GoFundMe today at GoFundMe.com. That's GoFundMe.com. GoFundMe.com. This is Marketplace. I'm Kyle Rizdahl. With one eye on the monetary policy calendar, that is to say, the Federal Reserve meets tomorrow and Wednesday on interest rates, here with this observation. At the central bank's last meeting in September, Chair Powell called the decision at that meeting to lower their key interest rate, a risk management cut. The risk being managed was a then-already sluggish labor market, possibly weakening further. Businesses across the economy are seeing that play out in real time now. So Marketplace's Justin Ho made some calls to hear how business owners are thinking about their own risk management decisions.

19:39Business has been fairly shaky this year at Fearless Foundry, a marketing and consulting firm near Seattle. Owner Madeline Reeves says many of her clients have been nervous about the economy, so they're nervous about spending money, too. Some of them are even ghosting her. I think there is this moment where people get excited or want to initiate a project and then because they're not confident in spending money right now, they just kind of like rather than giving us a firm no, just kind of like disappear. Reeves says all of that uncertainty has her questioning what her business should be spending money on, especially when it comes to staff.

20:12Who are the people we need? What are the projects that we are going to have coming through? Do we have the right capacity on our team? Do we need to hire? Do we need to fire people? Reeve says hiring people can be risky, since there's always a chance that a new hire might not work out. We have easily spent probably close to$50 ,000 plus, maybe close to$100 ,000 on staff that are no longer with us because they didn't perform at the level that it was expected in their job descriptions. So Reeve says she's not hiring. Instead, she's focused on improving the business itself, using new software to help existing staff manage projects.

20:48Because, you know, one, it doesn't really make sense to pay a person to do that job if a system can do it instead. And two, if I'm struggling to find somebody who will show up and do that role with consistency, I would rather have a system in place because then my clients aren't impacted if the person is not performing. There are still plenty of businesses that want to hire. If we found qualified candidates, we would probably hire 25 to 30 more people across all of our operations at this point. That's Spiro Papadopoulos. He's the CEO of Schlau Restaurant Group, which operates seven restaurants in several states.

21:24He says he's struggling to find candidates to be lead bartenders, kitchen managers, and other creative talent. As a result, he's raised wages, and he's offering more perks to his existing staff. So offering even more flexible scheduling, better benefits, cross-training them, investing in their development in maybe the next step of their career to try and retain those people that are so valuable to us. Papadopoulos says all of that comes at a cost. So he's decided to limit the number of days many of his restaurants are open. That lets him avoid having to hire extra staff just to keep them open, even on slow days.

22:01We pay rent on every day, whether it's a Monday lunch or a Friday night. We want to be open. But there's some operations that cost more to staff than revenue that will come in during the time that the staff is there. Other businesses are trying to navigate this moment by getting bigger. Stinner Frameworks is a bike frame manufacturer in Santa Barbara, California. We've been cautious, but we're at a point where we literally can't even fit any more bodies inside of our shop. So we have to grow and spread out. CEO Aaron Stinner says the company is in the process of moving into a new space with double the square footage.

22:38It also just hired a new welder, and Stinner's hoping to hire a couple more. One way to get more efficient is to hire. And another way to do it is to have space where you can have better tooling and better setups and better ways to make product more efficiently, which should eventually lead to more output. it. Making more frames will help the company bring in more revenue and build up a buffer in case the economy takes a turn for the worse. If it swings and sales slow for some reason, you have the ability to just absorb that because you're not riding that line super hard, the make or break line financially.

23:14And if the economy doesn't slow and demand stays strong, a bigger operation will help the company grow even faster. I'm Justin Howe for Marketplace.

23:46I think we've talked about the boom in romance novels. A time or two, they are selling lots and lots of copies. There is, though, another genre that's growing, horror. Not just a Halloween thing either. Horror book sales were up 7 % the first nine months of 2025. That's compared to the same period a year earlier. And it gets us to today's installment of our series, My Economy. My name is Trinity Beck. I'm 24 years old, and I own the Dreadful Bookshop in Casper, Wyoming. The Dreadful Bookshop is an all-horror bookstore. Right now it's all used books, but we're planning on bringing some new books into our inventory.

24:27We've got horror, thriller, true crime. We even have some kids books and young adult books. I moved to Casper from Texas about a year ago. I found a job at another used bookstore in town. And then Christy, she's the owner of Bookinit. and she also bought the whole building that her bookstore is in, which is how I was able to open my store, was because there's old apartments upstairs. So I turned one of the old apartments into my bookshop. My grand opening was Friday the 13th of June, and I definitely didn't expect the amount of people that did show up. There were hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people, and my shop's not very big.

25:16So I had to have people wait outside because it was becoming like a fire safety hazard. I actually sold out of pretty much everything that I had in the shop that day.

25:31Business is going pretty good right now. I am surprised that October so far has been my slowest month, which I thought would be the complete opposite, but it's still going good. It's been a dream of mine to open a bookstore. I never thought that I would actually be able to do it. But when I got my job working at a bookstore, even that was like, oh, this is a dream job. This is probably as close as I'll get to opening my own bookstore. Even thinking back on it now, like when I started working on that space for the shop, it looked completely different and I was so scared. and I was like, this is never going to happen.

26:16Like, this is never going to work. But it did and it's been going really well.