Too little, too late?

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1:21In Los Angeles, I'm Kyle Rizdahl. It is Wednesday, today, 19 November. Good as always to have you along, everybody. We are going to begin today with the calendar. We had been expecting the Bureau of Labor Statistics to grace us with the monthly September unemployment report tomorrow, six or so weeks delayed. Thank you, government shutdown. Alas, that is not to be. The BLS told us this morning, not only are we not getting that September data tomorrow, the October data, the part of it that they can pull together anyway, And the November data isn't going to be ready until mid-December. None of that is good news in any way, shape, or form.

2:03So we've done what we do, and we need a little bit of perspective. We've called Heather Long. She's the chief economist at Navy Federal Credit Union. Also, as you know, a Friday regular here. Heather, it's good to have you on. Great to be here with some data. Well, or not, what do you make of the news, first of all, that the October report is going to be delayed and some of that data may not ever show up? What was your first reaction? Honestly, my first reaction was we're going to get more than I thought we were going to get. So no unemployment rate, but at least they're going to try to do the business survey, the establishment survey that gives us a little bit of information.

2:36And I'm in the belief something is better than nothing. Well, fair enough, I suppose, at this particular moment. Let me ask you, though, as I do sometimes, and you don't always like it, to put yourself in Jay Powell's shoes, because the chair now is going to be running this meeting on 9-10 December without data that he thought he was going to have, right? The next installment that we're going to get from the good people at the BLS doing the hard work is going to be after that meeting. So what do you think the Fed's going to do now? Well, it seems like they're going to say we're still in this fog and our best option is to stay put until the fog lifts.

3:15And I've been one of the economists saying I think they need to cut, But honestly, I am a little bit more sympathetic. It doesn't really make that much difference if they have to do the next interest rate cut in January versus December. Maybe that is right to hold a little bit for more data. Well, you know, that's interesting because it makes me think of this word choice that we're starting to see a lot, which is a skip, which is to say they skip a meeting and don't do anything and wait till January, or a pause, which implies longer. Do you have thoughts on that? I would be surprised if they call it a pause because you're right.

3:48That's a big mindset shift. And it also seems like a huge U-turn, right? We're supposedly been cutting interest rates to support the labor market, and suddenly we're going to hit the pause button. So to me, it's leading up to Skip, but time will tell. Time always does tell. A word here about the politics, the criminology of the Fed, if I might, it does seem like those who are going to dissent from whatever the chair and the majority decide to do are becoming more vocal and tea leaves are being read about what that means for the Fed now and perhaps for the Fed after Chair Powell leaves. Do you have thoughts on that?

4:30Dissent is healthy, particularly where we are right now. I think the more interesting question is, you know, the next Fed chair and who's this person going to be? How much of a dramatic U-turn are they going to take? But honestly, from the White House perspective, the White House wins either way in 2026. Either they're going to get the interest rate cuts that they want by installing their new Fed chair, or the economy is going to look so good that everyone's going to agree that we don't need more rate cuts. So I don't know. That's kind of the way I think politically it really shakes out. Economically speaking, is there a lot they can do in a K-shaped economy to help the bottom of the K?

5:11that's really the big debate. And I'm not sure there's a whole lot, unfortunately, that they can do for the bottom. Yeah. Let me ask you the macro question there in the 45-ish seconds we have left. The K does seem to be getting steeper, right? The bottom half, as we know, the bottom part is struggling ever more. The top half is doing all the better. It certainly seems that way. And I've been saying for months, the middle-class squeeze is coming. And I think we're basically hitting it now. And the unemployment rate is rising a little bit, whether it rises in September to 4.4, I don't know. But it will eventually hit 4.4, 4.5.

5:48And at the same time, we're seeing inflation rise, as you know well, and been chronicling well. And so wage gains are coming down. Inflation's coming up. You do the math. It's less money in the middle class pockets right now. And people are feeling it. Heather Long, chief economist at Navy Federal, also has a side hustle with us on Friday sometimes. Thanks, Heather. Thanks, Guy. Wall Street today a little choppy as pretty much everybody was hanging fire on NVIDIA's earnings. We will have the details when we do the numbers.

6:42Artificial intelligence is, of course, all over the stock market. See also the aforementioned NVIDIA, also Alphabet, Amazon, Microsoft, and all the rest. But AI is starting to show up in the bond market, too. A couple of weeks ago, Meta sold$30 billion worth of debt, its biggest auction ever. Alphabet raised$17.5 billion. On Monday, Amazon offered$15 billion in the debt market, all of them using the money to build and invest in AI infrastructure, which, fine, I hear you saying, but what, Kai, is that going to mean for the actual economy? My name is Winnie Cesar, and I'm the global head of strategy at CreditSite.

7:21My name is Matteo Erolina, and I'm a professor of finance at Marquette University. One thing that has been a big theme this year has been a big increase in tech-related spending. Now, the question is, what if these investments continue at this pace, and if these companies will keep issuing bonds? What if, indeed? First of all, you're going to have a whole lot of debt. That's what bonds are, right? Debt, IOUs. You're going to have a ton of it tied up in one place. You know, a lot of these tech companies are very highly rated, but that doesn't necessarily make them immune to reality. And, you know, some questions around return on investment and growth of cash flows.

8:09Questions like, what if AI winds up not being as profitable as Amazon et al would like? Answer, all that debt starts to look more and more like a problem. Any time there's a specific sector or a specific issuer who needs to raise a lot of capital, that oftentimes means that it comes at the detriment of other issuers or it just kind of raises the cost of capital. So if you have a higher cost of capital to higher borrowing costs, the cost of debt, they would reduce the number of investments the company will make. And that would have repercussions for the economy. Investments, of course, is another word for corporate spending.

8:53Now, what's the next thing to look out for, do you suppose? The AI, quote, value chain is really like quite staggering. If you think about the data center construction, the utility infrastructure construction, you know, to power up all those data centers. Go on. Utilities are already one of the biggest sectors in the corporate bond market, and they've had to issue a lot more bonds. Sometimes I'm kind of like, well, we're all looking at Meta and Amazon and Apple, but like we should actually be looking over here too. Lots to look out for in the AI economy.

9:55There's a certain circularity when it comes to the world's food supply and climate change. About a third of the planet's greenhouse gas emissions come from food and agriculture and all of the systems and infrastructure that surround it. At the same time, though, the climate change that's happening because of those emissions is making it harder to produce some of our food. That includes staple crops like wheat and corn and rice, crops that provide about half of the world's calories. So feeding a growing population on a hotter planet is of not insignificant interest. That's why that's the topic of the latest season of our climate podcast, How We Survive.

10:32Here's Marketplace's Amy Scott. I'm in Dodge City, Kansas, where a sign commemorates the 100th meridian, the invisible longitudinal line that cuts through the Great Plains. The meridian passes through the city approximately one mile east of this marker between avenues L and M. The 100th meridian has long symbolized the dividing line between the arid west and the humid east. But several years ago, Richard Seeger, a climate scientist at Columbia University, discovered that the dry line appeared to be moving. The psychological 100th meridian is moving east. East of the 100th meridian, he says, is gradually getting more arid.

11:19And that could have huge implications for farmers, the economy, and the global food supply. About half of the wheat grown in Kansas is exported to countries including Mexico, Japan, and Nigeria. Climate change in the central U.S. is of enormous importance to food security across the world. To see how farmers are adapting, I drive 170 miles across Kansas from west to east to visit Penner Farms in Hillsborough, Kansas. I pull into a driveway and see an explosion of small cats come from beneath a parked pickup truck. Barn kitties that keep the mice at bay. Oh, hi, kitties. Yeah, you think I'm getting food?

12:09Paul Penner steps out of the truck. I've come to meet him because Richard Seeger's research suggests the dry line once represented by the 100th meridian now lies around here, closer to the 98th meridian. I wondered what changes Paul had seen in the 50 years he's been farming. Today, he grows wheat, corn, soybeans, and a little bit of grass hay on about 1 ,000 acres. We head out in his truck to take a look. Over time, have you seen yields go up with the modern seed breeding and that kind of thing? I have, but you know what? Also, I've seen yields drop because of drought. And believe me, boy, have I seen them drop.

12:55According to U.S. Drought Monitor data going back to 2000, Paul's County has experienced more frequent and severe droughts over the past 15 years. You do it for the love of farming, but also, you know what? I'm a businessman, too. I got to make money. And I get really angry at myself when I don't make money, you know. To try to keep making money in drier conditions, Paul has adapted. Around 20 years ago, he started practicing no-till farming. After a harvest, instead of turning the soil over for the next crop, he leaves the stubble, reducing erosion and evaporation and preserving the moisture in the soil.

13:38We drive out to one of his cornfields to check how close it is to harvest. And you see all the evidence of, you can see... Yeah, that's wheat stubble under our feet, right? And you see corn cobs, you see from the previous corn crop. And in between, I don't know, maybe you can look. Here's a soybean stock. Paul believes this practice of planting in layers of stubble has saved his crop during times of extreme drought. This year, though, Paul says has almost been too wet. He pulls up a rainfall app on his phone. You see that line? That line is average for 30 years. The average is about 36 inches.

14:22And this year we've already done 42. Much of it has come in short, intense bursts where only a fraction soaks in, leaving crops stressed. But one wet year doesn't change the trend line toward a hotter, more arid future. So if Kansas gets a lot drier or just has a lot more like wide swings and variability, how does that impact the rest of the world and our ability to feed a growing population? Number one, it's going to impact the amount of wheat available, production. It could impact quality depending on how the rainfall patterns are. We have to have a consistent form of moisture so that the nutrients that are needed can be absorbed and taken up by the roots and produce a crop.

15:16But for Paul, there's a challenge more immediate than climate change. To break even, he needs to bring in about$7.50 a bushel for wheat. But when I met Paul in mid-September, the market was offering less than$5. What is causing the low prices? Tariff? Trade war? I could use some other expletives, but I won't. Before the tariffs, Kansas had a rhythm. Roughly half the wheat moved overseas. China bought a lot of the soybeans, as well as corn and milo. But in late summer, those markets were drying up in response to U.S. tariffs. And all that turbulence has Paul worried about the sustainability of farming in Kansas.

16:03In Hillsborough, Kansas, I'm Amy Scott for Marketplace. There's a whole season's worth of stories to be had from Amy and the team. How We Survive is the name of the podcast. Follow it on the app of your choice.

16:30Coming up. It's interesting to talk about, maybe interesting in a different way to live through. I'm interested, but first, let's do the numbers. Dow Industrials down, up rather. Dow Industrials are up 47 points, a 10%, 46 ,138. The NASDAQ up 131 points, added 6 tenths percent, 22 ,564. S &P 500 added 24 points, about 4 tenths percent, adding things at 66 and 42. Shares of the AI chip company NVIDIA up 2.8 % before reporting its third quarter results after the closing bell. Once said bell rang, CEO Jensen Huang said demand for its newest chips is, and this is a quote, off the charts. Home improvement retailer Lowe's, the one with the blue color scheme, popped 4 % today.

17:19It reported financial results that were better than analysts were expecting. The orange-ish home improvement chain Home Depot lost about six-tenths of 1 % on the day. Bond prices, well, they went down. When that happens, the yield goes the other way. Yield on the 10-year treasury today, 4.13%. You are listening to Marketplace.

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19:10Plus, you can sit back and relax with Wayfair's fast and easy shipping. Everything home comes straight to your home. And the best part? Free delivery just in time for the holidays. This Black Friday Wayfair deals are bigger and better than ever. There's no place like home for the holidays. And no place like Wayfair for Black Friday savings. So don't wait. Black Friday ends soon. Shop Wayfair's Black Friday sale now and save up to 80 % off at Wayfair.com. Wayfair, every style, every home. This is Marketplace. I'm Kai Rizdahl. Consider the humble soybean. A staple crop. A great source of protein.

19:46Also a flashpoint in President Trump's trade war with China. Chinese buyers put in a big order for U.S. beans this week, bringing the total volume for the year up to almost a million tons. Marketplace's Savannah Peters has more now on the state of U.S. soy. A million tons of U.S. soybeans is a fraction of what China would normally have purchased by November. but it's more than zero tons, which is what we were looking at before President Trump and Chinese President Xi started talking. It's also psychologically good for the market because the markets look at this and going, oh, this is the first of more to come.

20:23That's Steven Nicholson with Rabobank, but he says there's reason to be skeptical. President Xi hasn't actually confirmed that commitment to ramp up orders by the end of the year. Plus, the supply chain won't reboot overnight. By the time you get all the buying done, the logistics, the vessels in place, get it loaded, it's just going to be really tough. And China's track record of sticking to trade war promises is rocky, according to Kristen Owen with Oppenheimer. We've seen this playbook before where there is a commitment and ultimately China becomes a price-sensitive buyer. And you know who's gearing up for a bumper crop of cheap soybeans?

21:06Brazil and Argentina, the countries that have been stepping in to supply the Chinese market. Meanwhile, American farmers have to make decisions. Yes, it is always stressful. Soybean farmer Brian Warpup in northeast Indiana stored most of this year's harvest when prices were subdued. Now that the U.S. and China are talking, prices are rallying. I feel that it is at a profitable level, so I might as well start selling at a profitable level. Warp Up will use that revenue to buy seeds for 2026, which he'll plant around April, hopefully with a clearer sense of where U.S. soybean growers stand with their most important buyer.

21:49I'm Savannah Peters for Marketplace.

22:12Gambling just keeps on getting bigger in this country, and the big prediction markets and sports gambling platforms aren't just financial powerhouses. They're quickly turning into media conglomerates, too. That's the case John Herman makes in New York Magazine. John, welcome to the program. Good to have you on. Thanks for having me. online betting is as we know um huge and growing i want you to give me sort of the the elevator pitch the 30 second version of the thesis of this piece which is that it's kind of pervading all of culture now yeah i mean anyone who follows sports has some version of this story that they're familiar with where 10 years ago sports betting was still a little bit of like a marginal activity something that you could do if you wanted to but you had to kind of try And in the years since then, it's absolutely everywhere.

22:58It's in the coverage. It's in conversations with friends. It has completely pervaded the culture of sports. It's causing new scandals in sports beyond what it used to. And what's interesting now is that we're starting to see similar things happening around world events, politics, other things happening in the world that aren't arranged competitions, you know, between people or teams. Right. Keep going. And look, I'll preface the question here by saying that we've all heard about prediction markets and we've done stories and work on the prediction markets on this program. You say, though, in this piece, you can make a case for a new betting-centric political media.

23:34Go ahead, make the case. During the last presidential election, betting markets were front and center. You were hearing about the Calci odds, the Polymarket odds. And in retrospect, they were pretty accurate. Now, in the mayoral election, we saw something sort of more advanced. We saw prediction markets like Calci and Polymarket kind of participating in the conversation. They were playfully getting in the mix with the news. And it just sort of crystallized for me in that moment that these companies are also media companies. I work in media. I see prediction markets all around me. I see people quoting them alongside polls.

24:06I see people feeling kind of threatened as pundits by, you know, this new tool. But you also just sort of see people talking about them as their own sort of thing. They're no longer primarily interested in who's going to be the next mayor of New York City. They might not live in New York City. They might have no interest in New York City, aside from this intense interest in the bet that they've placed on whether or not Zoran Mamdani was going to win. And that's just a completely different way to engage in politics. Well, look, let's talk more about that, right? Because as you alluded to up at the top of this interview and as has been in the news the last couple of days, there are more betting scandals now in sports than there have been.

24:45I mean, there are guys literally like betting per pitch and all that jazz. So is it necessarily a good thing if media becomes financed by gambling versus media financed by, I don't know, advertising and sort of, or as we call it here in public radio, underwriting, you know? Right. Well, I don't want to be precious about ad-supported media. It's got a ton of obvious problems right on the surface. But I think it's also pretty easy to pick out what the new types of problems would be with a prediction market information system around politics. You have people who know non-public information who might use it.

25:16You have people interested in swaying public opinion who can now do so in this indirect but powerful way by placing maybe a big bet on an outcome that they want to happen, that they want people to believe will happen. And that's just, again, in a totally zoomed out way, very interesting, very strange, kind of sci-fi, kind of dark. But in a very direct way, that is financialized democratic process. And so, I don't know, I don't think you have to get too creative to see how this could go wrong. As we gird ourselves now for 2026, and I apologize in advance for the pun, what's your bet on all this?

25:52I think that the momentum that prediction markets have in general is kind of unstoppable. It happened over a period of 10 years of sports betting where the industry went from kind of squeamish about it to embracing it to being sort of taken over by it. There is less squeamishness now, 10 years later in political media. We're just going to be hearing about odds. We're going to be talking about candidates in terms of odds and bets. And I do think that that changes how people think about the political process. and the people who are making the bets for sure, but also the people who are sort of hearing about this.