Rural America Facing Veterinarian Shortages

I don't want to alarm anybody, but have you seen prices lately From American Public Media This is Market Pans In Los Angeles, I'm K Rzall. It is Thursday today. This one is the eleventh of June. Good as it always is to have you along everybody. So here's what's happened in the oil markets the past couple of days. There was talk of a peace agreement in the war and oil prices went down. Then there were shooting and oil prices went down. Then there was a president saying he was going to bomb Iran hard. oil prices went down. And then the president said the bombing is off and Here we are Oil prices are down Part of why is that the United States has been drawing down its commercial and strategic oil reserves. Crude inventories fell another seven point two million barrels this week. That brings the drawd down, Reuter says to almost eighty million barrels since the war started. There are, yes, still hundreds of millions of barrels left, but inventories can only get so low before the supply chain starts to break down Traders might not care about the geopolitics They are sure going to care about the logistics. Marketplace is Kayley Wells gets us going Out of all those barrels in our oil inventories, a lot of them just aren't accessible you think about a large storage tank, there's always going to be some oil bottom that can't be pumped out. Earon Brady with S andP Global Energy says there's also the oil that keeps pipes lubricated and storage caverns safely intact So he estimates that roughly two hundred ninety million of the four hundred twenty six million barrels of oil now in the US inventory won't actually get used or sold. And at the current drawdown rate sometometime in July is my best guess is when we get into that danger zone where we get close to those minimum operating levels And even if the war ended today, it takes a couple months to get the global supply chain back up and running normally The hardest part, I think, is that it does not feel like we're close to a situation where things start to move back toward normal Dan Pickerking is founder and chief investment Officer of Pickering Energy Partners. And he says as countries deplete their reserves, oil prices have been deceptively not bad Folks are like, what do I need to worry about The issue is every single day that market's tightening And when you get to the point where it's obvious that there's an issue 's very hard to fix Now, the US is in a very different position than it was the last time it was flirting with oil supply problems in the nineteen seventies, says Hugh Dagel, professor of petroleum Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin when you had things like big lines of gas stations, gasoline rationing reedduction of national speed limits to fifty five miles an hour. I mean, those are pretty drastic measures Today he says it's more of a slow moving crisis, and the main threat to consumers is a drastic change in price. as we keep drawing down the reserve you're really limiting your ability to further control the prices that people are paying for refined products. Which is why all three analysts say oil prices will rise this summer. Dan Pickering says it could go up anywhere from twenty to fifty percent higher. I'm Kaylee Wells for Marketplace Wall Street on this Thursday, tell you what equities traders sure did like the geopolitical news Oh the day. We will have the details when we do the numbers The thing about this economy right now is that we are borrowing a lot of money, like way more than we have in the past So the Treasury Department has been auctioning off a lot of long term government debt this week, thirty year bonds today, about to ten years on Wednesday, which means we know what yield, which is to say what interest rate investors are demanding in exchange for lending the government money for years or even decades. Marketplace A Justin Ho explains what that means for where this economy might be going US Treasuries are the gold standard for government debt. Investors from around the world always show up to treasury auctions to load up on bonds. But every time, the question is how much yield are they going to demand for their money It all comes back down to compensation. Are you going to get compensated for owning a security above the inflationary expectations? That's Laurence Gillum, Chief fixed inccome strategist with LPL Financial. He says investors are worried that prices will keep rising over the next few years and eat up whatever interest they get on those bonds So the higher the inflation, the lower your actual real return that you're going to get from the fixed income markets As a result, investors have been demanding higher yields on short term government debt. Yields on two year treasuries have risen more than a full percentage point since the war started. Zachary Griffiths with credit sites says that's because investors expect the Federal Reserve to tamp down inflation by hiking interest rates. L isy truly dramatic shift from what we saw. At the start of the year, and that's driven by inflation concerns. But yields on long term government debt, as in ten and thirty year bonds haven't risen so quickly. Griffith says one reason is because rate hikes have long term consequences a higher policy rate environment in the near term, that does increase the risk that you have a more notable downturn in economic growth a ten year perspective versus a two year perspective Another factor that's keeping a lid on long term yields is the expectation that the Strait of Hormz will eventually open again John Can as lead market analyst at Oxford Economics. It's a question of time. It's a question of when, but you know the broad consensus is certainly that's what's going to happen Kanvan says when it does, inflation will cool and that optimism among market participants that that will happen. has also limited the extent of the rise in long term yields But Canan says there are still some big factors that will push long term yields higher nameamely the national debt longer term the drumbeat of deficit risks will just continue to grow louder and louder in the background. And that will put more upward pressure on long term rates, even after inflation concerns go away I'm Justin Howe for Marketplace We're gonna start this next piece with some audio It is unbelievable. It's it's nice to see IPOs getting so much attention. We got some hits coming up this summer. It's kind of hard to Iignnore it. It's like everywhere right now. That's Michelle Lary at Drexel University, Terererennce O'dein at UC Berkeley and Suha Sridtheram at Emory. And what they're talking about Had you missed the news are the three massive initial public offerings planned for this summer SpaceX starts trading tomorrow on the NASDAQ ticker symbol SPC X, should you be curious It will be, as you know, the biggest IPO on record nearly two trillion dollars Anthropic filed to go public june the first, Open AI filed this past Monday, each of the three likely to raise tens of billions of dollars, many tens And that's going to put a whole lot of equity into the stock market in a very short period of time Hsxel' Michelle. At some point it is hard to really understand when there are so many zeros on these numbers. Fackchck true on the one hand, we can look at the numbers and we can say Oh, in aggregate, these companies might raise two hundred, two hundred fifty billion dollars. That's an enormous amount of money Wow, indeed However, if we instead look at it as a percent of total market capitalization, you're talking maybe five percent, maybe even less. capitalization of US. stock markets all in now, seventy trillion dollars, which means as big as they are and they are big These three offerings are only going to make up a few tenths of one percent. And that's actually a lower percent than what we had back in the eighties and nineties. It's not a huge amount of the current market Not a huge amount, but definitely huge interest. And Suha Sriidaran at Emory points out that a lot of the retail investors buying into these IPOs are gonna once they go public, they are already big tech friendly It's your Nvidas. It's your even like Google, alphabet. Amazon, right? Like companies in the tech sector Words of the wise, by the way, do not expect SpaceX to start trading right at the opening bell tomorrow. It's going to take the NazdAak a good couple hours like a long couple hours to get things organized. World Cup started today in Mexico City, Mexico two notothing over South Africa. It'll be thirty nine days, sixteen cities in Mexico, Canada and the United States We did a story back in December about the smallest of those cities, Kansas, City, Missouri. where there was talk that There weren't nearly enough hotel rooms for the hundreds of thousands of fans that were expected to visit and As these things tend to go, some homeowners and developers We're hoping to rent their places out and get a pece O the action Now though, as the tournament begins, the market for short term rentals in Kansas City more of a mixed pag as marketplaces Henry Apperort. Lily Stork admits she was a bit late to the game. At first, she was reluctant to list her family's five bedroom Kansas City home during the World Cup, but then she started hearing how some other homeowners were charging thousands of dollars a night for their places we thought we kind of have this really wonderful space that's closer than anything else we've seen to where the games are going to be And so we thought we can't really pass it up Her house even has an indoor pool, so in March, she and her husband paid a property manager to list it at five thousand five hundred dollars a night We've had thousands of inquiries, but no fights That's not the situation Kansas Cityians were expecting just a few months ago. The local tourism Bureau Vit KC, had projected the World Cup would bring six hundred fifty thousand visitors, ten times the number of hotel rooms in the region, says Susan Brown, president of the Kansas City Short Term Rental Alliance We were worried in the beginning, will they be sleeping on the streets? Where will they stay So Brown's organization and municipal officials pushed to get more people to offer up their homes for rent As the city reduced its registration fees for short term rentals, Brown's group held training sessions for prospective hosts who wanted to make money from the influx of soccer fans Everybody wooished in open up their homes, hoping to get a piece of that And then what that does, it's just an economics lesson, supply and demand As in the supply of Airbnbs and Verbos outpaced demand That's held prices down, Brown says, and left a mixed bag for property owners. You might get lucky, you might get that booking or you might not Overall, short term rental bookings are up in the area, forty seven percent higher than the same time last year, according to AirDNA, a site that tracks global short term rental data. rates are up to sixty five percent compared to last year And yet, Jamie Lane, chief economist at AirDNA, says there are still a lot of available places in the region Demand can be really strong while overall occupancy seems a bit weak given all that demand because of the massive increase in listings into that market Some would be hosts in Kansas City have thrown in the towel. We knew by January like that maybe the World Cup thing wasn't going to quite be the boon Back in twenty twenty four, Roxana Shafe and her husband bought a townhouse. They wanted to get some short term hosting experience before renting it out during the World Cup. Months went by, the place wasn't getting booked And then some folks who just rented it asked if they could buy it. Chhafe ran the offer by her husband So I texted him and he immediately shot back with yes. N let's talk about it, not let's think about just immediately yes They closed in late February for just over three hundred thousand dollars, which was about what Chafe says they paid for it. Ultimately, she says, moving on was for the best. We never got a single worldorld Cup booking up until we closed. For homeowners still waiting for bookings, there is some time. Visit KC, the Regional Tourism Bureau confirmed that it still expects six hundred fifty thousand visitors over the next few weeks, but it declined an interview request. And the last two matches in Kansas City are in the later stages of the tournament. We won't know which teams are playing for a few more weeks So for now, Lily Stork is keeping her listing up and preparing to potentially move her family of four kids to her parents' house on short notice If for some reason we got a bite we would have to scramble, but We would We would do it And she's dropped the price of her place from five thousand five hundred dollars a night, now down to about two thousandars I'm Henry App for Marketplace Coming up, I'd be like trying to make a birthday cake and there'd be somebody standing there with their dog to be seen. You never know when Dudy's gonna to call, huh? first though Let's do the numbers Now indndustrial' up nine hundred and twenty nine points today, one and nine tenths of one percent. fifty thousand to eight hundred forty eighth and NASDAQ gained six hundred and forty points two and a half percent. twenty five thousand eight hundred nine S andP five hundred added one hundred twenty seven points. one and three quarters percent, seventy three and ninety four. Space X is sticker symbol, as we said, SPC X One letter away from SPC E, which is the symbol for another space company Virgin Galactic, Reuters reports users of the Reddit fororm Wall Street Bs have been saying they were buying SPE banking that that stock is getting to get a lift from people confusing it with SPC X Yeah. SPCE today up twenty one and six tenth percent. you're listening to Marketplace. This is Marketplace. I'm Kai Risdal. It has been a week of inflation data. The consumer price index yesterday, four point two percent. The producer price index today, six and a half percent year on year. That's the highest it's been since November of twenty twenty two. We're going to talk things over with Karen McDaniel. She teaches economics at Arizona State University First Mc Daniel. good to have you Thank you. So let me break the fourth wall here. You said before we actually turn on the microphones, you love price indexes. Why is that so? They're a lot of fun. You take a lot of different prices and the further down you drill into them, the more information you can find about what's going on price wise in the economy. All right, we're gonna to do some light drilling, not too far down. But do me a favor and take yesterday's CPI and today's PPI. That's a lot of initials I know I apologize to the listeners Um and put yourself in the mindset of Not somebody who's tryining to look at this stuff like you are, but somebody just, you know, reading the headlines and knowing the gas is expensive and food's up to and Holy cow, does this mean that just prices are going to keep going up? Well, I would say that the producer price index is often used as an indicator for the consumer price index, but the consumer price index includes some different things So one big component of the consonsumer price index is owners' equivalent rent. That's about a quarter of it And it's not included in the producer price index are also not included in the producer price index. But the producer price index includes the prices that domestic producers receive for their goods And those prices are up. Now we probably we'll expect consumer prices will continue to rise But the relationship between the two is not perfect Okay, now play this out like I don't know, six months and tell me where you sit on the whole being able to look through the energy shock, right? I mean, that's what Powell has said. Kevin Warsh may say something like that next week. I don't know U that in essence, without saying the word transitory, that's what they're saying Well, in order for these numbers to continue to be high That means prices have to continue to rise. Right now today Prices for gasoline are maybe a little bit lower than they were the month before, what's going to happen next month and the month after There's a lot of geopolitical stuff that's going to go into that. But in order for those inflation numbers to continue to be high then prices have to continue to rise. So I think that's what I would interpret as looking through. prices are high now We kind of know why for that the inflation rate to be sticky, they have to continue to rise and they have to bleed from energy into O goods and services. Which is kind of happening, right? I mean, energy is in everything. It's in trucking, it's in, you know, fruit packaging.s I mean, it's in the whole smmash Yes, it is. And you know, if the labor markets are tight enough that workers have negotiating power and can negotiate higher wages, then we'll continue to see prices rise or inflation numbers be high. Let me ask you if I might about inflation expectations because you know, as we know, what consumers think is going to happen can actually affect what kind of does happen Is there a reason now you think that inflation expectations are still anchored? or are you tending toward the Hmm, we'll see what happens with inflation expectations with these numbers I'm in a camp. There's a lot that's going on. We've got the energy shock, We've got high demand for Energy and investment fueling the RAI boom. is these are interesting times. Yes, they are. I think there's a curse that goes along those lines Kara McDaniel, she's at Arizona State. Professor McDaniels so much for your time Thank you Challenges in getting good healthcare, it turns out, are not unique to humankind. Rural America' got an animal problem in that there just aren't enough veterinarians to go around vet school is expensive and you just don't make as much taking care of animals on the countryside. It is a problem that shows up in almost every state. A quick glance at federal data shows Southern Indiana urgently needs livestock and poultry vets. Apparently all of West Virginia is in need Other rural areas are hanging on with one veterinarian doing a little bit of everything. The place of Caitlland Tan takes us to a tiny Wyoming ranching town Off Main Street in Big Piney, Wyoming, next to a hayfield is Dror Bob Byrerman's bed clinic. Inside the animals are talking lady holds an old Chihuahua, a horse trailer pulls up outside. You didn't know Big Piny had a zoo And this is it Fermman breaks from the interview to advise the owner of Tip, the chunky cat. So yeah, I don't want to see her anyer. Fyireman is tall with a thick mustache, and he runs the only brick and mortar clinic in the area. People drive two hours to see him, and sometimes he drives to them, especially during spring calving season I got two C sections under my belt so far this year. One was in the middle of the night. He'll vaccinate those baby cows later on and screen them for disease. a critical step for the meat we eat, so we don't get sick. This is all a lot of work. Byran is seventy one and he's trying to retire The practice is listed, so I had a couple nibbles. But it's got to be the right person who wants to come to this. This being the middle of nowhere. Big Piny is in the western part of the state and is a hundred miles from a Walmart. And restaurants forget about it. Well, we only have one No we have two sit down restaurants now. Perhaps you can get past that but then there's the money factor. A vet in Wyoming makes on average seventy thousand dollars less per year than one in K Califnia And Byrman's wife, Janet, says a rural vet rarely gets a break. Yeah, Al Christmas. Almost every single holiday we end up taking some calls. They started the business in nineteen ninety, and she taught herself how to keep the books We couldn't find a place and so we had the vet clinic in the basement of our teeny tiny house all while raising two kids I'd be like trying to make a birthday cake and there'd be somebody standing there with their dog to be seen, whatever. They lived paycheck to paycheck for a long time Things eventually got easier as they built up a loyal ranching clientele. A lot of people say, how do you make a living in a town of a thousand people. Well, that's because we have Sveral thousand cows here too It's the lifestyle. E Beyran is trying to pique young people's interest. He offers internships like to Annicca St. George, who is lured away from Seattle I was in the big city and it was just so overwhelming and I don't know, I realized that I wanted to be in a rural area working with animals She plans to go to vet school, but it's expensive. The average student debt is two hundred thousand dollars If I work in these rural areas, will I be able to pay out the debt that I'm going to have to incur from school? Staint George is betting on help. The federal government recently increased how much it'll pay off on student loans in trade for rural vet work Wyoming just approved something similar Firemen help can't come soon enough It's four years of vet school, so it takes a while before those kids are out in the workforce. So in the meantime, we got an appointment in here right now. Firemen will keep vaccinating, calving, medicating, and stitching up animals. It should be pretty numbed up. Like this paint horse named Scarlet. These kind of horses get Cancerous tumors. So now we're just gonna put a couple stitches in there. All stitched up, the horse walks out. Okay, just head out that door, sure.es. Environmentan's off to the next critter. In Big Piny, Wyoming, I'm Kaitlin Tan for Marketplace This final note on the wayay O today, a slice of the president's war with Iran that's getting short shriftMHO. Inflation gets all the headlines, but there's an economic growth thing going on here too. The World Bank said today that global economic growth is on track to be the weakest it's been since the pandemic. best case We're looking at two point a half percent growth this year. It was two point nine percent last year. Wst case, one point three percent Our daily production team includes Andy Corbin, Maria Hollandhorse, Sarah Leasonon, Seaan McKenry, and Sfia Torenzio, Will Story is the supervising senior producer and I'm Kai Risal, We will. seeee you tomorrow, everybody This is APM.