Garage Sales and Retro Collectibles

Five days in this economy, seven minutes to sort it all out. Let's see how we do, huh Fr American public media This is Market plan In Los Angeles, I'm Ky Risdal. It is Friday today. fininally, this one is the twenty sixth of June. Good as always. haveave you longong, everybody. The economy this week was a little bit data and a little bit vibes. So we're going to do both and we're going to do it with Catherine Rempeel from MS now. also Greg Ipp at the Wall Street Journal. Hey you He could Greg Yip, you get to go first and we're gonna start with data. The big ones, of course, this week, PCE came in at four point one percent, not great. GDP came in at two point one percent acceptable. You get the first whacket making sense of it. Go Okay, let's start with that inflation number. Now that four point one percent inflation number looks pretty bad, but we know that it was somewhat inflated by the price of gasoline But we also know that the price of gasoline has come down in the last few weeks. So it's probable that inflation will be lower in coming months, but not that much lower. It's still running around three percent based on this particular measure, which is a little too high for the Federal Reserve. So you have a new Fed Chairman, Kevin Warre. She's had one meeting where they kept rates steady And now there's a lot of chit chat that, hey, they may actually have to raise rates, which would be quite ironic since President Trump appointed W, hoping he would cut rates. That would would be one word for it. Yeah Ironic, yes. I think Trump might have a different word for it. That said, I think it's everybody needs to sort of like take a deep breath. We have a few more months, I think, before we have a real picture of what the underlying inflation trend is I think some of the tariff effects are fading Some of the stuff going on inflation looks a little weird. Maybe it's related to the demand for memory chips and computers. So I don't think there's any rush to raise rates And at the same time, as you say, with the economy growing around two percent a year, which is quite decent, and no sign that the job market is collapsing. I don't see a great need to cut rates either Catherine Rmpeell, I would like to introduce you to a little friend of mine called Core inflation. It is still well above where the Federal Reserve wants to be Austin Goullesby set on this program, The president of the Chicago Fed set on this program on Monday. that you know, inflation is trickling into and becoming sticky in services So it's not just oil and gas, right? It's not just oil and gas. Oil and gas are the biggest drivers of the headline numbers, but yes, core inflation is when you strip out energy and food. And even with those things excluded The rest of the index, essentially, the core inflation rate is still above the Fed's target has been above the Fed's target for what, like five years now. somethingomething And before that it was below it. So you know, I mean, come on. Yeah. Well, before that, the Fed suggested that you know, that they were not so worried about it being consistently below it and they wanted to work their way through Greater expectations, I should say, I guess, for full employment. you know, that they could be willing to go easy in terms of monetary policy for longer because they were much less worried about where inflation was going. We're in a different state of the world now U And U I think it is increasingly likely that Kevin Warsh is going to have to preside over incoming, you know, new higher interest rates. Markets seem to think so. and Donald Trump clearly not happy about it earlier this week He sort of torpedoed a bipartisan housing bill and said in his comments Who needs a housing bill when what really matters for getting housing prices down is lower rates. Why doesn't the Fed cut the rates So if I were Kevin Worsh, I would be feeling a little nervous right now given how Trump has behaved toward a previous Fed chair appointee who did not cut rates as much as he wanted. Who none of us in this room need to name. Okay, Greg, now turn to the we now turn to the vibes portion of this conversation. And let's pick up on Kevin Warsh's mood and the general sort of feeleing out there that money's about to get more expensive. AI is spending money hand over fist. We're going to talk about that in a little while and with Stephanie Hughes Um what's the what's your sense of the vibes So this is a good we could talk about vibes because there were two very important vibes in the markets, but they kind of cut in opposite directions The first vibe goes to artificial intelligence, AI. Now we all know there's been this AI boom. It's been going on for years. is one of the reasons the stock market's been so strong. But this week we saw us growing signs of nervousness and maybe it's too strong Pe were saying, oh my gosh, look, open AI is going to delay their IPO. SpaceX's stock priceices down and they're issuing all these new bonds to borrow more money. And Apple is raising prices because memory chips are so expensive. And so some of the airr is coming out of that AI boom or bubble if you want. But wait, sorry, sorry to interrupt. Do you really think so? becausecause if you look at Mike, not that this is a stock picaking show, but if you look at Micron teechnologies the other day, they blew the doors off their earnings Well, they did, but that wasn't enough to pull the whole stock market up. Now if I were a stock market guru, which I'm not, I might say that when the earnings are good and the stock prices don't react well, that's kind of a bad sign. But what I think for the purposes of our show and our listeners, what matters is, does this tell us that the AI boom itself is about to run aground. And we just don't have any evidence of that. We don't see signs of the demand for AI slackening or the investment in AI infrastructure going down and that would be good for the economy. Now the other vibe very quickly is the price of oil coming down a lot because of calm you know such as it is in the Strait of Hormz. and that should before long lead to much lower gas leine, which is already below four dollars a gallon So that's kind of pushing in the positive direction. Although that's said, Kai, I have to say I'm surprised that whenil gasoline went as high as it did, it didn't really shatter the mood of the economy that much. So maybe I shouldn't be so optimistic about what happens when it comes down. Well, hold on because maybe you should. I don't know, but Catherine, this one goes to you and it goes to consonsumer sentiment, which came in today up a little bit, but it's still low. consonsumers are cranky, but they're still spending. I mean the vibe, my read of the vibe is people are really cranky and they're pulling money out of savings and accumulating credit card debt, but they are still spending and driving this economy. Yeah, I basically agree with that. I would say that the vibes of the economy are extremely negative just in the sense of consumer sentiment being abysmal. I mean, being lower than it was during the deepest depths of the great financial crisis and the great recession and all of that worse I don't actually don't know if it's worse than it was during the pandemic and the most recent imprint, but it certainly has been So, you know, on paper, the fundamentals of the economy would not seem to justify that level of sourness in terms of attitudes about the economy or how people say that they are experiencing the economy peopleeople are clearly frustrated. You know, some of this is that we should Take it with a grain of salt. People are answering these questions with a little bit of a partisan lens in how they look at things. And that's been a problem for interpreting consumer sentiment data for a while. But people seem real mad kind of regardless of how good or bad the economy is, which makes me wonder How mad will they be if the economy actually does go into I should say, when the economy eventually goes hopefully no time so Just a question of proximity. Catherinenpeell, you can get her the bullwork also MS now Gg Epp at theall Stet Journal. Thank you Thanks very much, guy Have a nice weekend. Wall Street todayod, Traders ended things to the downside, details numbers. you know the drill. I know it seems like forever ago, but we did a story on Monday, as I alluded to a minute ago, about AI and its inflationary undertones. Data center spending, chip demand, you can connect the dots as well as I can And sure enough, yesterday, Microsoft and Apple said prices for Xboxes and some MacBooks and iPads are going up. Here's the Apple statement. The rapid expansion of AI data centers has created an extraordinary surge in demand for memory and storage. We have never seen, Apple said a component price increase this much this quickly Small comfort, I know, if you're in the market for a new Gizmo now, but As Marketplaceist, Stephanie Hughes reports, expectations are that AI is going to boost productivity And does actually ease inflation. eventually Say you're a lawyer and you handle about five cases at once I don't know, I'm not a lawyer, so I don't know the exact numbers. Alan Detmeister' is an economist with the Bank UBS. But he's imaging a time when AI will let you, the lawyer, become more productive and handle, say tenen cases at a time So what do you do? You probably lower your price a little bit pushing down inflation. Debtmister says that lower prices mean more people can afford to hire you, and you're making more money because you've doubled your workload So in this case, everybody wins This kind of rosy scenario depends on workers using artificial intelligence, and the adoption of these tools in the workplace has been gradual says Gil Laria with the investment firm DA Davidson. Part of it is that If somebody used an AI tool to try to do work two years ago They probably didn't get a great result. And so some people got discouraged and they may not be trying anymore It's also not clear exactly how productive AI will make us or when Tech historian Margaret Oma at the University of Washington says we can learn from the advent of the digital age in the last century sort of similar to now, there was a lot of heralding the internet as this extraordinary and transformative technology. And by the end of the nineteen nineties, it wasn't quite delivering on all those promises But the internet has turned out to be Kind of a big deal. And the same could be true for artificial intelligence. It could make a whole lot of things cheaper, but it might take a minute or two I'm Stephanie Hers from Markplress Hey, so here's a thought. What if rising healthca costs weren't, you know inevitable Well, there's a labor union on the east cooast. It counts nearly two hundred thousand dormen and cleaners and food service workers in its membership That is showing it is possible to offer good health care and save money at the same time Alice Hogan has the details The forty dollars Alfrreda Simpkins used to shell out for every doctor's visit she now spends on her grandkids They like to go to the arcade The sixty eight year old grandmother is a porter at a Long Island apartment building She keeps the lobby and hallways clean and takes out the trash At least I could take that and we could spend a day and we have memories and that's priceless Simkin saves forty bucks per visit. Her union, thirty two BJ, expects to save forty six million dollars this year alone Claire Brockbank, who runs thirty two BJ's Health Fund says the savings come from a simple idea control from the insurer We have to change the dynamics of healthcare Fundamentally There are two ways to lower healthcare costs, send patients to less expensive hospitals, and negotiate better prices. Brockbank says the union's insurer stood in the way of both. So, the union went directly to Northwell Health a twenty eight hospital system across New York and Connecticut. and negotiated its own deal ank says the Union is now paying about half as much as before Members can still get care elsewhere, but Brockbank is trying to make Northwell the obvious choice We give them economic incentives, but we do give them choice. And so we remove the copays for all the Northwell dogs as an added incentive For the Northwell Health system, the appeal is less administrative rigamor role and more predictable payments. Neick Stehan easy runs the arrm of Northwell that works directly with employers. He says Northwell spends a lot of money just to get insurers to pay for surgeries and visits It's expensive The health system has Thousands of employees whose job all day every day. is to work to get the health system paid. for the care that they've already delivered Northwell has these arrangements with seventy companies covering about three hundred thousand patients, so they still deal with traditional insurers for the vast majority of their patients. But Stef and Easy is bullish that these direct contracts will continue to grow We're not yet anywhere close to a majority. We will be one day. I am confident that we are on the trajectory. Other big hospitals like Henry Ford in Michigan and Sveral in Indiana have done similar deals Elizabeth Mitchell leadavs the Purchaser Bus group on Health, which represents large employers. She says, those that have been doing these direct contracts for years see savings between ten percent and thirty percent. And I think you're going to see more and more of this. 'use Employers cannot continually absorb double digit increases year after year. and they're not looking to push more cost sharing onto their employees Mitchell says these arrangements typically only work for large companies with people all in the same city And she warns there can be a big lift to set up thirty two BJs Brockbank says that's why she's sharing exactly how the union did it We do believe A rising tide lifts all boats. I don't think I've ever felt so strongly that we're in this sea change as I do right now. The question is, will union members find the lower priced care at Northwell enticing enough to switch doctors I'm Alex Olgan for Marketplace Cing up. analog cameras and vinyl records What's old is new again, but first Sure why not? Let's do the numbers. D Industrial down forty four points today about a tenth percent, fifty one thousand eight hundred seventy six. The NasdAq slipped sixty points about a quarter percent, twenty five thousand two hundred ninety seven. Y andP five hundred three points basically flat there ended things at seventy three and fifty four for the week, the five days going by, the D six tenth percent to the good. the NASDAq went the other way down four and six tenth percent S and P five hundred decreased two percent on the nose. Apple, which plummeted yesterday after announcing those product price increases gained back three and a tenth of one percent todayod Chip maker Micron, which as I said, had a huge rally earlier this week after the earnings report gave back. six and seventven tenth percent of it today. Microsoft closed at a fifty two week low yesterday by and by Increaseed five and seven tenths of one percent. Bnds up yield on the ten year te notote, thus down four point three seven percent. you're listing to marketplace This is Marketplace. I'm Kai Risdal. It happens every now and then you look around and you just have too much stuff where you decide you can't take the clutter anymore. So you have a garage sale. happaens every weekend all over the country But as Ava White reports now from Alaska public media, garage sales up there are a bit different, made more so by the high and rising cost of living It's a Saturday morning in June and Grace Peterson is kneeling on a tarp digging through a mountain of clothes in a backyard on the city's west side We love to do the Saturday mornings and just stop by and like check out garage cells. Peterson is stuffing fuzzy overalls and button up shirts into a brround paper bag At this sale, shoppers can fill it for as much as it'll hold for ten dollars. Her bag is overflowing Garage sale signs are directing shoppers to a tucked away neighborhood with nearly a dozen homes with items for sale, littered on lawns and driveways. power tools, hunting and fishing gear, a kid selling pink lemonade and small red plastic cups Peterson says she doesn't normally set money aside for clothes shopping because she can't afford to. My husband and I make a combined salary more than my parents ever did when I was growing up. and I felt like my parents were so much more comfortable and struggled way less than we do If Peterson were to buy this bag of clothes new, she expects it'd set her back a couple hundred dollars Peterson calls herself a big thrifter and says she's always looking for ways to get more bang for her buck It's not easy I'd say at least fifty percent off means a good deal, right? But it's crazy how easy it is to just spend, like even at places like this or thrift stores, you like feel the hit if you go crazy there too In cities around the country every summer, homeowners declutter and earn some extra cash, while shoppers swarm in hunting for deals on the stuff, that catches their eyes. Each August, one massive sale stretches from Alabama to Michigan along US Route one hundred twenty seven. Josh Randall, a spokesperson for what's called the one hundred and twenty seven yard sale, says this event brings an economic burst to rural communities across more than six hundred miles The whole idea was to kind of draw people off of some of the big routes to go through the areas to get that traffic and just to have people experience what they might not usually ever see. And so even to this day This almost the entire route is still very rural Back in Anchorage, Alaska, Elgin Dabins is dealing change for a pet feeder he just sold for five dollars. Thank you. You too. ennjoy Domins is selling nickknacks and household items along with more than thirty other residents at Mountain City Church. Everything he's selling was donated by community members and he donates all proceeds to charity We usually take whatever they offer. People say, well, how much? I said, how much you want to donate? So it's just something to get people in. And everything we make is gravy because everything is donated Dobin says the annual sale brings in a lot of traffic, especially on somewhat sunny days like today. Alaska's short summer creates a highly concentrated window of garage sales. Samantha Rooper lists roughly thirty of them in and around Anchord on a spreadsheet she created She threw her own neighborhood wide sale in early June and says dozens of her neighbors joined in She says doing it this way draws more shoppers peopleeople know that there's going to be multiple homes, they're more likely to take the time out of their day if they know that it's not just a one and done. Rupert says she made about eighteen hundred dollars during the two day sale Along with earning the money, she also met some of her neighbors for the first time I could tell that they really craved connection and wanted to connect and know who I was and And I wanted to know who they were too, because I've seen them drive by for years and years right around the Cold deac and I just never we never talked before. So Now whenever they drive by, it's a little bit different. plans to arrange another neighborhood wide garage sale next summer and says neighbors are already lining up to be both buyers and sellers. In Anchorage, Alaska, I'm Ava White for Marketplace. Caveat the setup for this next item by saying please consult your own financial advisor. But one investment you might consider making if you like to follow trends could be in a match company a matchbook company technically because sales of retro style matchbooks are up seventy five percent in each of the last three years, it seems they've become collectibles Matthew Kronsberurg wrote it in Bloomberg the other day. wecome to the program. G to have y you. Thanks for having me. So who is it that is collecting all of these matchbooks? is largely G ie and millennials, which is very different than what I remember growing up when it was my grandparents that collected them Yes, exactly. They also, by the way, our grandparents, probably had ashtrays on the kitchen counter and all around the house This does not necessarily correlate to a rise in smoking among Gen Z, right? No. That was our first thought. Yeah. And as we looked into it, we realized there is not really a jump in smoking. In fact, it's the opposite among adults So what's the deal? Why are these folks collecting all these matchbooks Part of it is it's the same thing that is driving these younger generations to use analog cameras and vinyl records They are trying to find ways of existing that are not connected to The digital world all the time And so Matches are just a physical meento from an evening out that feels more tangible than just a bunch of pictures on their phone's camera roll I get, and which makes a lot of sense. It also has to be said. and there are some great pictures of matchbooks in this article U There's some savvy marketing ar Oh yeah U and They are It's the interesting thing to me is that restestaurants and bars have been investing both a great deal of time and thought and money into creating these really beautiful keepsakes for their customers I learn a new word in this piece, by the way, Filuminists. amm I getting that right? I sure hope so. I've not been able to pronounce it correctly once So are are you a collector I've always had some around, but Yeah, it's been so long since I had seen any place offering them And I never really had a need for them. So I never thought to collect them until I started seeing these really beautiful examples like what they had at Wild Cherry in the West Village. And these matches, so the matchbook itself is glossy black and it has a little window cutting to the front where you can actually see the matched stems and on the stems themselves are printed symbols like you would see on a slot machine. And so you know, as you pull out a match to use it The lineup changes, the Funny thing, of course, is that they are so nice that lighting on fire is the last thing you would want to do. of course course. It does occur to me though that the nicer they are, the more expensive they are and you can't just keep giving them away because look, restaurant margins are small and you know, ten bucks on a a gross of matchbook isn't gonna to break you, but it adds definitely does. and the range can be extreme. You know, the little ones that you see on the counter at a convenience store, those can be just a few cents each ones like wild cherry and this depends a great deal on how many you order and how elaborate they get. Yeah. but they can come in at dollar or more, you know, up to close to two dollars Oh ye For one of them, which is why, you know, they tend to be a little bit careful about handing them out. Yeah Mthew Krhburg, Blomberg Matchbooks, great story. Thanks a lot, Matt. I appreciate it. Thanks for having me This final note on the way out today. mayaybe you heard this earlier this week, but it is worth a quick mention ahead of the opening bell on Monday. Alphabet is going to replace Verizon in the Dow Jones industrial average, the definition of the word industrial there Obviously changing as the economy does too Our theme music was composed by BJ Leederman, Marketplace' executive producers is Nancy Fargali. Joanne Griffith is the Chief content offfficer. Nilel Sarborough is the vice president and genereral manager. And I'm Kai Rzal. Eeverells a great weekend to everybody. We'll see you back here on Monday, all right? This is APM