Comcast Spin Off and Estate Sales

paraphrasing here, but one person's administrative state is another person's How the whole American economy works From American Public Media This is Met Pance In Los Angeles, I'm Ky Risal. It is Monday today, the twenty ninth of June, good as it always is to have you along, everybody a not at all hypothetical question as we get going today Now that the Supreme Court has decided that the president, any president to be clear can reach directly into the gears of this economy and manipulate them almost as he or she likes. What's going to happen Two bigiggies, as you know, out of the justices today. One about the Federal Reserve. O about what until today were called independent agencies. We have called Leia Littman for some analysis. She's a professor of law at the University of Michigan. Le, welcome back to the program. G to have you Thanks for having me. I want to take these one by one and I want to take the Lisa Cook decision first actually. It seems the most straightforward five to four the Supreme Court said The Federal Reserve is actually special, ye That is basically the court's reasoning that the importance of the Fed means that the Fed is exempt from the court's newly announced rule that independent agencies cannot exist because the president must have the power to fire the heads of any agency exercising significant executive power So what do you think just as a matter of the law, them carving out this special thing for the Fed as opposed to independent agencies, which we'll get to the second case in a second It is frankly ridiculous. In the other case, the one announcing the rule that there can be no independent agencies, Chief Justice Roberts, who wrote the majority, included this incredibly far reaching language indicating that the president has to have the power to fire everyone, no An' quasies about it O he simultaneously issued an opinion that contained a big and but except the Federal Reserve Board. And the justification for that exception to my mind, kind of amounts to insert economic reasons here.. He averts to the importance of the Fed And that's kind of it. Here's the thing that got me about this. They carve out this special place for the Fed because oh my goodness, the economy, as you said But then they said independent agencies fundamentally can exist because reasons but the whole reason the US economy works is because of these independent agencies, right? All the regulatory bodies, all the rest of them. Hel me out. No, I think that that's exactly right. When you think about the agencies that the court has effectively demolished their independence, we're talking about the Federal Trade Commission. which protects consumers from fraud. We're talking about the Securities and Exchange Commission, which does the same. We're talking about the Equal Employment opportunity Commission, which regulates the workforce. I could go on, but I hope those examples show that these agencies exercise sweeping powers over corporations, over the economy, over our health, over our safety And the court just handed the president the power to dictate the heads of those agencies do. And we've seen how agencies subject to his control exercise their power persecuting perceived enemies and by granting favors to friends Justice Sotomayor in her dissent in that case said Chaos will follow. One imagines policy and political ping pong here with regulatory agencies every four to eight years Yes, that's exactly right, because by handing the president the power to effectively remake the federal government every four years by firing the heads of these agencies. The court is allowing what are likely to be pretty stark vcillations between what one presidential administration will do and what the next will do So we talk about Congress here for a minute What's that according to the Supreme Court? Well Well, that's kind of my point, right? The court said these independent agencies have amassed all this power But and I am not a lawyer I'm pretty sure Congress gave them the power That's exactly right. Congress has been establishing these agencies for the better part of a century. And the Supreme Court just fundamentally reordered the distribution of power within the federal government because they know better than Congress. It's really remarkable when you both read these opinions and also put them together with other opinions that the court has issued this term which either invalidate laws that Congress has enacted, as was the case in Slaughter, the independent agency case, or render them effectively toothless and unenforceable, like some of the decisions we got last week. And the decision in sllaughter, which again, erases independent agencies, seems to view the prospect of congressional oversight as somehow antithetical to democratic governments And by hamstringing, kneecapping Congress, my view is that the court is undermining democracy in the process This is going to sound like a facetious question, but it's really not Now what happens? Now what happens is my guess is the president will attempt to assert the powers that he has been granted, and he will also press the limits of those powers by asserting control over the career civil service as well and remake the entirety of the federal government Leia Lipman is a professor of law the University of Michigan. She's got own podcast. It's called Strict Srutiny and also a book on the subject at hand Now I think, in paperback rightly, it's called laawless Indeed, with a new chapter on the unitary executive theory that was at work in slaughter There you go Leah, thanks a lot Thank you. Wall Street on the second and last day of the first half of the year, Taders had not a care in the world. We will have the details when we do the numbers Here's a little tomorrow's news today to get you ahead of the news cycle. Thursday's news today, teechnically, when will get the June Jobs report because Friday's the fourth After a pretty stagnant twenty twenty five, the labor market has picked up the past couple of months, moreore than one hundred seventy thousand new jobs every month mge in this economy Marketplace is Henry Epp. looks at what's been driving that and where it might be driving us. For most of the last year, healthcare was one of the only industries consistently adding jobs, says Nicole Bacha at Zip Recriter. But when we come into the last couple of months this spring, we've started to see gains equaling out a bit across different industries Local governments started hiring more. so did social assistance organizations think childcare and home carere aids. And last month, leisure and hospitality companies staffed up, restaurants and hotels, possibly boosted by the World Cup. Ron Hetrick is with the analytics firm Lightcast Those aren't the lock down career jobs that make people feel really good about the economy Professional industries, meanwhile, like banking, insurance, and tech are stagnant or even chedding jobs, and that's frustrating to a certain class of workers What they want to see is, are these white collar better paying industries hiring? And the reality is no, they're not So some workers who might otherwise try to climb the corporate ladder may be opting for lower paid work, says Nicole Bachau at Zip Recriter We're seeing a lot of maybe established experienence workers going and taking entry level positions. and that's leaving less room for somebody with no resume and no work experience to break into the market Especially new graduates, Michelle Evermore at the National Employment Law Project says that's who she'll be keeping an eye on when the June Jobs report drops this week I'm hearing that people newly graduated are having trouble finding work and June is where we will see them succeed or fail Evermore says she's concerned about fraying around the edges in the job market Along with youth unemployment, she's also watching bllack unemployment and unemployment among people with disabilities. If those numbers rise, it could be a sign of a weaker job market to come. I'm Henry App for Marketplace Energy prices have occupied a whole lot of our collective brain space the past what? fourour months? President started bombing Iran That's because a gas, but Also because B Rising fuel costs factor into everything else, Tansportation costs most notably One example thereof Over the past four months, the cost of sending a container full of goods across the Pacific has risen from around eight hundred dollars the shipping company, Fritos, says Almost four thousand two hundred dollars placeaces Justin Ho is on that one Fuel costs are a major component of container shipping rates. So when the war started and oil prices rose, ocean carriers started passing on those costs. And that's why we saw that kind of gradual increase in rates when this first started because they're trying to recoup with those costs. That's Judah Levine, He of research at Freredos. Then in May, rates spiked. Levine says that's partly because a lot of importers loaded up on goods ahead of schedule because they're worried that ocean carriers and overseas manufacturers will jack up prices even more. So this means that there's front loading. Imorters are pulling demand forward for various reasons. Another reason is that importers are worried about tariffs. In about a month, the Trump administration will be able to replace its current ten percent tariffs with a new set of import taxes that could go much higher Rachel Brewster is a professor at Duke Law School They could raise them to twenty percent to twenty five percent. You know, there really is no limit. I mean, they could set them at a thousand percent Importers also want to take advantage of strong consumer spending And so companies have confidence bringing in goods that we think will sell in the fall. Zach Rogers is a professor of supply chain management at Colorado State University. As a result, he says that's increasing demand for all kinds of transportation, pushing up the price of shipping by truck, for instance. And in turn. that even spills over into things like rail, which there's been a big shift in demand towards rail to try to get away from the cost of trucks Roger says a lot of those costs will eventually be passed on to consumers. I'm Justin Howu for Marketplace Apologies in advance for this inconvenient reminder of the passage of time But we're coming up on five years since the big one point two trillion dollars Biden era infrastructure law There is, in fact, a new bill working its way through Congress to reauthorize some of that money and add some new programs as well The Point is building public infrastructure is expensive And it turns out Figuring out just how expensive it is. is way easier said than done. Leah Brooks is a professor of public policy and public administration at George Washington University, and she's got a new paper out about exactly that his Books weking with the pro Thank you for having me. So, I'm going to read you back the title of your own paper. It says, meeasuring the cost of building infrastructure over time, colon, very hard to do well Why that bit after the colon? Why is it so hard to do well Because it's so, so hard, guys. It's hard because There are lots of important things that go into building infrastructure that we canan't measure in a standard way. Okay why? How come? As If you're producing a private good like Apple juice you measure the things that the Ale juice producer purchases to make apple juice, which could be apples and apples squishing machines and stuff like that.ure. And that's his producer price index. And then you can measure a consumer price index for apple juice, which is the price at which the apple juice producer sells the apple juice to consumers Fortunately, for roads and bridges and ports, it's not quite so clear. And it's not clear because the government is both a producer in its purchasing, but it's also the final consumer too If you think about the government as being us, the people who voted again these politicians. So first, it's hard to measure all the parts. and then second, you know, economists like to think about net benefits so not just the benefit to you, Kiiz all driving on the freeway to work, but the pollution and the noise that you give maybe is you passast the Hollywood Bowls and harm the as one does in LA. Right. So all those externalities. but let me ask you something. I mean Because this is the thing that confounds the citizenry at large, I'm sure all the time We are told that a new road will cost a billion dollars because that's what the contractors bid for it and that's what it's going to cost. And then, you know, five years later when the road is built, it winds up costing seventeen billion dollars because of markups and the cost of the government and all of those things. So there's I mean, there's a lot that happens between the initial price tag and taxpayers finally paying the bill That's right. And what we do really, really well is we measure the initial price tag. We're great.. We're pretty good at measuring the initial price tag. We are very, very, very bad at measuring the final price tag. But then there's all the money the government puts into the project above and beyond the money it's paid to the private contractor. and that we have littleittle to no visibility. Is that like administrative overhead? Is that what you're saying? Basically? I mean, you know, that's that's broad term, but basically Yes, but there's so many things that go into overhead, right? That could be permitting, that could be litigation, thousands of community meetings you have in advance of a project Those are you know, those are important and valuable and we should measure how much they cost. We are not as much as Americans might like to think otherwise. We are not the only country in the world, and we're not the only country in the world that builds infrastructure And yet we have a deserved reputation for building it more expensively than almost any other country on the planet, right? The Chinese do it, the Japanese do it, the Europeans do it and they all do it cheaper than we do. How come That's an excellent question, guy. What Zach Liskoa, Yale law professor and I have written is that part of the reason cost so much more in the US than elsewhere in the world is because we give citizens an unparalleled ability to complain which we call which we call citizen Voice,, which arrived in the late sixties and early seventies as a response to truly awful things that the federal government did. But in response, we've created a system where not only do you give input before a project starts, but you give input endlessly after the project continues, sometimes in the form of litigation. But litigation also drags out projects. and the longer the project takes, the more expensive the project becomes I'm having a tough time wrapping my head around this because it seems so obvious that there are things that need to change. but But we've been doing infrastructure in this country this way for dececades and decades and decades and decades and one despas that there will actually be a solution Well, I wouldn't say that you're wrong to be pessimistic On the other hand Economists also say that economists or traders, the only solution prices's high prices high prices And you know, maybe we just it wasn't bad enough before A some point, I think it will become so expensive that we realize that The tradeffs we're making are not the tradeoffs we want to make anymore. and that makes the politics change. Lear Brooks. I professor of public policy also public administration at the George Washington University For of books Thankks for time Ireci Thank you, Kay Coming up. Fun little hanging birds in bird cages, a whimsical cat pillow Sounds pretty nice. I don't know. First though, let's do the numbers. D Industrial is up three hundred six today six tenth percent fifty two thousand one hundred eighty two. The NAasSDAQ added five hundred twenty two points, two point one percent, twenty five thousand eight hundred twenty, the S and P five hundred up eighty six points, one and two tenth percent, seventy four and forty there So, Rocket Lab makes launch hicles, you know, uses them to put clients' payloads into orbit. It's paying eight billion dollars to byy irridium communications and its network of telecom satellites so it can compete against SpaceX rocket labs up fifteen and nine tenth percent. T, irridium ascended twenty five and four tenths of one percent. Meanwhile, SpaceX, discussing a deal to provide cell service with cable and interternet provider charter. So says Bloomberg SpaceX up seven and a tenth percent on the day you're listening to Marketplace This is Marketplace. I'm Kai Rizol You know how the streaming slash entertainment slash media slash TV slash film business is really fragmented right now Comcast would like you to hold its beer The Campbell conglomerate said today it's going to spin off its media subsidiary, NBC Universal into a separate publicly traded company It's going to have TV and film and peacock in it. That's the streaming service, alsoso universal theme Parks, Comcast keeps its connectivity businesses, broadband and wireless The deal is going to take about a year to get done, which Honestly is forever in this business Thisac Sthie Hughes When Comcast bought NBC Universal back in twenty eleven, we were in a very different media landscape The synergies that made sense fifteen years ago are less and less apparent Roger Entner is with Reon Analytics, which counts Comcast as a customer He points out that since then, streaming has become a thing. Satellite internet, also more of a thing. Content creators are definitely a thing All of these create challenges for Comcast attention that they deserve makes it much easier if there are two companies than one Etner says Comcast and NBC have always been culturally pretty different and will be more at home in separate houses, so to speak My cable company, he says, is by definition risk averse, because it's got to help people get and stay online Whereas when it comes to content, This is all about being boring Being cautious. Because that's like the worst content you can watch on television This is not Comcast's first attempt to divide and conquer Earlier this year, its spun off cable networks, including MSNBC and CNBC. One potential motive I'm Charles Srager is a professor at both NYU and Fordham and a former HBO exec He says it's tough to sell an entertainment company wrapped inside a cable company. No other business wants to eat something that big many things that they don't want. But would they be interested in buying a library A library of movies and TV shows with a streaming service as the cherry on top That's a lot more digestible I'm Stephanie H Heuich from Marketplace Sort, though it may be, this is a busy week economy wise. Those two Supreme Court rulings, Leah Litman and I were talking about. The June Jobs repeport on Thursday mentioned that And then tomorrow, the Casechiller home price indndex Part of the challenge with home prices now spepecifically with them staying high is that home owners are staying in their homes Longer, twelve years on average nationwide. That's data from Red Fin. the longest tenure is here in Los Angeles where the typical homeowner hangs onto a house for twenty years The longer you stay in one place, of course, the more stuff you are going to accumulate And when it is finally time to move or to sell all of that stuff can be a business opportunity Today iss installment of our series, Adventures in Housing. My name is Amy Byer and I am the owner, founder of Handled We do luxury estate sales in Los Angeles and we are here at our latest estate sale. and Beverly Hills. It is a beautiful homeome What we have done is trying to set the collection up for success by staging it like A desirable store We have our main room in here One of the exciting things about this sale is there are some Really beautiful rugs We've got Ceramics in every color. gotot some art books, fun little hanging birds and bird cages, a whimsical cat pillow. I mean, we like everything from you know, the Kitchy, fun to serious things We sell things from four dollars for cook's tools, like whisks and spatulas and things like that to I think the most expensive thing I've ever sold in a sale was sixty five thousand dollars for a rare porsche. It varies. This one, you know, the range, we're still pricing a lot of things. It's a lot of work. I mean, we've been pricing all of this pottery every single piece. So we are going to research the artists. We're going to look at what Similar things have sold for, and we're going to price it from there We offer a full service where you can just hand us the keys and we're going to Do everything and deliver it empty the end So for us, it means getting things donated and junking some things That's a higher level of service. This there's a a second level where we still do phase one and hold the events the exact same except we just don't deal with what's left Both options are just a flat fee So the only reason I know about this, at least on the service side is in twenty fifteen, my mother passed away and I hired a company to help me I didn't know what to do. If you look around, you don't know what to do with everything. So I hired a company, handed them the keys on a plane back to LA and watched as they handled her things so beautifully, it was an online estate sale. I was blown away and I knew immediately I had found a new career path I was really lost for a period of time. You know, I talk about real estate, I did it, but I fell out of love with it and was just floundering in a variety of weird attempts to just make ends meet And she gets sick My mom, I take care of her. She dies And I find this business, I find a whole new It's a whole new career. It's say it's her final gift to me because m just so lucky. I'm really lucky Amy Byer She owns handled estate sales here in Los Angeles Whatever your adventure in housing might be, we would love to hear at marketplace. org slash adventures in housing Center Final note on the way out today. It was Friday, but it's kind of evergreen as we all fret over AI taking our jobs. I saw this one on Bloomberg Ford had to hire back a bunch of engineers It had let go three hundred engineers specifically The company had thought AI could do their jobs in quality assurance. Turns out Not Score one, I think For humanity Air Babawi, Kayen E Ash, John Gordon Noykar, Steve Mllis and Stephanie Seek are the marketplace editing staff. Kelly Slvera is the news director And I'm Kyi Rizal. We will see you tomorrow everybody. This is APM