Central banks move in step, for now

How much your money is going to cost, and yes, you can get insurance for that. From American Public Media, this is Market Plan. In Los Angeles, I'm Kyri Rizdall. It is Tuesday today. This one is the 28th of April.

It is always to have you along, everybody.

If you get a bunch of economists and analysts in a room, and you ask them to name the,

“I don't know, top three most important factors in this global economy of ours, I am going”

to bet that most, if not all of them, have somewhere in that top three, the cost of money interest rates. So, it is no small matter that this week is kind of a central bank of Palusa. If you will, the Bank of Japan left it's key rate unchanged this morning. We're going to hear from the Bank of England, the Bank of Canada, and the central bank, too, and the Federal Reserve's Open Market Committee meets today and tomorrow, almost certainly,

by the way, Jay Powell's last get-to-the-other-end's price conference as Fed Share. Anyway, Marketplace Justin Ho is going to get us going with what those central banks are up against,

and how that might square, or not, with what the Fed is dealing with back here.

Central banks around the world are facing a similar dilemma. David Kelly, at JP Morgan acid management, says on one hand, prices are rising. Because what they've seen, particularly since the start of the Iran War,

“is it's speaking recent energy prices. That's adding to inflation.”

And central banks deal with inflation by raising interest rates. But Kelly says, on the other hand, the Iran War and higher energy prices are also slowing down economic growth all over the world. And central banks deal with that by lowering interest rates. It's a fine balancing act of the really trying to set monetary policy to try to keep inflation in check without so-and-down the economy.

As a result, Kelly says most central banks are going to keep interest rates unchanged this week.

But Dean Turner, with UBS global wealth management, says inflation pressures are rising. There's going to be a lot of expectations that central banks are going to look to have Tyson policy in the coming months, which is essentially raising interest rates. Turner says that's different from what the federal reserve is expected to do. Especially since Kevin Worsh, President Trump's nominee for Fed Chair,

backs interest rate cuts. The bias there would be especially with the renewing coming chair that, you know, the next moving interest rates will be down from the Federal Reserve. If the federal reserve starts diverging from the other central banks, investors will start to move money towards countries where rates are higher.

Alex Christina, with manual life investment management, says that it means less demand for U.S. assets and dollars. So you're probably seeing some downward pressure on the U.S. dollar if this directly happens. And a cheaper dollar makes imports more expensive. But Christina says all of this could change depending on what happens with the war in Iran.

You know, if you're the way of a magic wand, and we got full flows through the straight of her moves back up and running, a lot of the market posture and around what central banks will do. Probably dissipates pretty quickly. In other words, central banks around the world could start worrying less about inflation, and more about economic growth.

I'm Justin Howe, from Marketplace. Wall Street today, traders were maybe waiting to see what the Fed says tomorrow, although it's not like there is going to be a rate cut. Speaking of oil, by the way, is that last guy in Justin Spont was doing the straight still closed, crude up another couple of three percent on both benchmarks,

Brent, North Sea, the global benchmark, just shy of $1100 barrel. Also, you might have heard the United Arab Emirates is going to leave OPEC after 60 something years in that cartel. There's a whole lot of petrol politics going on that I will spare you, but it is a very big deal. Elsewise, in Market Capitalism, a fade by the three major indices, we will have the details.

When we do the numbers. The American consumer, as you know, and may well be experiencing personally, is not feeling great about this economy.

“And should you need data to validate those feelings?”

The conference board is only too happy to oblige. To be fair, the group's latest survey out today does show consumer confidence has ticked up this month. However, comma, it is still below the long-term baseline where it has been languishing for more than a year now. One perhaps not surprising culprit, high prices that just keep on rising. Daniel Ackerman made some calls.

like the little treat sometimes.

“"For lunch every day, for dessert, I like to have a small cake or a pie, a little individual cake or a pie."”

He says those used to cost 84 cents a piece. Now, they're up to 93. "I have noticed that increase, and I am upset about it." But for now, he's still enjoying those cakes. And consumers across the economy are still buying things,

even the goods that are hardest hit by inflation, like gasoline. Hoover says in places like New Orleans where he lives, there aren't many other ways to get around. "Our mass transit system isn't one that would allow for easy substitution."

Gas prices are also on the mind of Ted Rosman, he's principal analyst with Bankrate in New York City.

"I filled up yesterday, and it was about $60 to fill up the family SUV. I mean, that's noticeably higher than it used to be."

“Rosman says he's been thinking about ways to save on gas, like combining errands,”

but he hasn't really implemented them yet. And this gets at what's been the paradox of the American consumer. "People are not feeling great, but yet they're spending anyway. It's been really one of the biggest puzzling factors in the economy the past few years. And we really haven't seen that change. One explanation is the labor market,

says Dana and Peterson chief economist with the conference board. Even though there's not a ton of hiring, overall unemployment remains low. "As long as people are working, they're getting income, and they are still spending." "They're just not happy about it. I'm Daniel Akerman for Marketplace." There is a reality about the industry that accounts for almost one out of every $5 spent in the

economy that gets lost in all the high-level policy machinations that happen.

“Health care is a business. There are bottom lines for all the sole practitioners and medical”

groups and hospitals out there. So the news that Idaho is cutting how much it pays doctors, dentists, and therapists who treat Medicaid patients to close the state budget gap is a very live issue. Pediatric practices are feeling at the most since about half the kids in this country are ensured through that joint state and federal program. And as Alex Olgin reports, other states are thinking about similar cuts. "Medicade meant everything to carry

Warren when her kids were little. It covered vaccines. Doctors visits?" It was ginormous in helping me be able to raise my children and be able to move forward to healthy things for them. Now Warren sees the other side of Medicaid. She runs the business operations for quarterly and pediatrics in Northern Idaho. 40% of the practices patients have Medicaid. She says the payment is solo. It doesn't even cover the costs to see a patient.

That reality has practices like hers on thin margins. Then last year, Idaho cut how much it pays doctors across the state, sending her practice over the edge. There's been tears, sadness, anger, bitterness, frustration. After losing 13% of the revenue, the doctors made a tough call. Sell their practice to a local community health center, which actually gets paid more to see these patients. It was just a move we had to make to protect

our community. And that's that biggest focus is ensuring that the community has care. Idaho is a warning sign of what's to come. States are facing budget shortfalls driven by tax cuts and an anticipated one trillion dollar reduction in federal spending on Medicaid over 10 years. In Colorado, for example, the state already pulled back a Medicaid rate increase. The governor said the 2025 tax bill forced the change. The new law shifts more Medicaid costs to

states, forcing a choice, cut benefits, or what they pay doctors. It's really difficult for states to be kind of generous on both of those at the same time. That's Diane Alexander, an economist at the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania. She found back in 2013 when the Affordable Care Act temporarily raised Medicaid rates, it made a big difference. Increases as small as $10 per visit made it easier to get into a doctor. It doesn't sound like

that much on paper, but on the other hand, that was like, I don't know, maybe like a 10 to 15% increase in the baseline rates. But a few years later, when the rates went back down, Alexander found access went with them. We saw kind of the reverse effect. So within a year, most of the gains had been lost when the payments went back down. Alexander worries that if states cut rates again, we could see similar effects, meaning people have insurance on paper, but they'll have trouble

finding a doctor who will actually see them. Dr. Andrew Racine is the president of the American Academy of Pediatrics. He worries this will hit kids care, particularly hard.

In pediatrics, you don't like to be catastrophists because our glasses always have full.

Which has been around since 1965. Racine Warren's reimbursement or coverage guts could

“escalate the trend of hospitals closing or scaling back pediatric services. Since 2008 hospitals”

have closed a third of pediatric inpatient units, which includes things like pediatric ICU's

or pick-use. It doesn't matter whether you're on an indicator or not. If there's no pick-use, there's no pick-use. Elizabeth Parsons, a pediatrician at Pocatelo Children's Clinic in Southeastern Idaho, is worried about her practices future. To cope with the cuts, she and her colleagues are taking a 25% pay-cut and working longer hours. It has become more difficult for us to see medications because the margins have become negative. I hope that we could survive. I don't know.

Pediatricians worry that the cuts combined with expected coverage losses will leave kids in a large, unable to get basic care to keep them healthy. I'm Alex Olget from Marketplace. Depending on how much time you spend online, you might have already noticed this, that there are courses out there that you can take on almost anything. How to start your own business? How to alter clothes? Something called manifesting. The revenue estimate on the global digital education market

come $20-30 is $134 billion that's from the Consulting Firm Grand View Research. Emily Stewart

wrote about all of this the other day. She's a senior correspondent at Business Insider. Emily, thanks for coming on the program. Thank you so much for having me. Tell me about these courses.

“Would you, I guess, first of all, who is offering these things and about what subjects?”

I mean, basically, anybody can offer an online course if you think about it. I wrote a story about this recently in the way I kind of came into it as I was talking to people who flip stuff so that they find it goodwill online. And they said, you know, actually the money for us is it's in selling stuff anymore. It's an offering courses. And so what we've seen over the year, especially online, people can offer a course in anything. A lot of influencers do it, a lot of

marketers do it. And it's pretty good money if you can, if you can actually get around to it, because you basically film some videos, put them online, sell them, set them and forget it. All right, the flip side of this is who's buying them? Who's taking them? Who's paying the $1,500,000 to take these courses? I mean, that's a question. And some of them, to be clear,

“not, you know, they're not that expensive. I found some online for, you know, $44,”

where you can manifest money. But a lot of people do it. You think about, you know, in the same age, a lot of people feel like their skillset isn't quite right for the labor market. They're worried about money. They're also maybe not so sure about traditional education. And so a lot of people go looking for these things. I mean, I hear masterclass ads all of the time.

And not to say that these are like badness and thoroughly, but the problem is there are so many

that it can be really hard to figure out what is worth your money and what's not. Right. So there's definitely a caveat and toward a thing about this. But I do want to back up to something you said. There is in the air now on ease about this economy. And college maybe for some is too expensive and not working out. So they're just looking for other ways to get stable. Yeah. I mean, if you think about it, right, if you're, you know, thinking about going back to school,

or thinking about going to college now, you might be sitting back and thinking, well, you know, this is $40, $50,000 a year. Here's an online course that tells me, you know, maybe I can learn these skills in a set of weeks that will be much cheaper. Why not do that? And if you think for the people selling the courses, they're also very incentive. A lot of influencers, people feel like, well, I'm really subject to the algorithm. Today, the algorithm loves me. I get an audience tomorrow.

I don't. And so one way to monetize their audiences is to sell them things directly. Sometimes, you know, that is a course. You say this in the piece, but there is a certain snake oilationist to this, right? You don't really know who's actually giving you useful stuff and who's just kind of, you know, scamming you. Yeah, I mean, some of this does feel like multi-level marketing, a little bit where the idea isn't so much that you sell a product, it's that you sell other people

on joining your network. You know, I found a lot of courses that are courses on how to make courses. And some of them say point blank, you don't have to have expertise. You even just make a course. And it's like, well, wait, wait, wait. Why would I make a course on nothing? You know, and I talked to a couple of people for this who had had bad experiences who had felt like,

And you know, regardless of, you know, the people even offering the courses, people tend to drop off of these things, like, who among us has, has signed up for something and then and given up.

“And so it is one where I think a lot of the time, the, you know, the expectation”

does not line up with reality. Not for nothing, but you could do a course on, I don't know, had I had a right for business inside or I don't know? I mean, that sound nice, but I feel so bad if I didn't like it. No way. You know, me both. That'd be on the radio. I don't know. Emily Stewart, she's a senior course about it at business inside of Emily. Thanks a lot. Thank you. Coming up, people are having drinks, buy and snacks.

I mean, what's not to like? First though, let's do the numbers.

Down Dell shows basically flat down 25 points, 49,141. The NASDAQ off 223, that's points. The percent is nine tenths of one, closed to 24,663, the S&P 500 gave back 35 points,

“about a half percent, 71 and 38. Dan Accommon was telling us earlier about consumer confidence”

ticking up and able despite rising prices. No sign in that and how sure is there some big retailers did today. Walmart's flat target down 2% Costco wholesale slips four tenths to the one percent. A lot of big tech companies are reporting earnings tomorrow. More about that post-haste from Henry App. Amazon slipped about a half percent meta platforms, declined one and a ten percent alphabet that's actually Google tick down two tenths percent. YouTube is well bunch of other stuff.

Bonds down yield on the 10 or 10 out rows, 4.34% you're listening to marketplace. This is Marketplace. I'm Kai Rizdall. Should you be looking for something corporate on which to hang your economic hat the next couple of days? My day recommend big tech,

“capital B, capital T. Tomorrow in Thursday, most of the heavy hitters in that slice of this”

economy are going to report results for their first quarter and you know the names as well

as I do. Meta, Google Microsoft, Amazon, Apple, they are together worth $16 trillion Bloomberg did that math. That is a quarter of the value of all of the companies in the S&P 500 and the way those companies are getting and spending their money can tell us some things about the economy now and what it might look like in the future Marketplace's Henry App has that one. There's a good reason we watched these results each quarter. Big tech makes up a large chunk of

the American economy. Jacob Born is an analyst at E-Marketer. In a span of 48 hours, you have just a handful of five companies that, you know, they can swing the market in either direction. But it's not just the stock market. Big tech can also tell us how consumers have been doing lately. Industry analyst Julie Osk says take Apple, which reports on Thursday. Apple gives us a view of consumer confidence in the markets and their ability to continue to spend when we look at

things like upgrade cycles of iPhones, which can tell us how much discretionary spending consumers are doing. Meanwhile, Amazon's results will give us an even broader view of shopping habits, and then there's Meta and Google, which make a lot of their money selling ads, Osk says. There you also get a sense of the strength of the economy, just based on what folks are spending, to drive awareness and acquisition of consumers. But investors won't be looking as much at

those consumer-facing aspects as Brent Fill at Jeffries, because companies like Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, and Google, they are effectively feeling the AI investment boom of over $700

billion invested this year in infrastructure, and they are the foundation for AI, which is a

bet on the future of this economy. And as big tech spends to make that bet, it's boosting other sectors, Fill says. You're seeing energy, semis, hardware, infrastructure, all these stocks are absolutely ripping higher. Fill says he'll be watching whether big tech keeps spending on data centers, and whether its suppliers can keep up. I'm Henry App from Marketplace. The past couple of years about how in-person events just keep getting more and more popular,

An economic corollary to that is that the more people are paying up for concerts and

“sporting events and whatnot, the more risk that promoters and performers are looking at if”

something goes wrong. Enter then insurance policies, very specific kinds of insurance. Joe Words is a weather and climate reporter at Bloomberg. Joe, it's good to talk to you. Thanks for having me. Set the scene for me. Would your bed bunny has sold out a bunch of

shows in Dent and Columbia? Rain is in the forecast, obviously multi-million dollar investment.

What happens? Yes, right. 145,000 tickets sold. This is three days of concerts at the big stadium there, and really about $23.7 million on the line, not just in ticket sales, talking. Food, drink, merch, all sorts of stuff, and yeah, it's a tricky time of year in Columbia. We got some rain in the forecast, and it's a notoriously tricky place to do forecast. It's got tropical climates and microclimates there. His organizers think we need to ensure

“against a potential washout here. With an eye on the forecast, they set up these weather stations”

like inside the stadium and brokering the insurance that way. Tell me about how that went.

Right. So what they set up was a parametric insurance policy, and this is a policy that will

pay out a set amount and that needs a specific pre-agreed trigger. And the weather stations that they set up were to measure if that trigger happened. And in this case, a pre-agreed amount of rainfall. And this is an amount of rainfall that the organizers thought would lead to losses for the for the concert event. The thing is, weather is changing everywhere. Climate, more broadly, is changing everywhere. And I imagine this applies sort of more broadly than just bad bunny

concerts in Medellin. Yeah. Yeah, that's right. Look, these parametric policies and these weather triggers are pretty common with more extreme events. We see them in renewable energy, right?

So for my buy them to cover an unexpected, you know, wind downturn or cloud of your

skies and imagine and you want to cover some potential losses for your solar energy project or something like that. And in the entertainment industry, we're seeing events really be the predominant driver of a lot of profits in the entertainment industry space. And maybe the risk for your event is not just the event itself, but maybe it's a few hours before the event where people are having drinks, buy and snacks, and a lot of your profits come from that. You can use these types

of parametric policies to cover, you know, that risky period that really might eat into your

“eating to your margins. Yeah, you're using the word casually. But honestly, that's what's going on”

here, right? These companies, the event promoters, also the brokers, the insurance companies themselves. This is a new way or a reimagined way, I suppose, a pricing climate risk. That's right. It's a new way to price that risk, and they're getting better at pricing that risk, both using new tools to look at the data and look at the long-term trends for the bigger risk, but also their pricing exposure, right? How will they know if this triggering of

that happens? And now, with technology making the sensors smaller and more portable, you can pack it up in a flight case, get on a plane, go to Columbia, and set it up, and make sure that that you're confident that these triggering events have happened, and that the payout terms are are met. The kicker to this piece is that like three days after these concerts, there were, in fact, huge range norms in Columbia. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, huge, huge, uh, a torrential range just a few

days later, so it looks like, uh, looks like a smart policy. There you go. Joe Words, Bloomberg, isn't London. Joe, thanks a lot, I appreciate your time. Thanks a lot. This final note on the way out today, it's a new working paper out from the Bureau of Economic Research about CEOs. Lots of interesting stuff in there, including this, the average age at which CEOs are being appointed has risen sharply since the beginning of the century from 51 to 61. There is no

single reason for that, the paper says, but quoting here, rising demand for generalist human capital leads firms to trade off pickability for accumulated experience. Jordan Manji, the name of Maharaj, Janet Win, Olga Oxman, and Virginia Case Myth are the digital team. I'm Kai Rizdahl, we will see you tomorrow, everybody. This is APM.

informed, rather than overwhelmed. Hey, I'm David Brent catcho, special correspondent from Market

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