"The Pitt" is the ultimate workplace drama

serving commercial clients across the Twin Cities since 1980,

“with grounds care, snow management, parking lot services, and seasonal decor.”

Learn more at rxlanscape.com. Just because it does bear repeating, the economy does not stop when headlines turn elsewhere, you know. Also, and completely unrelated, we're going to talk a little television on the program.

Today from American Public Media, this is Marketplace. In Los Angeles, I'm Connor Rizdel. It is Wednesday. Today, this one is the fourth of March.

Good is always to have you along, everybody.

There are some things happening in this economy, hours and globally, that make good sense, oil, for instance, spiking. We all know why.

“Gold, though, off its highs right after the war started, still up a lot.”

The US dollars in Saturday morning, very much in demand, which means it's been strengthening relative to other currencies. All of the above are part for the course when geopolitics goes haywire. Where things are getting strange, though, where that flight to safety paradigm, that we are so very used to, seems to be breaking down,

is in the market for US treasuries, the safest of safe havens. You would expect investors to want more of them, just like they want more dollars. But no, Marketplace is just in hoes on the, what the heck is going on here, desk for us today? When investors want a pile into the safety of the US dollar, they have plenty of options.

You could find a money market fund, that's a relatively safe place to go to. Brendan McKinna, with Wells Fargo, says investors could also park their money in corporate bonds, which you need dollars to buy, same with mortgage-back securities. You could park it in and just the savings account, right, and you're relatively safe there. Investors have been considering these options because they're not exactly thrilled about investing

in US treasuries right now. Sebastian Maliby, senior fellow at the council on foreign relations, says between the president's tariffs, his attacks on federal reserve, and the pendants, his intervention in Venezuela, and now Iran. You just have a series of ad hoc policies that undermine the idea that there's a stable hand guiding the system, and when you don't believe that anymore, you're not going to want to hold

US government debt because you don't trust the US government. But Maliby says investing in Europe, or Asia, is looking risky too, especially since the war is making energy more expensive. Both the East Asian economies and Europe are big energy importers, so as spike in the cost of energy is very, very bad for them.

Compared to that, the US economy looks relatively more stable. Christopher Vekio had a futures in FX with the research company Tasty Live, says investors are basically just sitting on their dollars. If you are someone who, for example, is in Europe, and this really is more of a question for foreign investors and traders, I may sell out of my US treasuries, and instead of

converting the money back into euros, I could just keep them in US dollars.

Vekio says no matter what investors think of US treasuries, the dollars always going to be in

high demand, because the global economy runs on dollars. I'm just in hell for Marketplace. On Wall Street, the day traders did what they do sometimes. When things go, hey, why are they going to ignore anything that's not right in front of their noses? We will have the details when we do the numbers. Treasury Secretary Scott Benson said today that those tariffs that President Trump announced

after the Supreme Court ruling against him a couple of weeks ago, 10 percent tariffs the President imposed, best in said today that could go up to 15 percent as soon as this week. One hesitates to presume the Secretary of the Treasury isn't aware of this, but that tariff bump would be feeding into an economy already dealing with the inflationary pressures that were brings. And we're going to talk about that. And some other stuff,

with Heather Long, she's the Chief Economist at Navy Federal Credit Union also comes by on Fridays from time to time. Hi, Heather. Hi, Kai. What is your inflation spidey sense if you will

“telling you right now? Well, it's certainly going to be going out. The question is how much?”

I certainly noticed the gas prices on my drive into work this morning already up about 20 cents, and we're all wondering what's next. And you just mentioned these tariffs that are now going to be

hiked, but presumably at the end of the week to 15 percent and a lot of the confusion that's going

on around the world about whether there will be some exclusions for Europe or UK or Australia,

a lot of anxiety from American consumers about high prices and March is certainly not going to help.

So, let's talk transmission mechanisms. Oil and gas you mentioned and we can see that we are seeing that at the pump. Eventually, all of that's going to show up in the cost of goods, right? Not just at the pump. That's right. I mean, we forget, sometimes how much those oil prices flow through the entire economy and economy where we transport goods across the country, whether it's food products, or whether it's cars, and so that's why when you really start to see oil prices get up,

I would say the trigger dollar amount that I'm really watching is to be get to $90. Do we get into the $90 again? Because that translates to $4 gas, and that's when you

really start to see that psychological shift for both consumers and businesses to thinking that

this is a higher inflation regime that we're going back to. Not for nothing, but we're over 80 on on-brand. I mean, you know, it's not far away. Exactly. Exactly. So, we're not there yet,

“and I think that's why you've seen this very muted market reaction so far, but the million trillion”

dollar question is how long does this last? Well, let's go there for a minute. I'm not going to ask you how long this is going to last, but I need an expert in your the expert in this conversation to talk to me about about the cascading effect the longer it does last. I mean, the president is talking about four to six weeks, you know? And that's, I hate to use the word manageable, but every single analyst note in my inbox right now says that if it's four to six

weeks, it's a manageable hit to the U.S. economy. It's probably a different calculation for Europe and Asia, but you know, the question I think that begins to transition when we get to something like $90 oil is you get these feelings that were back to that dreaded summer of 2022 when inflation really spiked. You know, that's the last time we really saw gas and oil in that, you know, $100

“and a barrel mark. And so that's I think what you're really worried about whether you're the”

federal reserve or whether you're a corporation trying to assess this is if we get to a place where companies and consumers really start to change their assessment of what they think the next several months are going to be. It's not happening yet. Right. Right. Last thing and, and then I'll let you get back to work. The phrase supply shock is being banded about because it's not just oil and gas and it's not just the street of hormones. Insurance for shipping is going up. There's

general unease out there. That's, that's a real worry. Right. This idea of a supply shock now into this economy. Yeah. That's a really good point. And, you know, the good, the flip side of that is that we had an over supply arguably of oil and gas in the market coming into this and that most other parts of the economy were pretty well supplied. So you're starting from a much better base than say what happened in 2022 when we were coming off a period where there still wasn't enough supply

of cabinets or toasters or auto parts or whatever. But you're right. Again, if this is something that lasts for months, then you're back to 2022. Heather Long, and maybe federal. Heather,

thanks a lot. Always good to talk to you. Thanks, guys. As Heather and I were just talking about,

this war is already starting to be felt in this economy. But, as we've also talking about, there are things that are going to hit right away and there are things that are going to take a while on that latter list of things that are going to take a while is the labor market. The February jobs report comes out on Friday and we did get something of a preview today. Payroll processing company ADP says private company hiring jump last month, 63,000 new jobs

also and not for nothing. Pay was up about four and a half percent year over a year. Marketplace across the Havier reads the tea leaves on that one.

“All this job's data is really important. Says RSM Chief Economist, Joe Bruce Wayless.”

The unemployment rate, average average worked, average hourly earnings and with the median duration of unemployment is those are really key factors to understand the health of the American economy. He says ADP's numbers reaffirm a low higher low fire labor market and make him want to look closely at health care and private education in Friday's jobs report. He's been the primary driver of hiring for the past several months.

I think the story is a good one.

That senior Economist David Tinsley.

“The jobs growth at least at the start of this year had some room momentum behind it.”

But he says there's also a growing gap with higher income households seeing wage growth of more than four percent year over a year. While low income households have wage growth with below 1%. He'll be looking for any indications of that in Friday's BLS data. Kathy Post-Jansik at nationwide is expecting modest job gains for February and will be watching for any provisions to January solid number. But in terms of what consumers, businesses,

and investors are focused on, it's probably going to be overshadowed by what's happening in Iran. And she says what impact oil and gas prices, or even just uncertainty, could have as the conflict continues. I'm Carla Havier from Marketplace. Coming up, you don't know what that doctor had for breakfast. You just show up and you

“hope to have God he's going to save you. And you hope the writers know what they're doing.”

But first let's us do the numbers. Downdustro's up 238 today about a half percent, 48,739. But as that could prove 290 points about one and three tenth percent finished at 22,000 and eight hundred and seven. There's some p5 hundred added 52 points, eight tenth percent ended things at 68 and 69 bond prices. Thanks for asking. They fell yield on the tenure

treasury up 4.10 percent you're listening to Marketplace.

This Marketplace podcast is supported by Faye Greedrinker, one of the largest law firms in Minnesota, with nearly 300 Minneapolis attorneys helping clients solve complex legal issues and meeting their goals. In the Twin Cities and beyond, Faye Greedrinker.com. This is Marketplace. I'm Kai Rizdong. Amazon has confirmed that several of its data centers in the Middle East have been hit. There were service outages in that region, of course, banking and payment apps included. But

more to the point, there are increasing worries now about data centers security, which as you know have become the backbone of the internet and the AI economy. Marketplace is making Cardi Corrino as more on that one. The computing power in data centers is basically the new oil

“says analysts and Ives at Wedbush. It's the essential resource that so much of our digital”

economy runs on. So it was only a matter of time until this critical infrastructure was targeted,

like oil pipelines have been in war. They have to adjust to the new realities where they're going to have to make sure they protect their assets both abroad as well as in the US. The industry has been focused on the threat of cyber attacks as just in Sherman at global cyber strategies. China, Russia, Iran, others trying to hack into cloud systems, data centers to steal data, disrupt training. Most of the cloud is run by Amazon, Microsoft, and Google, which Sherman says

are well-resourced to defend against hacks. But the average commercial facility isn't equipped to deal with physical threats like drones, says Matt Pearl at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. It's just not hardened in the same way that military infrastructure is, even though in many cases, the military relies on it. And some of the same qualities that make data centers unpopular neighbors also make them easy targets. These data centers are becoming very large,

physically, they're above ground, you know, it's all visible. He says even consumer drones can do a lot of damage, the kind that takes more than some lines of code to repair. I'm making McCarty Carino from Marketplace. We're in the thick of Hollywood award season right now, movies, and TV. And if you happen to have seen or read about the actor award Sunday night, you know that in the world of television, the pit won big. I wish we could say we could plan

it this way. But we got lucky that the very next morning we found ourselves on the Warner Brothers lot out in Burbank. I don't usually do this with Hollywood big wigs. Well, you're not doing any today with Hollywood big wigs. That's our Scott Gamble. He created the pit. He's also the showrunner and a writer and an executive producer of that show along with no whiley and John Welles, both of whom he worked with on ER way way back in the day. If you're not watching full disclosure,

I am the pit is a medical drama on HBO Max. It happens in real time. Each episode is a single hour of a shift in the emergency room. New episodes drop on Thursdays if you're looking for something

I want to talk about let's talk about that thing behind you first of all. It looks for all the

world like an architectural drawing like actual plans for a hospital ER, except clearly it's for the show. Yep. And you've got I guess characters and people and places and all sorts of things on multicolored stickies up there. What's going on there? This is how we plan out our show. We have to track everyone where they are. These are all patients. You can see they've all got tags on and also tell what's episode there in. So we can tell when they're coming, when they're going. All of us have

these at home. We all have the maps. All the writers. All the writers. Okay. Yeah, you can't write without the map and then you have counters or players for all the actors and we just move them around like risk as you figure it out because our show is very kinetic and very and so in order to keep

“that going you have to know the set very well and you have to know that if I want to have Robbie”

and Dana have a conversation you know starting in room 20 that ends at the hub I better make sure that dialogue covers that distance you know so you have to literally the time it takes the absolutely. Yeah, so you'll see us down there all the right on the segment themselves. You know as they walk the set. You've been in TV for a long time. Yeah, you've been jagged and obviously you're and NCIS. What was it about doing this project that got you to come back to a thing that honestly you've

mastered kind of, right? Yeah, yeah. Ironically enough this came out of a conversation of why I would never

do another medical show and I listed a bunch of reasons and thought of one maybe that I would do and then it just transformed into you know once sort of hit upon the real time aspect changed everything and what we wanted to do was we had the opportunity to create a new medical show from scratch and so that was exciting because you were inheriting nothing other than I had Noah and John. Right, right, did you know what was going to work? No, I didn't bring any of my writers from my other shows

with me. I didn't bring anyone with me because I was afraid it wasn't going to work and I didn't want people to take on a job at my behest and then I haven't failed and we wrote the whole and shot the whole first season without any air date so we didn't know when we were going to be on the air we didn't know if people were going to like it. There was no feedback really. This is your first streaming

“thing. It is my first streaming show. What do you think? I think it's fun because it”

is working out. It's so fun. Yeah, no, it's fun. It's I just wrote a pilot for a network show and it was one of the most difficult things I've done because I've been like just now recently. Yeah, sorry, aren't you busy enough? Yeah, well, it was a favor. I was a favor. But it was so weird to be off. I've been off leash for a couple years. Yeah, it was better. Yeah, I enjoy this. Yeah, it's fun. Yeah, it's very fun. About the show. A couple of things. Medical drama sure, yes,

that's the way you guys are doing it and thinking of it. For my money for the program, I work on.

It's a workplace drama, right? These people are doing a job. Yep. And they never go home with them.

Well, that's the thing I want to ask you about. You only see them in the workplace. Yeah. How come? Because I think that's your experience when you're in the ER. You don't know what that doctor had for breakfast. You just show up and you hope to have God he's going to save you. You know,

“and I think it made it much more realistic, much more immersive. You know, we really wanted”

to focus on the emergency department and not so much on the doctors, of course, but only in their work environment because that's where we see them. Speaking of doctors, you have a lot of them. I do set on staff. Well, we have one on set every day, but we rotate them out, so we have four or five that rotate out because they're all working. So they have to, you know, do the real medicine and they're not doing our fake medicine. And then I have this year, we'll have three doctors

in the writer's room and that makes, you know, that makes it so authentic, because we're working with real doctors all the time. And we are also working with experts and other doctors, especially this time of year, we're just starting episode, season three. We talked to a lot of experts in the medical field about, you know, anything that's coming up. Are you writing your shooting? We're done shooting and today we have our first writers meeting today for season three.

Do you still write? Oh, yeah. Yeah, that's the best part of the whole job. I read somewhere that you sleep like eight at night to two in the morning and then you read it right at that time. That's that true. Yeah, I do a by phase of sleep cycle. Yeah, really. Yeah. I guess it works. It works. Yeah, it happened during hiatus. I was not sleeping well and I was getting really pissed off. And so I was like, if you're going to be up, you're going to work. And I actually got a lot of work done,

went back to bed, woke up, started my day, had a whole days worth of writing. I mean, you look pretty good. I feel okay. I fall asleep driving here sometimes, but I don't know that's okay. Hold on a second.

injuries and you see it all and you guys are going to great job with prostheses and all that jazz,

but there's there's a ion season two and there's the Medicaid cuts in season two. There was the

“measles outbreak right in season one, which you guys where I think ahead of, yeah, happening in actual”

real life. Um, clearly you're thinking about real world stuff as you as you write this show, right? Well, what happens when we talk to the experts, um, regardless of what field of medicine they're in, um, you know, we talked to them about what scares them, what keeps them up at night. And then when we extrapolate, uh, where things were going, being in the head of the measles epidemic was not being overly prescient. It was just, nobody's getting vaccinated. Eventually

this is going to hit a turning point, tipping point. And so I think we we look at things like that,

Medicare, uh, Medicaid cuts. You cut people's Medicare, Medicaid, they're not going to have a primary

care physician. When they do get sick, they're going to be really sick. And the only place they're going to go is the ER. So it's going to put even more strain on the system, which is going to be even harder on the nurses and the doctors. And so it's just about looking at the real world situations and then thinking about how they're going to play out. You, uh, I watched your, your, uh, Emmy speech from a year ago when you want best from. And you made a point at the end of that

speech of honoring and dedicating it to healthcare workers. You said, you know, honor them, trust them,

“protect them, I think, is what you said. Um, why? Well, we wouldn't be here without them. I mean,”

I wouldn't be here without them. And, you know, that, that's sort of show is kind of a love

letter. I think to the healthcare workers for what they do. A lot of my friends are doctors and,

um, and nurses. And I just think it's a wonderful profession. And we deserve to give them the credit they deserve. Did, did it start that way though? Because, I mean, you know, you read about no whiley and him actually going to Pittsburgh and going to medical centers there and people treating him, I mean, yes, he's a star, but treating him like an actual rock star, you know, and, and going crazy over him. Did, was that the plan? Did that surprise you? Yeah, that surprised me because I, I think

I showed was a slow build. We kind of came out of nowhere and a lot of it was weird amount. And a lot of it was weird amount from the healthcare professionals. And if anyone embraced the show, that's who we wanted because that's who it was sort of meant for and dedicated to. And if we can do well by them, then I have our job is done. Working on season three now, you're going to start writing. It's going to start shooting soon enough, I suppose. June 11th, I think. You're going to ride this

for a while? Oh, yeah. I mean, I was on my last show for 14 seasons. Yeah. For me, part of my job,

“I think, a very important part of my job is to keep a show on the air as long as possible to keep people”

employed for as long as they want to work. And so I stay with the job until they turn the lights out. Talk to me about that ecosystem, right? Because this now, the show now and you and Wells and, and know, while are kind of economic engines, are kind of economic drivers, right? You have of the whole infrastructure of the show. Yeah. You think about that? Sometimes, I focus mostly on the storytelling. The other parts are gravy. You know, if the story telling is good and people are enjoying it,

then everything else will fall into place, I think. A word here about the business of this business, and you can dodge this one if you want to. The Paramount Netflix, Warner Brothers, Goat Rope for a month of a better work has now been resolved. Are you, what's your worry factor of that? Or are you just keeping your head down and doing your job? Yeah, I don't really worry about it. You know, ill-change business, the business side of it, but it won't change what we do.

You know, our job is to still tell stories that touch on the human condition and move people. To me, it's kind of like, I said the other day, it's kind of like a divorce. You know, it's coming. You just hope you get through it and see what happens so you can move forward. You know? Scott, come a thanks a long. Thanks, Matt. I appreciate it. Appreciate it. This final note on the way out today in which it's all over, but the voting, I guess. The White

House announced this afternoon, it has formally sent Kevin Worsh's nomination to the Senate, both as a member of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve, that is a 14-year term, and as the new chairman thereof, that is a concurrent four-year job. Two things of note about the above. Number one, at least one Republican member of the Senate Banking Committee has said he is a no on Worsh's nomination unless and until the Department of Justice drops its criminal investigation

of the central bank and the incumbent chair. Speaking of whom, the incumbent chair that is, this is thing number two. Jay Powell's term as chair is indeed up in May, but he's got another

fanwatchers right now is whether or not he is going to stick around. Our media production team includes

“Brian Allison, John Focke, Montana Johnson, Drew Jostette, Gary O'Keefe, and Charlton Thorpe.”

Alex Simpson is the manager of Media Production, and I'm Kai Rizdel, we will see you tomorrow, everybody.

This is APM.