Category: 3-EconSometimeCommentary

When Cody Fischer decided to get into real estate development, he had a vision. He wanted to build affordable, energy efficient apartments in Minneapolis, not far from where he grew up.

His vision was well-timed because, in 2019, Minneapolis's city council passed one of the most ambitious housing plans in the nation. One aim of that plan was to alleviate the city's housing shortage by encouraging developers like Cody to build, build, build.

But when Cody tried to build, he ran into problems. The kinds of problems that arise all over the country when cities confront a short supply of housing, and try to build their way out.

Today on the show, NIMBYism, YIMBYism and why it's so hard to fix the housing shortage. Told through the story of two apartment buildings in Minneapolis.

This episode was hosted by Amanda Aronczyk and Kenny Malone. It was produced by Emma Peaslee and Sofia Shchukina, and edited by Molly Messick. It was engineered by James Willets and fact-checked by Sierra Juarez. Alex Goldmark is Planet Money's executive producer.

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Take the 2024 Planet Money Summer School Quiz here to earn your personalized diploma!

Find all the episodes from this season of Summer School here. And past seasons here. And follow along on TikTok here for video Summer School.

We are assembled here on the lawn of Planet Money University for the greatest graduation in history – because it features the greatest economic minds in history. We'll hear from Adam Smith, Karl Marx, John Maynard Keynes, and some surprising guests as they teach us a little bit more economics, and offer a lot of life advice.

But first, we have to wrap up our (somewhat) complete economic history of the world. We'll catch up on the last fifty years or so of human achievement and ask ourselves, has economics made life better for us all?

This series is hosted by Robert Smith and produced by Audrey Dilling. Our project manager is Devin Mellor. This episode was edited by Planet Money Executive Producer Alex Goldmark and fact-checked by Sofia Shchukina.

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Once considered noble and heroic, pigeons are now viewed as an urban nuisance — one that costs cities millions of dollars a year. Zachary Crockett tosses some crumbs.

 

• SOURCES:
  • Andrew Blechman, journalist and author.
  • David Champagne, owner of Bird Busters, Inc.

 

• RESOURCES:
  • "Racing Pigeon Sells For A Record-Breaking $1.9 Million At Auction," by Carlie Porterfield (Forbes, 2020).
  • "Feathers of Honor: U.S. Army Signal Corps Pigeon Service in World War I, 1917–1918," by Frank A. Blazich Jr. (Army History, 2020).
  • "Pigeon Wars," by Jon Mooallem (The New York Times, 2006).
  • Pigeons: The Fascinating Saga of the World's Most Revered and Reviled Bird, by Andrew Blechman (2004).
  • "Pigeons Have Magnets," by Charles Walcott, James L. Gould, and J. L. Kirschvink (Science, 1979).
  • "The Pigeon as a Quality-Control Inspector," by Thom Verhave (American Psychologist, 1966).

 

• EXTRAS:
  • "Freakonomics Radio Live: 'Jesus Could Have Been a Pigeon,'" by Freakonomics Radio (2018).

When David Rashid took over US autoparts maker Plews and Edelmann, the company was losing business to its Chinese rival, Qingdao Sunsong. Both companies make power steering hoses, but Sunsong was offering its hoses to retailers at a much lower price.

Then, in 2018, the Trump administration threw companies like Rashid's a lifeline, by announcing tariffs on a range of Chinese goods, including some autoparts. Rashid thought the tariffs would finally force Sunsong to raise its prices, but, somehow, the company never did.

It was a mystery. And it led Rashid to take on a new role – amateur trade fraud investigator. How could his competitor, Sunsong, absorb that 25% tax without changing its prices? And why had all of Sunsong's steering hoses stopped coming from China and started coming from Thailand?

On today's episode, the wide gulf between how tariffs work in theory... and how they actually work in practice. And David Rashid's quest to figure out what, if anything, he could do about it. It's a quest that will involve international detectives, forensic chemists, and a friendship founded on a shared love for hummus.

This episode was hosted by Keith Romer and Jeff Guo. It was produced by Emma Peaslee and edited by Molly Messick. It was fact-checked by Sierra Juarez and engineered by Ko Takasugi-Czernowin. Alex Goldmark is our executive producer.

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Find all the episodes from this season here. And past seasons here. And follow along on TikTok here for video Summer School.

When we last left the United States of America in our economic telling of history, it was the early 1900s and the country's leaders were starting to feel like they had the economic situation all figured out. Flash forward a decade or so, and the financial picture was still looking pretty good as America emerged from the first World War.

But then, everything came crashing down with the stock market collapse of 1929. Businesses closed, banks collapsed, one in four people was unemployed, families couldn't make rent, the economy was broken. And this was happening all over the world. Today we'll look at how leaders around the globe intervened to turn the international economy around, and in the process, how the Great Depression rapidly transformed the relationship between government and business forever.

This series is hosted by Robert Smith and produced by Audrey Dilling. Our project manager is Devin Mellor. This episode was edited by Planet Money Executive Producer Alex Goldmark and fact-checked by Sofia Shchukina.

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Welcome back to the Environmental Economics series, hosted by Jordan Lofthouse. On this episode, Jordan converses with Mikayla Novak and Nathan Goodman on their paper, "Militarized Climate Planning: What is Left?", co-authored by Lofthouse, Novak and Goodman. Their paper is influenced by Don Lavoie's critiques of central planning laid out in his book, National Economic Planning: What is Left?, applied to today's issue of militarized climate planning or "war footing." Instead of using climate planning to solve climate change, they advocate for a peaceful, polycentric approach that is more adaptive to local knowledge.

Mikayla Novak is senior fellow with the F. A. Hayek Program for Advanced Study in Philosophy, Politics and Economics at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University and the Associate Director of the Entangled Political Economy Research Network. Learn more about her work with EPERN here.

Nathan Goodman is a senior research fellow and senior fellow at the F.A. Hayek Program for Advanced Study in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. He is an alum of the Mercatus PhD Fellowship. Learn more about Nathan’s work here.

Check out Jordan Lofthouse's work.

If you like the show, please subscribe, leave a 5-star review, and tell others about the show! We're available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, and wherever you get your podcasts.

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CC Music: Twisterium

How do criminals turn their ill-gotten gains into taxable income? And how does law enforcement stop them? Zachary Crockett follows the money.

 

• SOURCES:
  • Patrick McKenzie, fraud prevention expert and strategic advisor at Stripe.
  • Kerry Myers, associate professor of instruction at the University of South Florida and former F.B.I. special agent.

 

• RESOURCES:
  • "National Assessments of Money Laundering Risks: Stumbling at the Start," by Joras Ferwerda and Peter Reuter (Risk Analysis, 2024).
  • "Hacker 'Washes' $25M in Stolen Crypto Through Magic: The Gathering Card Scheme," by Oliver Dale (Blockonomi, 2023).
  • "Money Spending or Money Laundering: The Fine Line between Legal and Illegal Financial Transactions," by Matthew R. Auten (Pace Law Review, 2013).
  • "HSBC to Pay $1.9bn in US Money Laundering Penalties" (BBC News, 2012).
  • "How a Big US Bank Laundered Billions From Mexico's Murderous Drug Gangs," by Ed Vulliamy (The Guardian, 2011).

 

• EXTRAS:
  • "Why Does One Tiny State Set the Rules for Everyone?" by Freakonomics Radio (2023).
  • "Kafkaesque," S3.E9 of Breaking Bad (2010).

You might have seen ads for online banking services that seem to offer a lot of great stuff — accounts you can open in minutes and without a minimum balance or monthly fees. The ads seem to say: "These aren't your parents' boring old banks." But the truth is: Even though they might resemble banks, they aren't.

These "bank-like" companies are a type of "fintech" or financial technology company. And this is a story about the potential risks of putting your money into these apps.

Banks go through a whole regulatory gauntlet in order to exist. But, in the past several years, there has been a rise in fintechs that skirt regulations. And many of these pose a real threat to even the most savvy of depositors.

When a little known tech company filed for bankruptcy a few months ago, thousands of people couldn't access the millions of dollars they saved. On today's show, we meet some of the people affected and learn what the fintech industry reveals about banking regulation.

Today's show was hosted by Erika Beras and Sally Helm. It was produced by Sam Yellowhorse Kesler and Sofia Shchukina with help from James Sneed. It was edited by Jess Jiang and fact-checked by Kevin Volkl. It was engineered by Valentina Rodríguez Sánchez with help from James Willetts. Alex Goldmark is our executive producer.

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Episodes each Wednesday through labor day. Find all the episodes from this season here. And past seasons here. And follow along on TikTok here for video Summer School.

In the middle of the twentieth century, China and its neighbors in East Asia were poor, mostly rural economies. China had been wrecked by a brutal civil war. Taiwan became the home of people fleeing from that conflict. Japan and Korea were rebuilding after their own wars. And then in the later half of the twentieth century, they started their comeback. The governments made some explicit choices that unleashed the power of individual incentives and free market forces and lifted millions of people out of poverty. We focus specifically on China and Taiwan during this time, when they showed a burst of economic progress rarely seen on this globe. Why then? Why there? Can other nations copy that? We'll try to find out.

This series is hosted by Robert Smith and produced by Audrey Dilling. Our project manager is Devin Mellor. This episode was edited by Planet Money Executive Producer Alex Goldmark and fact-checked by Sofia Shchukina.

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Thanks to online booking platforms, the way we make reservations has changed — but a table at a hot restaurant on a Friday night is still a valuable commodity. Zachary Crockett books a four-top for 7 p.m.

 

• SOURCES:
  • Lisa Blount, director of marketing and public relations at Antoine’s Restaurant.
  • Adam Iscoe, writer.

 

• RESOURCES:
  • "Why You Can’t Get a Restaurant Reservation," by Adam Iscoe (The New Yorker, 2024).
  • "New York Passes Bill to Make the Restaurant Reservation Black Market Illegal," by Emma Orlow (Eater, 2024).
  • "When Canceling Your Reservation Costs as Much as Dinner," by T.M. Brown (The New York Times, 2024).
  • "65% Of Diners Go Directly To A Restaurant’s Website To Book A Reservation," by Tessa Zuluaga (Toast, 2024).
  • "No-Show Diners by the Numbers," by OpenTable (2021).
  • "Selling Reservations Democratizes the Dining Experience," by Tyler Cowen (The New York Times, 2015).
  • Antoine's Restaurant.

 

• EXTRAS:
  • "Why You Shouldn’t Open a Restaurant," by Freakonomics Radio (2018).