Planet Money

Tires, Tariffs, and Grizz: Oh My!

/ Matthew Clemente / Leave a comment

Tires, Tariffs, and Grizz: Oh My!

NPR’s Planet Money recently ran as story answering the question: “why are tire prices so damn high?”  Here is a description of the story: 

The price of tires has risen by about 40 percent in the past five years. That’s partly because rubber prices have gone up. But it’s also due to a tariff the U.S. imposed on Chinese tire imports.

As tire prices have risen, more people have been renting tires rather than buying them outright. And renting tires, it turns out, is often a bad deal in the long run.

On today’s show: How a celebrated attempt to help one group of people ended quietly hurting a much larger group. Also on the show: The Grizz.

For more, see our story Why More People Are Renting Tires. And see the paper we mention on the show, U.S. Tire Tariffs: Saving Few Jobs at High Cost.

Father of High-Frequency Trading Advocates Slow Down

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Father of High-Frequency Trading Advocates Slow Down

NPR’s Planet Money recent re-aired the story of Thomas Peterffy, a financial innovator that helped chang how (fast) stock trading occurs.  Here is a description of the story:

Thomas Peterffy’s life story includes a typing robot, a proto-iPad, and a vast fortune he amassed as one of the first guys to use computers in financial markets.

On today’s show, Peterffy tells us his story — and he explains why he’s worried about the financial world he helped create.

Patenting Podcasts?

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Patenting Podcasts?

Several weeks ago, I posted a link to Marc Maron’s WTF podcast where he urges his listeners to support the Saving High-tech Innovators from Egregious Legal Disputes (SHIELD) Act, a  pending bipartisan bill that would force patent trolls to pay defendants’ attorney’s fees in unsuccessful litigation.  

This week, NPR’s Planet Money team discusses patent law and the patenting of podcasts. Here is a description of the story: 

Back in the nineties, Jim Logan started a company called Personal Audio. The concept was simple — people could pick out magazine articles they liked on the internet, and his company would send them a cassette tape of those articles being read out loud. The cassette tapes didn’t catch on like Jim hoped, but he had bigger dreams for the idea behind them.

He dreamed that one day you wouldn’t need a cassette player, you would just be able to hear smart people talking about whatever subject you wanted, and that audio would be magically downloaded to a device of your choice. He says he dreamed of podcasting as we know it today.

Now Jim Logan did not create the technology to podcast. He himself is not a modern-day podcaster. But he did get a patent on that big dream of downloading personalized audio, and he claims to have the patent on podcasting.

On today’s show, he says all the people out there podcasting today, owe him money.

 

Edith: Welfare Queen or Government Success Story

/ Matthew Clemente / Leave a comment

Edith: Welfare Queen or Government Success Story

NPR’s Planet Money team recently explored the economic implications of government assistance. 

Here is a description of the story: 

On today’s Planet Money, we meet a single mother who makes $16,000 a year — and who managed to fund a vacation at a Caribbean resort with an interest-free loan from one of the world’s largest banks.

Edith Calzado gets credit cards with teaser zero-percent interest rates — then transfers her balance before the rate ticks up. She signs up for store cards to get discounts — then pays off her bill on time. She gets food stamps and lives in subsidized housing. Her son is doing well in school.

She may be the single most successful and productive beneficiary of government assistance you’ll ever meet.

Demand for Bullets: Shooting Up

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Demand for Bullets: Shooting Up

NPR’s Planet Money recently discussed how there has been an increased demand for ammunition, yet prices have not correspondingly increased.  Here is the introduction to the story: 

Sales of guns and ammunition rose after President Obama took office in 2008, and they went through the roof starting late last year, when a school shooting led to a push for new gun control measures. That’s led to a prolonged ammunition shortage, even with manufacturers running at full capacity.

A gun owner in Florida told me he has had a hard time finding .380 ammo for a small handgun for the past six months. Customers at Bob’s Little Sport Shop in southern New Jersey told me it’s hard to find ammo for some rifles and for the popular 9 mm. Even .22 rounds, the small ones, have been hard to come by.

An economics textbook would say this shouldn’t happen. It would say that Bob Viden, who has run the shop for almost 50 years, should respond to the increase in demand by raising prices. And some stores and online sellers have done just that. But, Viden told me, “We don’t want to do that. We want to be fair.”