A glitch in the consumer-driven recovery

Make Me Smart August 24, 2023 Transcript

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Kai Ryssdal 

Amy’s ready, everybody’s ready. Hey everybody, I’m Kai Ryssdal. Welcome back to Make Me Smart, where we make today make sense.

Amy Scott

And I’m Amy Scott in for Kimberly Adams. Thanks, everyone for joining us today. It is Thursday, August 24.

Kai Ryssdal

We’re gonna do our Thursday thing, a little audio from this week’s news. We’ll chat about it probably three or four times, I guess. And then we will depart. Right? Yes. All right.

Amy Scott

We’ve got some good clips for you today. Let’s start with the first one, shall we?

Macy’s executive

We experienced an increased rate of delinquencies within the credit card portfolio across all stages of aged balances. While we had expected delinquencies to rise as part of our normalizing credit environment, the speed at which the increase occurred for us in the broader credit credit industry since our first quarter earnings call was faster than planned.

Kai Ryssdal

Yeah, so that was from the Macy’s earnings call earlier this week, Mitchell Hartman did a story about retail and the way consumer habits are changing and what that’s doing. I think there are a couple of things that are interesting in that piece of tape. Well, one in the piece tape, and then then then one, which I will share with you. Obviously loan delinquencies, credit card delinquencies piling up more quickly than they were thinking they might, that is not great. That is very not great. And it’s a little glitch in the whole consumer driven recovery. Right, number one, number two, as a result of some of those glitches, Macy’s actually, well, it hit its earnings target. Macy’s actually lost money April through June, which is I mean, that’s something when a big retailer like yeah, actually net net loses money. So yeah.

Amy Scott 

Yeah, and people just generally are struggling a little bit to pay their bills. And part of this is because mortgage or sorry, interest rates on credit cards have gotten so high, so their balances are higher, people are having trouble paying the bills, not spending, therefore as much on their Macy’s credit cards, right. And they actually had to write down some of that debt and just say, it’s not going to get paid back.

Kai Ryssdal 

Right, and not to get totally geeky here. Sorry, I gotta open the door so Bonsai can get in her. Bons come on. Otherwise, she will scratch. Not to get totally geeky here. But a couple of weeks ago, the New York, San Francisco Fed was out with some research that showed excess savings that consumers have in their bank accounts, which is what we’ve been using to pay a lot of these credit card bills ever since we got a lot of those payments during the pandemic that is going to be exhausted in this quarter. So the you know, the consumer picture is a little bit tricky right now a little bit tricky.

Amy Scott 

Yeah. And, you know, when people have to start, millions of people have to start repaying student loans again, could complicate matters further, though, I think we should point out that in the scheme of things, according to the New York Fed, delinquencies are still pretty low. Higher than just before COVID. But even then, they were pretty, pretty okay. Yep. So not to worry too much. Yet.

Kai Ryssdal 

Not to worry too much. Yeah. Don’t go away from this thinking the recession is around the corner. Do not think that right. Okay, next clip. Here we go.

Ann Johnson

What do you think are my artificial voice?

Kai Ryssdal 

That was kind of a wild story, you go.

Amy Scott 

Ahh I’m gonna cry. Yeah, so that was the artificial voice of a woman named Ann Johnson. She had a stroke when she was 30 years old, back in 2005. And she hadn’t been able to speak since. But that was her basically communicating through an AI avatar controlled by her brain signals. Just so remarkable. The New York Times posted this clip of of Ann Johnson’s avatar voice. And I’ll just quote from the story. “Technology converted her brain signals into written and vocalized language, and enabled an avatar on a computer screen to speak the words and display smiles, pursed lips, and other expressions.” The research was first published in the journal Nature. The Times story is great as she told the reporter, “it let me feel like I was a whole person again.” And you know I think we talk a lot on this show and others about the risks of AI and all the scary and problematic things about it but this is just a really positive story about someone who got to speak you know, for the first time in many years, pretty cool.

Kai Ryssdal 

Yeah, I think I think your your point there your last point is an amazing one right for all the peril that these new technologies bring what should they do and all the you know, wailing and gnashing of teeth, right? Which yes, okay, fine. But literally, it changes people’s lives for the better. Literally, you can do that and that’s kind of great. It’s kind of great.

Amy Scott  

Yeah. All right next clip, shall we?

Announcers

[Applause]…people are pplauding your from the secretary department of space and Chairman ISRO, Shri S. Somanath.

Kai Ryssdal 

So India is on the moon. That was audio of a video feed of mission control in India as the I’m gonna mess this up Chandrayaan-3 probe made its approach to and landed on the moon, it’s got a little rover inside, it’s on the south pole of the moon or near the South Pole, which is where they think there’s actual frozen ice, frozen water, which could be really cool for a whole lot of things. And it is on the moon. I just think it’s I just think it’s amazing. I think it’s very cool. Just very cool.

Amy Scott 

Yeah, it is cool. And yeah. I was thinking about all the trash that’s piling up on the moon. So you know, Russia, this was interesting, because Russia, just less than a week before had failed to land its own probe. It crashed into the moon surface. And I was just thinking about, like, how many of those things are up there? If you google search this there’s an Atlantic story from maybe seven years ago that says there’s like 400,000 tons of junk strewn across the moon at this point from both successful and failed missions. So not to be a downer. But it’s kind of an interesting side effect of this successful mission.

Kai Ryssdal 

Well, look, maybe at some point, it’d be common enough to go up there, that would be fair, what to do with all that junk? And you know, we probably only hope so we can, you know, figure out something to do with it. But anyway, you know, exploration is cool. Exploration is cool. And if and if NASA’s timeline works, I think we’re back on the moon and like 2024 2025ish,

Amy Scott 

Which would be cool. Maybe they can bring a couple of Hefty bags.

Kai Ryssdal 

That’s right, a couple of couple of Hefty bags. Alright, last clip of the day coming up, playing a round of name that tune, we’ll play a bit of a song that a listener sent in as their economic anthem of the moment, we will try to guess what it is. I’m just gonna say I got it last week, and I’m pretty damn proud of that. And then one of our producers will Slack us the answer. I was very, I was very, very pleased as I think you’ve gathered in that moment on the podcast anyway, let’s hit it and then we’ll try to guess what it is.

Kai Ryssdal

Oh come on, we all know that one.

Amy Scott 

You guys really think we’re out of it? Huh?

Kai Ryssdal 

That wasn’t even hard. And that’s like, almost from my era. It’s a little before I’m not that old. But you know, Beach Boys.

Amy Scott 

Of course, “Good Vibrations.” Beautiful song. I was so prepared to be stumped, but thanks for playing an oldie and a goodie.

Kai Ryssdal 

Oh, man, Stephanie from Berlin. That is her economic anthem o’ the moment. Got a link in the show notes to a Spotify playlist that we’re dealing with all those listeners submissions.

Amy Scott 

Do you have one by the way?

Kai Ryssdal 

I do. I do. But I don’t know if I’m allowed to roll it out now because I think Marissa wanted to make a big hoo ha out of it. But I don’t so we’ll save

Amy Scott

Can’t wait.

Kai Ryssdal

It for a later date. Yeah, we’ll see. We’ll see. Alright, anyway, so we’re done for the day. That’s it, quick and dirty. Back tomorrow for economics on tap. Join us on the YouTube livestream at 3:30 Pacific, 6:30 Eastern. Sign up for our newsletter if you’d like, where the team shares reading recommendations also we will let you in on what we’re drinking for happy hour tomorrow I will be having water because I got a soccer game tomorrow night. But you can sign up at marketplace.org/newsletters. Hydrate in advance because it’s gonna be like 90 degrees.

Amy Scott 

Make Me Smart is produced by Courtney Bergsieker. Today’s episode was engineered by Charlton Thorp. Ellen Rolfes writes our newsletter our intern is Niloufar Shahbandi.

Kai Ryssdal 

Marissa Cabrera is the senior producer of this podcast. Bridget Bodnar is the director of podcasts and Francesca Levy is the executive director of Digital and on demand at Marketplace production. Which ought to be a thing even though it’s not. I’m just saying. If anybody in St. Paul is listening, you know where to find me.

Amy Scott 

I feel you’re just gonna will it into being I love it.