What car repos say about this economy

Make Me Smart April 20, 2023 Transcript

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Kai Ryssdal 

All right, I’m ready. You’re ready?

Kimberly Adams 

Yeah, let’s do it.

Kai Ryssdal 

Hey everybody, I’m Kai Ryssdal. Welcome back to make me smart, where we make today make sense.

Kimberly Adams 

And I’m Kimberly Adams, thank you for joining us. We have made it to Thursday, April the 20th, which is the news fix and make me smile day. So jumping right into the news. Kai yours is all economic-y. So let’s do that one.

Kai Ryssdal 

All right. So mine are two different stories. But I have to do a very quick setup to explain my first one. So we went to the movies the other day, my my wife and my daughter and I, they had… actually I had something to do so I had to meet them there. So we arrived in separate cars. And I went up to the sixth floor of…. if you’re in Los Angeles at the Americana, I was at the Americana, and up to the sixth floor where we always park just because we know the way down and blah, blah, blah, whatever. It’s all good. So I get there in the six floors and there are traffic cones in the way and you couldn’t get on to the sixth floor. And, and I, because I’m a jerk, said The hell with this. And so I went in the out gate of the sixth floor, and I parked on the sixth floor like I always do. But anyway, but wait, it gets better. But there was nobody around. There were all kinds of cars, it was full of cars. There was nobody around and all these cars were parked backing into all the spaces. And so I parked my car and as I’m walking to the elevator, I start looking at these cars. And they all have 8 by 10 inch pieces of paper taped to the front windshield that says “this car was subject to repo. It’s going to be moved on March the 28th.” And they all have that. All of them had been repossessed. And there were there were like 200 cars there. Easy, easy, easy, easy. And I mentioned that because of a story I saw in Bloomberg today about people falling behind on car payments, which is true. Car delinquency, car loan delinquencies are actually up, which is actually an indicator of not good economic things to come because if people can’t make their car payments, they can’t get the work and you can figure it out from there. But the headline in this piece is “the repo man returns as more Americans fall behind and car payments,. Pandemic relief measures shielded many people from repossession, but that’s changed as interest rates soar and auto prices go up.” So I had my little interaction with a little slice of the repo universe today or this weekend. It was wild. Honest to god there were 200 cars or maybe more.

Kimberly Adams 

Did you leave your car there

Kai Ryssdal 

you know what’s funny? I did because I was running late and I just kind of crossed my fingers. I pulled it in backwards so it looked like all the other cars and I just kind of went.

Kimberly Adams 

And it was still there when you got back?

Kai Ryssdal 

It was still there when I got back although I thought about it a time or two during the movie. I thought about it a time or two during the movie. Rick Caruso, if you’re listening, Rick Caruso is the guy who owns the Americana at Brand in LA. I’m really really sorry. But you know, I did pay you for your parking anyway. So yeah.

Kimberly Adams 

Yeah, I’m sure he’s also making a nice amount of money renting out his lot for the repo man.

Kai Ryssdal 

You betcha. So how about that? That was pretty funny.

Kimberly Adams 

My anxiety would not let me do that. I would not have been able to enjoy the movie. I would have been so paranoid. You’re a braver one than me. Alright, what’s the other one?

Kai Ryssdal 

If it had gone badly, it would have been all over anyway. So this one is just anecdotal. Just on water supply in California, as everybody knows, we had torrential rains here a huge snowpack in the Sierra Nevada. Lots of water. Tulare Lake is back if you know anything about the Central Valley of California you know Tulare Lake coming back as a very big deal. It’s a sign of how much water we’ve had. Anyway, Bloomberg again today is pointing out that California is going to supply the most water to state and local water districts since 2006. Which is huge because we have been, it might not sound like it and everybody out there might think Californians are stupid about water because we water our lawns and all that jazz, but we’ve actually been rationing and had cutbacks in water here for many, many years. And now we’re getting the most water to our households and to farms since 2006, which is an indicator of how much water there is. There was so much water. It’s a lot. It’s a lot of…

Kimberly Adams 

Yeah I mean, you were talking about the rain, like every day on this show. We could hear it in the background. So yeah, no, no, no reason to apologize. It was a lot of rain. Like it was funny at first and then it was like, okay, that’s not funny anymore.

Kai Ryssdal 

But that’s it. That’s exactly right. That’s exactly right. It was like, oh, yay rain. Oh, God, rain. That’s exactly what. Anyway.

Kimberly Adams 

So my stories are about glass houses. And just, you know, if you live in a glass house, be careful about throwing stones. Which takes us to Tennessee, where a Republican lawmaker who voted to expel those two black members of legislature has now had to resign himself, due to an ethics violation involving workplace discrimination and harassment. Basically, a local TV news channel, confronted the guy with after he was found guilty of sexually harassing, harassing at least one legislative intern likely two, by an ethics subcommittee that was acting in secret. And then he gave up his seat in the Tennessee General Assembly that was NewsChannel5 in Nashville. And the member of he was… this guy was member representative Scotty Campbell, was a member of the GOP leadership. Also, there is an increasing number of calls for the speaker of the Tennessee House to resign amid a variety of allegations. There’s the you know, rumors of the affair, there is also the documented, you know, challenges to whether or not he actually even has residency in his district. And did he buy a house through a shell company. There’s a whole lot going on there. And additionally, the GOP in the Tennessee State Legislature has been kind of infighting over how they were being portrayed after, you know, booting the two black guys, but not the white lady. Just… I wonder if it’s a going to give other people pause in making moves like this. When you direct that much attention to yourself, you’re gonna get the attention.

Kai Ryssdal 

Yeah, I don’t think it will stop people. His-history, I think vindicates me. I don’t think it will stop people. You know?

Kimberly Adams 

Well, yeah. So those are my news fixes. I’ve been very fascinated watching that. And it and you know, but on the other hand, even though this is all very interesting, and shows sort of the political compromises that people make, and whatever. The whole issue was trying to stop gun violence, right? And that has now taken the backburner to all these scandals. And there was another story in the AP that I saw about this family of the man who opened fire at a bank in Louisville. Right? And his family wants to destroy the AR-15 rifle that he used to kill five of his co-workers.

Kai Ryssdal 

Oh yes I saw this.

Kimberly Adams 

And they can’t because apparently the rule in Kentucky is that law enforcement when they confiscate a weapon, they auction it off to raise money to buy police equipment. And so there’s a not small chance that this AR-15 that’s already been used to kill people could be back out on the street and this man’s family is trying to stop that from happening, which is wild to me.

Kai Ryssdal 

Absolutely wild. Yeah totally. Alright Charlton

Kimberly Adams 

Okay.

Kai Ryssdal 

All right. So I’m just gonna climb in here because I don’t have a make me smile on the rundown. But I do want to point out as I’m sure anybody who’s interested in space knows, SpaceX tried to launch his rocket today. Did in fact, launch its rocket, and then they had to destroy it. But it was pretty cool. And I think you should look at the video, just because it’s kind of amazing. And eventually, they’re gonna get it right. And that thing is gonna circle the Earth and go to the moon and all that stuff. Crazy cool. Crazy cool.

Kimberly Adams 

You know, I know we talk a lot of negativity about Elon Musk on here, but I did love that there was a celebration despite the failure, because all of these steps are incremental, you know, and nobody was injured. Nobody died. And a rocket blowing up but still forward movement is something indeed to be celebrating. I think there’s like some metaphor for life in there as well.

Kai Ryssdal 

Yeah, it’s huge. Do have to do have to give all the all the credit to Gwynne Shotwell, who actually runs that company while Elon Elon is off doing whatever the hell he’s doing.

Kimberly Adams 

Yes, yes. That’s probably wise. Yeah. Yeah. I have to say when I saw the headline about the rocket exploding I was I had a very like unkind thought about see what happens when you get distracted. But you know he’s not… yeah. That’s, that’s very reductionist. I know. All right. So my story was not actually one that I planed to use for make me smart. But the marketplace shares a Slack community with our variety of APM APMG, Minnesota Public Radio, KPCC companies, and some of our Slack channels cross all the divisions. And one of them is our random channel where people just drop in like random things. And I saw this story on eater, that I dropped into the random channel a week or two ago called “I really miss my George Foreman grill. A fascinating emblem of the 90s. It inspires a complicated nostalgia.” And I don’t think I have ever put anything in Slack that has generated as much conversation as the article on the George Foreman Grill, because everybody had something to say about it. And a lot of those memories were very similar to mine was that, you know, it was this thing that was your stepping stone into grown up cooking, right? Because if you’ve never seen a George Foreman grill, it’s basically this almost like it looks like a panini press almost, but it has sort of it’s tilted down at an angle. And it was marketed very heavily in the, sorry, in the 90s, by George Foreman, who was a boxer and very famous one. And, you know, it was marketed sort of in this phase of low fat dieting, and all fat is bad. And they had these really interesting ads where you’d like to close the grill and see the fat dripping down off of the meat into the little tray and it made you feel like you were eating healthy. But it was also kind of foolproof. Like you weren’t going to burn down the house. Worst case scenario you ended up with, like dried chicken or something like that. But it made it relatively easy to make a lot of things. And it was great. You know, it’s this thing that college students got, and new couples would get it or you moved into your first apartment. And it was definitely, for me growing up, one of the first things I practice cooking on and it triggers all this nostalgia. And so it’s it’s been very fun watching, like all these people in the company, you know, reminisce about their memories of the George Foreman grill. A lot of people still have them. And they do still sell them. Yeah. And so I just thought that was very fun.

Kai Ryssdal 

So just to bring it back to me going to see the movie. So at the movie that I saw where I parked with all the repoed cars, one of the previews… first of all, so the movie I saw was Air by the way, which is a story of how Nike sign Michael Jordan. Really good movie. One of the previews was… it’s really good. One of the previews was a George Foreman biopic called the “Big George Foreman, the miraculous story of The Once and Future heavyweight champion of the world” in which him signing the deal for the George Foreman grill features prominently.

Kimberly Adams 

I’ll bet. I had a brief stint in my life where I was seriously considering going to one of the military academies. And I went, I did. Yeah, I apparently scored extraordinarily high on the ASVAB. So… and I was very heavily recruited by all the military academies. And so I was taking flying lessons at the time. And so I decided to go and spend a couple of weeks at the Air Force Academy for their summer program.

Kai Ryssdal 

Boo.

Kimberly Adams 

And I was in that… Whatever.

Kai Ryssdal 

Look I gotta stick up for it. I gotta stick up for it. Anyway. Go ahead. Sorry

Kimberly Adams 

Beautiful campus, by the way, but it was a two week program and in my cohort was one of George Foreman’s sons who was also named George Foreman.

Kai Ryssdal 

Is that right? Man the world keeps getting smaller. He’s got six kids, I think, and they’re all named George Foreman, I think, but they’re yeah, they’re all named George Foreman.

Kimberly Adams 

Yeah. And looked just like him. Very tall. Although I should say my mother was very glad that I did not go to the Air Force Academy because it was just a couple of years later when that big scandal about all those sexual assaults of the cadets at the… that would have been exactly when I would have been at the Air Force Academy. But alrighty then that we did a lot.

Kai Ryssdal 

We covered a lot of ground. Alright Charlton. Get us out of here. All right, we are back tomorrow economics on tap. News, drinks all that good stuff. Half full/half empty. Sorry I lost my…

Kimberly Adams 

Yes. And there is still time to vote for make me smart for our Webby Award. It’s the very last day you can go to marketplace.org/mms. But to the credits, which is what we’re supposed to be doing now. Make Me Smart is produced by Courtney Bergsieker. Today’s episode was engineered by Charlton Thorp. Our intern is Antonio Barreras. And I’ll just give you the clear to read the rest of it.

Kai Ryssdal 

Ellen Rolfes does our newsletters. Marissa Cabrera you know what her job is. Bridget Bodnar you know what her job is. Francesca Levy you know what her job is. There we go. All right. All done. Boom. Come on, everybody that listens to this podcast knows what all those three people do.

Kimberly Adams 

This is true.