Marketplace All-in-One – Details, episodes & analysis

The idea that the government should be run more like a business isn’t new. But with two businessmen, Donald Trump and Elon Musk, now taking a proverbial chainsaw to the federal bureaucracy all in the name “efficiency,” this theory is being put to the test. While it’s an appealing idea, Philip Joyce, professor of public policy at the University of Maryland School of Public Policy, said governments can’t afford to take risks the way businesses can. On the show today, Joyce explains the origins of the idea that the government should be run like a business, how we define “success” differently for the two entities, and how the way Trump and Musk do business is showing up in the White House.

Then, we’ll break down the high stakes of today’s special elections in Wisconsin and Florida. Plus, reflections on serendipitous moments in walkable communities and what we gain by admitting we were wrong.

Here’s everything we talked about today:

• “Why Running the Government Like a Business Would Be a Disaster” from The New York Times
• “The US Government Is Not a Startup” from Wired
• “The US Postal Service has been struggling for years. Now Trump’s talking about privatizing it” from AP News
• “DOGE wants businesses to run government services ‘as much as possible’” from The Washington Post
• “UPDATE: RECOVER Long COVID pathobiology grants restored” from The Sick Times
• “NIH restores some long COVID grants” from C&EN
• “What to Watch in Wisconsin’s Supreme Court Election and Florida’s Special Elections” from The New York Times
• “What to watch for Tuesday in Wisconsin’s high-stakes Supreme Court race and special elections in Florida” from CNN Politics
• “Control of the Wisconsin Supreme Court is at stake in race that’s drawn powerful political interests” from AP News
• “Volume 52 | Issue 1 | February 2025” from the American Ethnological Society

Got a question or comment for the hosts? Email [email protected] or leave us a voicemail at 508-U-B-SMART.

People feel richer — and spend accordingly — when their assets rise in value. That’s called the wealth effect. But when folks get their retirement account statements for Q1 of 2025, they may feel the opposite, since most of those accounts lost value. Will Americans pull back on their spending as a result? Plus, subcompact cars steer into the sunset, farmers are pessimistic about tariffs, and very small businesses can be a bellwether of economic trends.

From the BBC World Service: Stock markets in Asia took a hit as traders look ahead to U.S. President Donald Trump’s so-called “liberation day” on April 2, when a raft of tariffs are expected to be announced. Plus, a court in Paris has convicted Marine Le Pen of embezzlement, and a cryptocurrency company plans to roll out small power plants to rural villages in Africa to provide electricity and mine for bitcoin.

Chinese President Xi Jinping is pushing for the country to be a global leader in artificial intelligence by 2030 as Beijing competes with Washington to gain an edge in advanced technology. The release of AI chatbot DeepSeek, which stunned industry experts in January, gave a boost to China’s hopes of catching up to the U.S. despite restrictions on the advanced chips used to power AI.

The artificial intelligence cloud computing provider CoreWeave sold shares to the public today with so-so results. Because it’s the first major IPO of the current generative AI era, some argue that CoreWeave could be a barometer of the AI boom. We’ll get into it. And, a federal appeals court ruled in favor of President Donald Trump’s firings of independent agency heads. The case will likely make its way to the Supreme Court. Plus, we’ll play a round of Half Full/Half Empty!

Here’s everything we talked about today:

• “Appeals court clears way for Trump to fire leaders of ‘independent’ federal agencies” from Politico
• “CoreWeave stock seesaws after IPO in first big test of AI trade” from Yahoo Finance
• “CoreWeave Is A Time Bomb” from Ed Zitron’s Where’s Your Ed At
• “OpenAI Unveils New Image Generator for ChatGPT” from The New York Times
• “DoorDash and Klarna partner to offer buy now, pay later for takeout” from Marketplace
• “Crocs hits record revenue as popularity with younger consumers soars” from Marketplace
• “When should we pay rent with a credit card? from Marketplace
• “Facebook’s New Friends Tab Brings App Back to Its Roots” from The New York Times

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Consumers say they’re fed up with inflation, then they keep spending. But their behavior could be catching up with their anxiety, an economist told us. The clues are in data released today by the Commerce Department. Also in this episode: Can you live on just 13 gallons of water a day? One water-saving group thinks it’s possible. Plus, we look into how cities, farmers and compost brokers are tackling organic waste.

The current economic landscape, marked by tariffs and other policy-driven uncertainty, could be a particularly difficult one for Fed decision-makers to navigate in the next few months. We chat with Susan Schmidt, Portfolio Manager at Exchange Capital Resources, about the latest inflation data and what it means. Plus, federal worker unions are pushing back against the Trump administration’s rollback of collective bargaining rights for government employees. And, the BBC’s Sam Gruet reports on how Canadian businesses are reconsidering their partnerships with U.S. businesses amid tensions between the two countries.

Student loan borrowers saw a bit of a reprieve during the pandemic and the following years, with many lenders stopping repayment obligations and freezing interest accrual. That party is now over, and holders of student debt are under increasing financial pressure amid more widespread economic uncertainty. Plus, a look inside Congress to see why Republican lawmakers are looking to overturn Biden-era rules limiting banking fees. And, the latest mortgage rate data may suggest a loosening in the housing market, but some experts advise against drawing any premature conclusions.

From the BBC World Service: As Canada’s prime minister, Mark Carney, says the U.S. is no longer a reliable partner, Canadian businesses that work with American companies are facing a tough decision: continue their trading relationships or try to bring more operations and supply chains home. Also, as card payments rise, the UK sees an unintended benefit for children’s health.

AI company Anthropic recently added web search to its chatbot Claude. It joins other artificial intelligence tools like Perplexity and ChatGPT in delivering one clear answer to a web search query instead of pages and pages of links. Plus, 23andMe declared bankruptcy. So what’s gonna happen to all that genetic data? But first — the Signal group chat heard round the world. A Trump administration official appears to have inadvertently invited a journalist into a conversation about sensitive national security issues on the secure messaging app Signal. The app does offer end-to-end encryption, the gold standard for security in consumer-level messaging apps, but that doesn’t make it foolproof for the most sensitive of data. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Joanna Stern, senior personal technology columnist at The Wall Street Journal, to break down all these topics for this week’s Marketplace “Tech Bytes: Week in Review.”