Week of June 28th, 2010

Posted by Stephen Hoffman Marketplace Money; July 4, 2010 Happy birthday America! On this day in 1776 you were on your way to becoming a new na…

MSN Money's Liz Pulliam Weston and host Tess Vigeland take your questions on how to handle investment properties and what happens when a condo in your complex goes into foreclosure.

Easy Answer: Yes, it's a spill. But that hasn't kept people from trying to rename it….

Posted by Melissa Kaplan For Marketplace Morning Report, July 2, 2010 It was the end of a week with a lot of really bad headlines, so we went e…

By Bob Moon…

Professor Kathleen Vohs talks with Tess Vigeland about a study she helped lead that says handling dollar bills actually helps ease both physical and mental pain.

After displaying a lavish lifestyle on the reality TV show, the Real Housewives of New Jersey, Teresa Giudice and her husband have filed for bankruptcy. That's for $11 million dollars. Host Tess Vigeland talks with Gail Cunningham of the National Foundation for Credit Counseling about how to get out of such extreme debt

Small business owners across Arizona are paying a price for the state's new immigration law. Businesses that have catered to Hispanic customers have been hit hardest. Jeff Tyler reports.

Thousands of ordinary people are turning towards microfinance as a form of charitable giving. But it turns out your contribution could end up in the wrong hands. New York Times writer Neil MacFarquhar discusses the challenges surrounding microfinance with host Tess Vigeland.

A study by the NAACP showed 79 percent of Latino households carry credit card debt, compared with 54 percent of white households. And when it comes to the interest on those cards, Latinos pay a much higher rate. From WAMU in Washington, D.C., Rebecca Sheir reports.

Most workers today have 401(k) plans. Government employees, however, are an exception. The retirement guarantees they thought they had are vanishing because budget woes are forcing deep cuts in government workers' promised benefits. Marketplace's Mitchell Hartman reports.

Tess Vigeland turns to "Dinner Party Download" hosts Brendan Newnam and Rico Gagliano for some Fourth of July barbecue advice.

Marketplace's Brendan Newnam and Rico Gagliano chat with fellow staffers Dalasie Michaelis, Bill Radke and Stacey Vanek-Smith about real light sabers, wine vending machines and the worst (or best) drunk story ever.

There are no roads for cars in or out out of Peruvian town Iquitos, which is deep in the Amazonian rainforest — so Honda opened a motorcycle factory to cater to local needs.

Kevin Pereira, co-host of G4TV's "Attack of the Show," shares his summer reading pick: A guide on business management that throws convention out the window.

Reuters's Felix Salmon and the Atlantic's Megan McArdle talk with Tess Vigeland about the latest unemployment figures and what it means for the recovery, and the financial reform bill.

With the housing market still at a low, home builders are having a tough time staying afloat, except for one — Habitat for Humanity. Eve Troeh reports.

Software update won't fix bad reception and dropped calls complaining as some iPhone customer still complain about poor reception. Reporter Bob Moon gives an update on the iPhone signal situation.

Host Tess Vigeland talks to Steven Pitts of the UC Berkeley Center for Labor Research about the job market for African Americans and the numbers from the center's latest report.

The unemployment rate dropped, but don't take that as a good sign yet. Reporter Mitchell Hartman explains how to understand the latest unemployment figures.

Question: I owe over $10,000 on a single credit card, but I have a fixed interest rate of 3.99% for the life of the balance as long as don't make…

Sam Zell, chairman of the still-in-bankruptcy Tribune Corporation, said in an interview that he sees a day when newspaper home delivery will have…

Easy Answer: Sniffing it.  Eating it.  And testing it for chemicals….

A fun way to pretend to have a light saber without going and getting yourself killed or incinerated.

The Mid-Day Update is a five-day-a-week podcast from the Marketplace Morning Report co-hosted by Bill Radke and Steve Chiotakis that wraps up the…

Officials want to stop for-profit schools from shopping for accreditation by buying struggling colleges.

Pubs and eateries in the U.S. are doing what they can to pull in soccer fans while the World Cup is going on.

Easy Answer: There's bad news for the Mississippi River Delta to the western panhandle of Florida (no surprise there) and good news for parts of…

The "Shrek" and "Ice Age" movies have big fans in Russia, one of the hottest international film markets, particularly for animated films. But "To…

Nonprofit low-income homebuilder Habitat for Humanity ranked eighth in Builder Magazine's Top Ten list of builders.

Healthcare.gov has just launched and companies are already jockeying to create a new version of the site that will bring comparison shopping to health insurance.

Now that Finland has made broadband Internet a legal right, service in the country's rural areas will improve.

Data out this morning from the Labor Department is sending mixed signals on unemployment. Professor James Angel of Georgetown University explains which numbers we should focus on.

The Australian government has pulled back plans for a massive, controversial tax on mining profits.

We didn't get the happiest news this week. So let's focus on Francis Scott Key.

Google has made a $700 million deal to buy travel technology company ITA, a move that will help the search engine stay ahead of Bing.

Washington, D.C.'s local government is relaxing the rules for licensing wanna-be tour guides, which has a few of them worried about protecting their turf.

Marketplace Morning Report for Friday, July 2, 2010

Marketplace Money for July 2, 2010

Marketplace Tech Report for July 02, 2010

Marketplace for Friday, July 2, 2010

With a number of different versions and even options for video and audio on its smart phone app, it's difficult to determine what the Kindle is evolving into.

The world's most expensive city for expatriates is Luanda, Angola (pictured below). The Angolan capital beat out Tokyo for the top spot, with N…

CONVERSATIONS FROM THE CORNER OFFICE: Sprint CEO Dan Hesse.

Question: My husband and I are at our 50's, have high levels of education, finally are virtually debt free (except for home), have some retirement….

Lots of folks are boycotting BP (or at least want their Facebook friends to think they're boycotting). A new Facebook fan page called Boycott BP…

By Kai Ryssdal…

Easy Answer: If you accept the high end of the government's oil spill estimates, BP is now the largest spill in the Gulf. …

CONVERSATIONS FROM THE CORNER OFFICE: Sprint CEO Dan Hesse.

Southern California has always been a place of mythologies. It's the epicenter of kink and corruption in the hard-boiled novels of Raymond Chandler. It's the epitome of vapid phoniness in many Hollywood movies. What we have next is a historical look of the famed So Cal, in commentator Gustavo Arellano's summer reading pick.

New high-risk insurance pools will mean people who were denied health-care insurance because of preexisting conditions will now have access to coverage. And that means fewer calls like these. From the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater, comedy sketch group "Nice Kitchen" performs.

German exports have surged this year compared to 2009, business confidence is up, and several think-tanks have raised the country's growth forecasts. So German policymakers and economists are cautiously optimistic. But the little guy isn't feeling as good. Why? Kyle James reports.

One of the first pieces of the health-care reform law went into effect. The law establishes temporary, high-risk insurance pools for people who can't get insured because of preexisting conditions. Some of those pools started taking applications. Nancy Marshall Genzer reports.

We've gotten a raft of bad economic news recently — manufacturing growth has slowed, pending home sales are down. So is the recovery pausing to catch its breath? Or is this the fragile U.S. economy gasping for air? Jeff Horwich reports.

Woot.com is this really strange and wonderful online retailer that is sort of the opposite of Amazon. Instead of billions of items, they sell…

After more than two decades of carpoolers crossing the Bay Bridge into San Francisco for free, they will now be charged $2.50 per car.

Wicked Lasers has been selling a portable laser that looks an awful lot like a Star Wars light saber for around $200.  Anyone can order it online…

The Mid-Day Update is a five-day-a-week podcast from the Marketplace Morning Report co-hosted by Bill Radke and Steve Chiotakis that wraps up the…

Economics correspondent Chris Farrell explains why we should focus on resolving the education crisis in the U.S.

Today's jobs data says 472,000 Americans filed for jobless benefits this week, higher than what analysts expected. Projections for tomorrow's jobs data say they'll also be up for the month.

Food trucks are a hit in many cities across the U.S., but in Chicago they're still not legal. And many entrepreneurial chefs are pushing for permission to pedal their wares.

Arizona is letting its license for payday loans expire today. But lenders will probably find a way around it.

Toyota will recall 270,000 vehicles it's sold worldwide said to have engine problems that could cause them to stall. But the automaker plans to learn from PR mistakes made earlier this year.

Several countries in East Africa are taking a step towards regional economic integration. But the African trade deal has some worried about similar pacts.

BP has been trying to raise over $20 billion for clean-up of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

If you thought a day at the tanning salon was already taxing, now the federal government is getting involved. Today begins a 10 percent tax on…

The version of the financial reform bill which passed yesterday in the House may be threatened by the July 4 break.

A facet of health care reform law will allow people to apply for high-risk insurance pools starting today. But there's not enough cash to cover everyone.

"Crisis in the Gulf" is a video game that gives you a chance to clean up the oil spill in the Gulf.  Well, clean up may be a stretch.  Players…

You may think the deep psychological link between money and the pursuit of happiness is strictly the burden of a free-market society, but it turns…

Marketplace for Thursday, July 1, 2010

Marketplace Morning Report for Thursday, July 1, 2010

Marketplace Tech Report for July 01, 2010

A few years ago, Dan Hesse was hired to turn things around at Sprint, which lost millions of customers and billions of dollars after network problems and customer service complaints following a merger with Nextel. Hesse talks about how he plans to get all those customers back.

Hulu launches Hulu Plus, a paid option with a bigger catalog. But is this paid model really going to change our TV-watching ways?

Apparently in Brazil, it's not just the soccer players who are on the field. In the soccer-crazy country, reporters and photographers stand behin…

A quick word on a new report from the Congressional Budget Office (PDF). Contrary to conventional wisdom, the CBO says our debt problems will be…

If you've been online, you've at some point encountered some kind of Captcha, where you have to decode warped-looking letters and numbers. I don't…

On the heels of yesterday's worrisome report on consumer confidence, the president made his way to Racine, Wisconsin this morning. Marketplace's senior business correspondent, Bob Moon reports.

A theater troupe of day laborers for day laborers, Teatro Jornalero, performs educational plays about labor and immigration laws, mixed in with the challenges day laborers face.

So far, this week's been a big bonanza for Tesla Motors. The electric car company raised $226 million with its IPO Monday, and the share price has…

It isn't cheap to travel these days, what with the cost of fuel and air travel, but commentator Robert Reich proposes a few of his ideas to get more bang for his buck — and his weight.

Marketplace's Alisa Roth looks into what it means that automaker Ford to start paying off its debt, in cash, and what is in store in its future.

Author William Powers talks to Kai about how information overload is not an ancient problem, but a modern one, along with ideas on how to combat the deluge of information people face everyday.

New parents often will go to great lengths to get the for their baby. The latest trendy item for baby are designer diapers, so babies can stikll look their best with their pants off.

Kai Ryssdal talks to the New York Times' Louise Story about the piece she wrote with Gretchen Morgenson on AIG and how the company waived its right to sue the banks that underwrote the mortgage securities it was insuring.

Question: I am 26 years old, working at an Energy Service company for 3 years (right after college graduation). I've been putting 9% in my 401K…

Put me in the camp of people who are still mystified by Foursquare. I think they got off on the wrong foot by first entering my world as a stream…

The Mid-Day Update is a five-day-a-week podcast from the Marketplace Morning Report co-hosted by Bill Radke and Steve Chiotakis that wraps up the…

Carnivorous cocktails? Oh my….

There are a ton of music festivals going on these days. Except, after days of dancing and digging live tunes, where do you juice up your dead cell…

It's still the biggest overhaul of the financial system since the Great Depression. But it won't be paid by a $19 billion tax on big financial institutions. Jeremy Hobson reports from New York.

The Environmental Protection Agency doesn't think Texas is doing enough to keep its air clean. So the agency is expected to tell the state that the federal government is taking over air quality permitting for about 39 plants. Ben Philpott reports.

GPS is used by everyone from stock traders time-stamping trades to farmers driving remote-controlled tractors. Now the GPS satellite system is getting an upgrade promising increased coverage, stability, and accuracy. Sally Herships reports.

Despite India's growth spurt, there are still too few jobs for the country's 450-million strong workforce. At the lower end of the country's job spectrum, competition for jobs is tough, especially after India shed 10 million jobs last year. Raymond Thibodeaux reports.

Global investors are getting their first look at what's expected to be the world's largest stock offering: the Agricultural Bank of China plans to list on the Chinese exchanges next month.

Europe correspondent Stephen Beard talks with Steve Chiotakis about the European Central Bank's latest move to fund 171 banks in Europe.

Richard DeKaser, president of Woodley Park Research, talks with Bill Radke about the latest private jobs report, and whether it's an ominous sign.

Hillary A. Sale, law and business professor at Washington University, talks with Steve Chiotakis about whether it's difficult to prosecute derivatives trading and what she's watching closely about cases coming down the pike.