Marketplace®

Daily business news and economic stories
Dec 20, 2013

Marketplace for Friday, December 20, 2013

With the deadline for healthcare.gov sign ups looming 72 hours away, we look at how administrators are preparing: If the rush of customers is a coming flood, what are the Obamacare sandbags and where are they being deployed? Lead bullets are on their way out. Fourteen states have banned them, the military is phasing them out, and on Dec. 1, the EPA is shutting down a bullet-producing lead smelter. But hunters say a shift to copper will make bullets more expensive and less effective, and even could raise copper prices. Finally, today’s glance at third-quarter GDP numbers are good. The country is growing at a rate of more than 4 percent. But unemployment is still high, wages are still not growing, and while companies are thriving and sitting on piles of cash, Americans, for the most part, are not. 

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With the deadline for healthcare.gov sign ups looming 72 hours away, we look at how administrators are preparing: If the rush of customers is a coming flood, what are the Obamacare sandbags and where are they being deployed? Lead bullets are on their way out. Fourteen states have banned them, the military is phasing them out, and on Dec. 1, the EPA is shutting down a bullet-producing lead smelter. But hunters say a shift to copper will make bullets more expensive and less effective, and even could raise copper prices. Finally, today’s glance at third-quarter GDP numbers are good. The country is growing at a rate of more than 4 percent. But unemployment is still high, wages are still not growing, and while companies are thriving and sitting on piles of cash, Americans, for the most part, are not. 

Marketplace for Friday, December 20, 2013