Airing on Thursday, April 2, 2015: Evidence is mounting that the U.S. economy may not be as robust as many investors and central bankers have touted it to be. This at a time when we’ve seen softening data on personal spending, manufacturing, job growth and auto sales. It’s a situation that’s heightened concerns that Friday’s all-important jobs report could also be a disappointment. Plus, FICO has created a new credit score specifically for consumers with weak — or no — creditworthiness. We explain how the new metric will work, how it is different, and who will benefit most from it. And Missouri doesn’t recognize same-sex marriage, but the governor there has allowed those couples to file state taxes as married couples. Other states that don’t allow same-sex marriage have issued other workarounds. But in Alabama, there’s a standoff between federal and state courts, with the state courts refusing to recognize same-sex marriage, leaving accountants at tax time flustered.      

Airing on Wednesday, April 1, 2015: Web hosting company GoDaddy is going public today. Shares in the company are expected to start trading this morning, after pricing its initial public offering overnight. More on that. Plus, Seattle is front and center in the minimum wage debate in the nation and today as the first phase of the city’s minimum wage plan goes into effect with a $11 an hour rate for all minimum wage workers. This will increase to $15 for all workers over the next few years but at least one iconic local restaurant chain, Ivars, is jumping ahead to the final phase straight away. We explore. And we mentioned earlier this week that there’s so much oil being pumped right now that we may be running out of space to put it all. And that situation might get worse if Iran is allowed to start pumping its oil into the market. That’s doing a couple of things: it’s making oil prices fall, and it’s increasing the price of storage. And that could create an opportunity for oil traders. Marketplace’s Paddy Hirsch joins us to explain.  

Airing on Tuesday, March 31, 2015: The Case-Shiller 20-city housing price index for the month of January comes out today. Given the recent uptick in pending sales and overall tightening of inventory, a bump seems likely. But will it be a healthy bump if it’s due in part to a limited number of new and existing homes on the market? And the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, plus Germany, have been in Switzerland since Sunday trying to get some sort of deal done that would prevent Tehran from developing a nuclear bomb, in exchange for easing sanctions that are crippling its economy. Secretary of State John Kerry put the odds of reaching a deal at fifty/fifty – and oil markets are taking note with crude prices down almost 2 percent today. More on that. Plus, Russian President Vladimir Putin has said he will intervene anywhere to protect ethnic Russians from persecution. Just like in Ukraine. Which begs the question: What about Latvia? We report rom the Latvian capital, Riga.

Airing on Monday, March 30, 2015: There’s a report this morning that retailer GNC has agreed to start new testing of its herbal dietary supplements.  More on that.U.S. Treasury Secretary Jack Lew will be in China on Monday meeting with Chinese officials. Currency and economic reform are on the agenda, but many also expect discussion of the planned Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. The U.S. is suspicious of the Chinese-led “alternative to the World Bank” but a number of U.S. allies are rushing to join. We investigate. Plus, after putting it off during the Great Recession, cities are starting to spend money to repair roads, bridges and other pieces of their crumbling infrastructure. In Atlanta, voters recently approved a quarter of a billion dollar infrastructure bond package.   

Airing on Friday, March 27, 2015: Prices are not budging in Japan at a time that policymakers really wanted to see prices rise some. There’s news today inflation in Japan is zero. Sinking oil is one reason, but consumers are still tentative about buying things. That’s despite extensive efforts by the Japanese goverment to stimulate things, a set of policies called “Abenomics”. More on that. Plus, 3G Capital plans to put into place “zero based budgeting” at Kraft. We explain what this means and how it works. And for people who have too much to do, don’t want to think much about food or are tired of microwaving plastic from the freezer, there is something called Soylent. It’s a powder that turns into a bland, beige shake. Soylent is produced by a start up company that’s been attracting some serious venture capital from big Silicon Valley names. We talk about, and taste, the product.

Airing on Thursday, March 26, 2015: With the Saudi-led coalition bombing targets in Yemen to stop advances by Houthi rebels, the price of oil right now is up 4 percent. That’s a dramatic spike, given that Yemen accounts for a tiny percentage of the world’s oil. More on that. Plus, did you know that nearsightedness causes people to make bad decisions about money? I’m talking about a kind of myopia that can’t be fixed by the optometrist. It’s the human tendency to see the future as hazy and the present sharply in focus. Behavioral economists have a fancy name for it: “hyperbolic discounting”. Joseph Kable, a neuroscientist in the Department of Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, joins us to talk about it.  

Airing on Wednesday, March 25, 2015: You may know that many of the beers you drink are produced by a Belgian-Brazilian conglomerate known as Anheuser-Busch InBev. There’s word just now that Heinz of ketchup fame is merging with Kraft of Mac and Cheese, Jello, Oscar Meyer and Philadelphia cream cheese fame. The Brazilian angle? At the center of this estimated $40 billion deal is a Brazilian private equity fund known as 3G Capital that already controls Heinz. Plus, Apollo Group, the parent company of the University of Phoenix, reports earnings this morning. For-profit colleges have seen enrollments decline, thanks to negative publicity and an improving economy. But the biggest threat right now might be from traditional universities competing for students online. And Radioshack is bankrupt and on the auction block. We talk to Heather Landy, global news editor for Quartz, who has been digging deep into the sad demise of the Shack.

Airing on Tuesday, March 24, 2015: After the 2008 financial collapse, the government required banks to prove if they failed some day it wouldn’t drag down the rest of the financial system and require a bailout. The documents to prove this are known informally as “living wills.” Last summer it emerged that a range of U.S.-based bank still posed too much systemic risk if they were to go bankrupt. Today, several published reports say three foreign owned banks also lack persuasive living wills. BNP Paribas, HSBC, and Royal Bank of Scotland. More on that. And there’s news today about factories in China, where an index of manufacturing fell in March. We take a look at the issue. Plus, Shell is expected to get the green light this week to re-start drilling for oil in the Arctic. Critics fear low oil prices may raise pressure on the company to cut corners and compromise safety. Given its poor safety record in the Arctic, why is the US supporting Shell’s application? We explore.

Airing on Monday, March 23, 2015: The man who transformed Singapore has died. Lee Kuan Yew was 91. Countries the world over, including China looked to Lee’s example of economic transformation, but it was a system that was controversial. More on that story. This next story is about a water war that ended…during a drought. Sounds odd, but that’s what’s happened in California, where the city of Los Angeles and air regulators in the rural Owens Valley recently called a truce in an ongoing dispute rooted in L.A.’s century-old “water grab.” If your history’s failing you, think “Chinatown,” folks.