Marketplace for Friday, October 29, 2010

Leigh Gallagher from Fortune Magazine and John Carney from CNBC talk with Kai Ryssdal about the big news that will happen next week: midterm elections, and the Federal Reserve's next attempt to try and turn things around economically with its latest quantitative easing plan.

Despite today's news that the U.S.'s gross domestic product has grown for the fifth straight quarter, the White House warns that faster growth needs to occur to get unemployment down. Marketplace senior business correspondent Bob Moon explains the factors behind it all.

Spanish language network Univision has been making big gains in 18 to 34-year-old viewers this year, due in part to steamy soap operas know, as telenovelas. Univision has also attracted a growing share of advertisers. But as Jennifer Collins reports, a telenovela debuting Monday takes that to a whole new level.

Lost in all of the TV coverage of the midterm election is this: November is a pretty important month for TV folks too because of sweeps. TV producers and writers tend to save their best stuff for this period. And that was true for commentator and co-creator of "Lost," Damon Lindelof.

Professor John Quiggin, author of "Zombie Economics," talks with Kai Ryssdal about how some economic ideas can be zombies -- theories that refuse to die no matter how wrong they prove to be.

We could soon see the second coming of a poster child for the mortgage mess. Miami-based BankUnited went belly up after filling up on risky adjustable rate mortgages. Then the government swooped in and sold BankUnited to a group of private equity firms. Now those investors have announced they're ready to take the bank public. Janet Babin reports.