PODCAST: Farm bill comes up short

The dollar is on a 12-year high driven by the potential for high interest rates, but what does that mean for the markets? We check in with Payden & Rygel chief economist Jeffrey Cleveland. Next, GM announced this week it’ll give shareholders $5 billion in dividends and a $5 billion stock buyback. That’s good news for investors, and for GM, which managed to avoid a major clash with hedge fund interests on the board. But when the company opens negotiations with the United Autoworkers Union this summer, it could be tough to argue for keeping a lid on wages. Finally, Washington lobbyists and think tank-types are tearing apart the Farm Bill, trying to figure out how far Congress was off in budgeting for the subsidies that were ushered in by the subsidies it ushered in.