Marketplace - Borrowing costs go boom

Episode Date: September 1, 2026

Bond yields jumped to multi-decade highs in some countries this week, as market anxiety about inflation and the Iran war grows. The U.S. is not exempt from this turmoil. Borrowing rates could balloon, affecting the Fed and your wallet. We’ll explain. Also in this episode: The labor market barely budges in July job openings and labor turnover data, U.S. solar energy storage capacity nearly doubles under President Trump, and Reddit becomes valuable internet real estate in the age of AI.Every story has an economic angle. Want some in your inbox? Subscribe to our daily or weekly newsletter.Marketplace is more than a radio show. Check out our original reporting and financial literacy content at marketplace.org — and consider making an investment in our future.Read the stories in today’s episode:Rising global bond yields will put pressure on U.S. interest rates, tooThe labor market in July showed very little movementFor this Mississippi barge line, labor is more of a concern than tariffsWhy solar energy storage capacity has nearly doubled since Trump took office"The heart of the internet": AI has marketers flocking to RedditFrom medicine to HVAC: one entrepreneur's journey

All right, let's toss a coin, labor market or the bond market. Heads I win, tails you lose. From American public media. This is Marketplace. In Los Angeles, I'm Kai Risdahl. It is Tuesday. Today, this one is the first of September good, as it always is, to have you along, everybody. There is a thing that happens with the news.

News, in general, I suppose, but business and economic news in particular, I believe, where a story just becomes so ubiquitous, so constant that people kind of tune it out. They just stop hearing it. Tariffs back in Trump 1 is a good example. Trump 2 tariffs as well, to be honest. I'm a little worried, though, that all the bond market news the past couple of weeks is starting to fall into that category, which I get to some degree because even on the best of days, bond market stories are dense. but when globally bond markets are kind of screaming at you, attention must be paid.

Attention specifically from us, the American consumer. Bond buyers around the world have been demanding higher interest rates for reasons we have been talking about for a couple of weeks now. And when rates rise globally as they are, they are going to rise here to attention, as I said, must be paid. Marketplace is Justin Ho gets us going. Let's start with Germany as an example. Right now, yields on its 10-year government bonds are at their highest since 2011. Ken Rogoff, an economics professor at Harvard, says a lot of that is down to government spending. In the particular case of Germany, they were not a high-debt country, and suddenly they're really nervous about Russia. They're having to increase military spending. More spending means more debt. And because of that, the bond market is demanding higher interest. And not just from Germany. Ten-year bond yields in Germany. Ten-year bond yields in Germany. Japan are at their highest level since the late 90s.

The Japanese government needs to compete for funds against everybody else. Countries are not islands, even the United States. And yields on U.S. treasuries are already pretty high, which is also adding to the competitive pressure around the world, says Henry Wu with Alpine Macro. So when you see yields going up in the U.S., and that's the biggest bond market in the world, yields in the rest of the development world follow it. But there's also a feedback loop here. When yields in the rest of the world go up, that puts pressure on U.S. Treasuries to pay higher rates.

Ana Chieslock at Duke University says there is a lot of competition around the world for investors' money. And since governments and companies are issuing so many bonds to cover budget deficits and pay for AI data centers, investors need to be persuaded to keep buying them. Suppose that everybody has already eaten so much candy that they cannot take anymore. it will take a bigger sort of effort to induce them to buy one more candy. And that bigger effort in this case is higher interest rates. I'm Justin Howe for Marketplace. Wall Street today forget stocks or candy for just a second. Those stocks did have a lousy day.

You will hear me say this again in just a little bit, but the yield on the 10-year treasury topped out at 4.8% today. That, you just got to believe me here, is high. We will have the details. when we do the numbers. Today's good news, bad news, or maybe things are fine news, comes to us from the aforementioned American labor market. The number of job openings in this economy didn't change a whole lot in July, and though people are still skittish about quitting their jobs, they're at least not getting laid off more. That's all from today's job openings and labor

turnover survey. And as marketplaces Brie Beneschal reports, there is a sliver of the positive in there. For every person out there looking for a job, there are 1.05 jobs available, at least on paper, which is good. The ratio of jobs openings relative to unemployed individuals, that's a metric of how tight the labor market might be, actually continues to rise. And it's at its highest level since January of 2025. Matt Luzetti is chief U.S. economist at Deutsche Bank. Now, the Federal Reserve might look at this and say, okay, if the job market is, fine, then maybe we won't ruin it if we raise interest rates, which we may want to do to fight inflation, which is definitely a problem. So the labor market is not a reason to not raise rates at this point in time.

Markets right now are saying there's a 70% chance the Fed raises interest rates this month. The job market, though, it may be stable. The unemployment rate has come down, layoffs are down slightly. But it's not a great job market. Michael Kramer is founder of Mott Capital Management. People aren't necessarily flipping jobs at this point, probably because wage growth isn't that great. And companies aren't laying off people, probably because it took them a while maybe to hire some of those people, and they're not going to be quick to just let them go.

Also, things are very different depending on what industry you're looking at. If you work in manufacturing of durable goods, well, you got 76,000 new job openings in July. If you are in business and professional services, which covers a lot, there's 68,000 fewer of those job postings. Sneha Puri is an economist at the Indeed Hiring Lab. So this duality of the labor market is definitely quite starking. And every month we kind of see these like really stark differences where job seekers in some sectors are experiencing very different reality while they're looking for a job compared to job seekers and other sectors. She says, whatever this is, this labor market, where jobs are. secure if you have them and hard to get if you don't, it is probably the new normal.

In New York, I'm Subrey Beneshaw for Marketplace. Those macro stories that Justin and Subre just did for us are really important, critical even, for getting the big picture of what is happening in this economy. It is the policy of this program, though, that what's happening on the ground out there, people in businesses actually doing the work matters just as much. So we have a bunch of people that we talk to on the regular to get exactly that on the ground perspective. Today is Austin Golding. He's the CEO of Golden Barge Lines in Vicksburg, Mississippi. Hey, Austin, it's Kai. How are you?

Hey, Kai, doing great. You ready, man? We're just going to hit this. Yeah, let's do it. All right. First question, as always, how is business at Golden Barz Lines? Business is good. Business is steady. It's been a really, really good year that's had consistent demand, which we've needed. over the last few years after a few pretty turbulent cycles. It's really interesting that you're saying things like consistent when the macroeconomic

environment out there is anything but consistent and uncertainty is the byword. I mean, are you not feeling that? Well, you know, obviously we've seen the price of the product we move, have a lot of volatility in it. These refineries are running about as hard as they can. And so they know about how much they can produce. They know about how much they need to consume. and so when you're running wide open, they know about how much it takes to move their product.

Right. Some of the other things that we have talked to you about historically, the one that always comes to my mind is labor and just finding crews and the expertise necessary to run those barges. Where is that for you today? Well, this is a really, really interesting topic, and I know some people that are into social science could probably give me some answers, but what I'm seeing are a lot of applicants, A lot of people coming to the door, more people than we've seen in years past, but they're just trying us out. And I think they're bouncing between industries, and there's lots of choices. And when folks have choices, they want to explore those choices, and they want to see the balance is not just all about how much money they're going to make.

It's how much time they get at home. People are definitely trading gross income for personal time, and that's been our biggest struggle. That is so interesting. So how is Golden Barth Line holding it up? I mean, is it a challenge for you, or are you getting people? We're getting people, and we've decided to really focus on how we can retain them and listen to our people as far as what they want. And so, like I said, if they want more time at home, we're going to offer more schedule options.

You might be able to work 28 on, 28 off, which are 28 days on the boat, 28 days off the boat. That seems like a hard life, man. I'm sorry. That just... Well, you know, look, they get... I always mess with them. They get more vacation time than me. six months off, you know, but, but no kidding.

They, they're gone for a while, but that's why they're compensated to the point they are. And a lot of these people are coming from parts of the country where there's not a lot of options. So, you know, they're, they're leaders when they have that kind of income back in these small communities. And over time, it becomes totally worth it to the folks that get to the end game. These communities, are you talking mostly communities like up and down the river? They are, you know, we've done a heat map around where most of our people are located, and a lot our core employees are located along the I-10 and I-20 corridor.

Those two interstates connect a lot of our region towards, you know, national employers. So there's something about living within about an hour's proximity to either I-10 or I-20 that people will travel for work. That is so interesting. Another couple of macroeconomic things. Number one, tariffs. I mean, it's been in the ether for like a year and a half now. Are you feeling it or is it just like a background thing for you? You know, in our world, the tariff thing has not hit us nearly as hard than some other industries.

But as far as the tariffs on the cargo we carry, it did not seem to have affected the flow of those products. Interesting. All right, yeah. So tariffs aren't that huge right now. Labor is working out for you. Petroleum prices being what they are and refinery is going as hard as they are, and that being one of the main things that you move, that's good for you. What is the monster under your bed? For sure, this Jones Act waiver process.

This Jones Act waiver. So for those who aren't familiar, Jones Act in 30 seconds or less. The Jones Act ensures that all product move between U.S. port to U.S. port is on a U.S. own vessel that was built in the U.S. and is crewed by U.S. crews. And there's become a flashpoint in this discussion around this law around availability and coastal vessels to move the amount of cargo that's needed. Well, the child at the end of the dinner table while our parents are fighting is the inland maritime sector. Which is you guys. Which is our guy, yeah, which is us. Which there are no shortage of vessels.

And we're over here screaming that we're going to be the collateral damage in this fight. We're trying to keep our head down and allow things to play out coastally while we try to either have any damage incurred on the inland sector while they figure that out. Austin Golding runs a family business out of Vicksburg, Mississippi. It's called Golden Barge Lines. Lines or line. Is there one or several? Golding Barge's line.

Just one. All right. You'd think I'd know that by now. Awesome. We'll talk to you soon. Thank you, God. All right. Yes, sir.

Bye-bye. Coming up. I was like, you know what? I'm going to start a business. I mean, why not, right? First, though, let's do the numbers. Dow Industrial's off 419 today, 8 tenths percent, 52,76. The NASDAQ subtracted 271 points.

That's just a bit more than 1%. 26,0-9er-Niner. S&P 500 down 54 points, 710%, 77. and 31. Another round of strikes in the Middle East. Another jump in oil prices. Brent Crude added 5 and a third percent. West Texas intermediate rose 5 and 9 tenths

of 1%. Natural gas producer Comstock resources popped 11% today after selling off a bunch of its assets in the Hainesville shaled gas fields. That's where Louisiana, Arkansas, and Texas all come together. Price was one and two thirds of a billion dollars. The new owner, Azerbaijan's, state-owned,

oil and gas company. Bond prices went down. the yield on the 10-year T-note closed at 4.79%. You are listening to Marketplace. This is Marketplace. I'm Kai Risdal. You know, all those times that Trump administration officials have downplayed the promise of renewables, solar and wind in particular, by saying, and these are basically quotes, they say the sun doesn't always shine and the wind doesn't always blow? The response, of course, is batteries, which gets us to this next item.

Energy storage batteries has nearly doubled since President Trump took office. That's according to a fresh report out today from the Solar Energy Industries Association, Big Solar, if you will. It says that last quarter was the biggest this country's ever had for adding new storage capacity. The timing is nothing if not ironic given this administration's renewables policies. But analysts say it does make perfect sense that these records are being broken right now. Marketplaces Kelly Wells explains. First, a little context. Energy storage capacity in the U.S. went up 14% in just the spring of this year.

Now we're at a total of 165 gigawatt hours, says Tim Pellini. He's CEO of the Solar Energy Industries Association, which released the report. That is the equivalent of enough storage capacity to power 6 million homes for a day on a single charge. And there are two main reasons it's taking off now. One? There's a lot of money to be made for energy storage. Even after the Trump administration has cut billion. of dollars from clean energy subsidies. Energy economist Caspian Conran with Beringa says we've left

phase one of the energy transition. We're now definitely in phase two where frankly a lot of this tech on the res side is commercially viable without subsidies. The other driver, all of a sudden we need a lot more power than we used to. The data center buildout kind of thing is relatively new, and that pressure is going on really quickly. Philip Crying teaches electrical engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and says this is an economically viable way to meet the data center demand, no matter who's president. Plus, electric customers aren't thinking that much about politics

when their monthly utility bill comes in the mail, says Brian Corgle, who directs the University of Texas at Austin's Energy Institute. People in Texas, you know, I mean, they talk about where the electricity comes from, but at the end of the day, they just want their lights on. The report even has proof of that. Three quarters of the new energy storage capacity added in the second quarter of this year was added in states that voted for President Trump.

I'm Kaylee Wells for Marketplace. Reddit used to call itself or was called by many, the front page of the internet. Slogans come and slogans go, but marketing is forever. And companies are cluing into the idea that in queries like, what's the best lawnmower from my yard or where can I find high quality affordable jewelry online? There be marketing gold. Katie Dayton wrote about it for the Wall Street Journal Leadership Institute. Katie, welcome to the program. Thanks for having me back, Guy. So I want to ask about this bit in the headline. Brands suddenly care about Reddit. When, where, how did that happen?

So Reddit for a long time was seen by marketers as a kind of not very important social media channel compared to the likes of meta platforms and TikTok and everything that's changed lately has been because of AI, sorry to say. Basically, LLMs scrape the internet, as we all know, and they get citations from different publishers, and Reddit has become a very important publisher for these chatbots. And basically, now marketers are hoping that they can kind of gain that system a little bit and make sure their brands appear in those citations. How does Reddit feel about this and the redditors themselves? Because not to be at all progerative, but they seem a bit, they have always seemed to me anyway, to be very organic and interested in, you know, sort of the purity of the internet

experience as opposed to like AI and LLM bots, you know? Exactly. And that's a huge part of their pitch, right? It's the last human place on the internet they try and sell themselves as. The moderators, those people that are in charge of running the subreddits, they actually have so much power. Like Reddit basically gives them all the power. They can delete comments. They can block people. So, They hate this because, you know, they've spent years crafting these subreddits to make sure that everyone follows the rules. And they hate the fact that people are trying to use what they consider to be their homes to sell more items, basically. Tell me about these things called full service Reddit agencies.

Is that just, are we, it's more marketing spin, right? Exactly. I mean, look, whenever there is a new technology and the marketers are paying attention, agencies will be set up. We had SEO agencies 15 years ago. Now we have Reddit agencies. Some of them are genuinely like this really hard to put your marketing on Reddit because moderators will take it down. We can advise you and have us to do that.

There are others that offer a certain amount of negative comments. Deleted. They say that we can have 15 mentions of your brand. Give us a base payment and we'll do that. And Reddit has said it doesn't work like that. and Reddit isn't too happy about the appearance of some of these agencies. One does wonder whether brands trying to, and I'm using this word not pejoratively at all, but they are trying to exploit Reddit for whatever they can get for it.

One wonders whether they're going to kill the fatted calf somehow, and Reddit's going to either deny their access or do something else to rejigger their algorithm so that these brands can't do that. Exactly. And Reddit itself, you know, Reddit doesn't have a problem with the brands being on there. They just want them to be using it in a good way that's not going to annoy their users. So what's a good way? Is it like one of those AMAs or something you see on Reddit all the time?

Yeah, exactly. You have to basically be giving solutions. You have to be helpful as a brand on Reddit. A lot of brands aren't used to that. A lot of brands are used to social media letting them do exactly whatever they want. Also, Reddit would rather brands basically give them money in paid for advertising. That's an ad that can't get deleted by moderators. Key point about the paid advertising, it's not like Reddit's getting things from the brands when the brands do this, you know, trying to be on Reddit thing, right, without buying paid ads.

Yeah. Yeah. I think the question will be whether Reddit now that it's a public company will face pressure from investors to allow, you know, if they could say to a brand, well, if you give us X amount of advertising spend, you know, we'll make sure your account doesn't get deleted if the moderators don't like it. and insert themselves more. But I think Reddit itself knows that in doing that, it's risking losing what makes Reddit Reddit and what makes people come to the site. Right.

There's a lot of tension there, and it's in an interesting position right now. Absolutely. Katie Dayton at the Wall Street Journal Leadership Institute. Katie, thanks a bunch. I appreciate your time. Thank you, Guy. Things change over the course of a lifetime,

interests, opportunities, challenges, It's perhaps not surprising then that careers change too. There's a study out of Australia that shows the average person cycles through three to seven different careers of the course of their work and lives. So it's important to stay nimble and flexible and when the chance arises to embrace one's entrepreneurial spirit. On that note, here's today's installment of our series, My Economy. I am Latoya Lisa Sampson, also known as Dr. Toya. I'm a board-certified OB-GYN coach and entrepreneur. and I own the general heating and air, a residential HVAC company here in Cyprus, Texas. So ever since I was young, there was like five seconds where I thought, oh, I'll be a pediatrician.

But once I really decided, yes, I want to go into medicine, it was because I wanted to educate young women about our bodies. And that was the draw. And it was my first calling. in this beautiful profession that I am in, it is very difficult. And there was some burnout that came with that. And in the midst of the burnout, the pandemic happened. And I was like, you know what? I'm going to start a business. It was a directory for black owned businesses and black professionals

who catered specifically to the black community. Started originally because I couldn't find products for my hair. And that was the thing that, change my perspective and really gave me freedom to explore other ways to practice and to continue educating women and empowering women, which is what I have always wanted to do. So I left traditional practice in an office to doing travel doctoring. It's called locum tenants. During that time, I had more time and capacity to start a TikTok channel. It's called Dr. Toy, ObGYN. And I used it to helping other women physicians deal with the transitions that come with being a doctor,

being a professional and being a mother. So I say that coaching became my second calling. Every time I tell this story, people are like, well, wait, when did you go into HVAC? That's the part that's usually confusing. And because I had gone through so many career changes and so many different iterations of entrepreneurship, when my husband, who is a 10-year Air Force veteran and the HVAC contractor wanted to start our business, it just made sense that I would do it with him. We have big, hairy, audacious goals, but we have been growing, and it's slower than we would have liked, but it is important to keep track of the winds. I had put all of our finances and things into Claude Chat just to, like, see where we were at some point a couple

months ago and then I did it again. And Claude was like, oh, this is a completely different business. You all have done well. And I said, well, thank you. So it was another reminder that, yes, we have a lot of work to do, but it is happening and it's working. It's working. La Toya Lusa Samson, Dr. Toya, she's a board certified OBGYN, also the owner of General Heating and Air. It's an HVAC company. They're in Cyprus, Texas. No matter where you are, no matter what you do, it is you and your story that makes this series go, send it to us, would you? Marketplace.org slash

my economy. This final note on the way out today, and I know I am kind of violating my own admonition from the top of the program, hitting a story so repeatedly that it becomes wallpaper. But you will thank me, I hope, when inflation comes in higher

next month and you kind of knew ahead of time it was going to happen. We did oil in numbers, Here's the trickle-down. Diesel today, $5.63 a gallon. Think for just one second about how much stuff moves around this economy on trucks. Jordan Manjee Zaniel Maharaj, Janet Winn, Ogha Oxman, and Virginia Kaye Smith are the digital team. I'm Kai Rizdahl. We will see you tomorrow, everybody. This is APM.