Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin - Economy Wrapped: 2023's Biggest Money News in Review

Episode Date: December 29, 2023

Taylor and SAG-AFTRA and AI, oh my! Today, Nicole is joined by exceptional journalist Mosheh Oinounou to bring you the five biggest stories in business in finance of 2023— it's a Spotify-Wrapped-meets-finance. An Economy Wrapped, if you will. Why look back? Well, the best way to prepare for the upcoming year, is to look at the one in the rearview. To listen to Mosh's amazing podcast, click here!

One of the most stressful periods of my life was when I was in credit card debt. I got to a point where I just knew that I had to get it under control for my financial future and also for my mental health. We've all hit a point where we've realized it was time to make some serious money moves. So take control of your finances by using a Chime checking account with features like no maintenance fees, fee-free overdraft up to $200, or getting paid up to two days early with direct deposit. Learn more at Chime.com slash MNN. When you check out Chime, you'll see that you can overdraft up to $200 with no fees. If you're an OG listener, you know about my infamous $35 overdraft fee that

I got from buying a $7 latte and how I am still very fired up about it. If I had Chime back then, that wouldn't even be a story. Make your fall finances a little greener by working toward your financial goals with Chime. Open your account in just two minutes at Chime.com slash MNN. That's Chime.com slash MNN. Chime. Feels like progress. Banking services and debit card provided by the Bancorp Bank N.A. or Stride Bank N.A. Members FDIC. SpotMe eligibility requirements and overdraft limits apply. Boosts are available to eligible Chime members enrolled in SpotMe and are subject to monthly limits. Terms and conditions apply. Go to Chime.com slash disclosures for details.

I love hosting on Airbnb. It's a great way to bring in some extra cash, but I totally get it that it might sound overwhelming to start or even too complicated if, say, you want to put your summer home in Maine on Airbnb, but you live full time in San Francisco and you can't go to Maine every time you need to change sheets for your guests or something like that. If thoughts like these have been holding you back, I have great news for you. Airbnb has launched a co-host network, which is a network of high quality local co-hosts with Airbnb experience that can take care of your home and your guests. Co-hosts can do what you don't have time for, like managing your

reservations, messaging your guests, giving support at the property, or even create your listing for you. I always want to line up a reservation for my house when I'm traveling for work, but sometimes I just don't get around to it because getting ready to travel always feels like a scramble, so I don't end up making time to make my house look guest-friendly. I guess that's the best way to put it. But I'm matching with a co-host so I can still make that extra cash while also making it easy on myself. Find a co-host at Airbnb.com slash host. I'm Nicole Lappin, the only financial expert you don't need a dictionary to understand. It's time for some money rehab. Happy New Year's Eve, Eve, Eve, everyone. We are really in the holiday spirit here on Money Rehab.

Yesterday's episode was all about goal setting for 2024 and making financial New Year's resolutions that actually stick. Well, today we're flipping perspectives and looking back on 2023. And my God, what a full year it was for the money world. So full, in fact, that I decided that we needed to do a Spotify-wrapped meets finance episode. An economy-wrapped, if you will. Why look back? Well, I find the best resource for preparing for the financial highs and lows of a new year, the old one. To break down the five biggest money stories of 2023, I call up Moe Schwanunu, who is an uber-talented journalist and the host of one of my favorite podcasts, Moe News. Let's unwrap. Moe Schwanunu, welcome to Money Rehab. It is so good to be here and a great way to end 2023 and look ahead to next year. Absolutely. Can you imagine a better way to celebrate? I know there's nowhere you'd

rather ring in the new year than here on Money Rehab doing an economy wrapped. Oh yeah, no, I've all been at New Year's Eve plans, but in the days leading up, this is a great, a great way to look back. And it's interesting to bring up the Spotify Wrapped comparison because it turns out there's a little overlap this year, at least for one of our picks for our top five stories. Yes. So let's start there. All right. So this is our favorite of the five. Well, it's hard to say favorite, but definitely something that we've been texting about, the sheconomy of 2023.

economy of 2023. And when we're talking Spotify rap, I'm talking about Taylor Swift and Beyonce, who've moved way beyond just music this year in terms of overall impact on the economy. We can also throw Barbie in there. And the numbers are wild. I'll say this also because in 2023, I'll say personally, my wife and I welcomed a baby, our first, a girl, into this world in September. So I am pumped for her in terms of what we've seen this year. So some of the numbers here are pretty astounding. Taylor Swift and Beyonce alone generated $10 billion just in the U.S. economy this year. Notably, the impact is global. You saw in Sweden, actually, that Beyonce alone brought inflation up,

according to the economy minister there, because of the ticket sales, the boom, etc. That literally Beyonce led to inflation. And you see the impact across the board. Just her six shows, Taylor's six shows in LA generated upwards of $300 million-plus for the local economy. So you're talking about hotels, you're talking about rental cars, etc. So Beyonce and Taylor, global impact. Then you have the Barbie movie. And that, just as a film, has grossed $1.5 billion in 2023. And that's not even counting Mattel sales and the larger impact on the economy there.

I think Michael's crafts, etc, did well off of Barbie. So the Sheconomy story, is that what we're calling it? Sheconomy? Yes, Sheconomy. Of 2023, when you look at the numbers, women in the workforce, women in the C-suite, still way behind where they need to be, right? The top 500 American companies, only 10% have female CEOs right now. Notably, single women this year made up about 20% of home buyers, notable because just a few decades ago, literally till the 70s, you needed a man to co-sign with

you to purchase a home. So you're seeing progress, you're seeing the numbers head in the right direction, and hopefully that's reinforced by Barbie, Taylor, Beyonce. So you're seeing progress. You're seeing the numbers head in the right direction. And hopefully that's reinforced by Barbie Taylor, Beyonce. So allow me to read between the lines here, Moshe. You would vote for Taylor for president. Oh, a thousand percent. I mean, in a battle between an 81 year old and a 78 year old, both of whom have already been president for four years. I think that Taylor would do very well. I think she would hit the number of electoral votes necessary. I don't know that she's interested. Right. We had former presidential candidate Andrew Yang on Money Rehab, and he basically said the same thing. So I guess we're getting ready for Swift 2024. Yes, yes. We'll run the campaign. Okay, perfect. So that's

story number one, the she economy. Next up, perhaps the biggest story in the 2024 word cloud, inflation. Yeah. So that's the big story this year. What recession? It's so interesting, Nicole, because I thought back and realized that we didn't interview in 2022 talking about how to prep for the recession. We didn't interview earlier this year where we talked about prepping for a recession. That's been all the talk in the last couple of years. And for all of the criticism we gave the Fed for being too slow to recognize that inflation was real in 21 and 22,

they finally got aboard, we're gonna raise interest rates. Then the concern was they're gonna raise them too quickly and put us in a recession. So this whole idea of the Goldilocks economy, like, not too hot, not too cold. Can you slow things down, cool things down without bringing us into recession? And it turns out, it appears, as of this recording, that they have pulled it off for now, which is pretty amazing given where we started here

and given that just not so long ago, we were talking about 9% inflation. I mean, numbers we hadn't seen since the 80s. Yeah, we're even looking to 2024 and talking rate cuts. It's pretty incredible. I mean, that Goldilocks approach that you're talking about was the goal for achieving a soft landing. And all signs point to the fact that they actually pulled it off. Yeah. So they were able to raise rates really quickly.

Now, by the way, it's had an impact on all of us, right? On the 30-year mortgage rate, on car loans, on all the things that the Fed interest rate impacts in the economy. Credit cards. Though I know that if anyone listens to this podcast, they're not in any credit card debt because they've been listening to your advice for a while now. But that said, we're talking about 2024, 2025 having interest rate cuts. And that's why you've seen one of the reasons between the market go nuts, the stock market go nuts in the past few weeks is we're now talking about cuts. Now, one story I'll be following in 24 related to all of this is how does this translate to consumers and voters?

Because we have an election coming up and we have a president who is running on pulling off the soft landing. Now, we're not going to give him credit because, you know, we tend to overly blame presidents or overly credit them. At the end of the day, you know, this is the Fed. The issue when it comes to this soft landing is, do people feel it? Because as we know, inflation slowing down doesn't mean prices are dropping. It just means they're not increasing as much as they were. And so people still feel the pinch. You go to the grocery store and it hits $200 very quickly when you're buying a bunch of groceries. And you're like, how is this? And so I think the question is, while the economic numbers, you know, kind of low unemployment,

inflation coming down, et cetera, all positive headlines, many Americans and many people around the world are not feeling it. You see it with the housing market, and that's continuing to be a thing. And so that translation of the Fed pulled it off, but people don't really care or don't really feel it, I think is going to be one of the interesting news stories to watch this year. Yeah, I like it. You are already teasing our economy wrapped for 2024. Oh, yeah.

I'll be back. Same bad time, same bad place next year. Perfect. Perfect. So that was big story number two, inflation and the soft landing. Our third story for 2023 is one I can't believe we haven't mentioned already, AI. How can we sum up the AI revolution and what we saw in 2023? Let's ask ChatGPT. Should we ask?

I think we should. I think it's only right. So I will say this, AI had a bit of a headstart, right? Because like you really, there was a moment in, I believe it was November of 2022 when ChatGPT comes out and we were tracking the numbers on MoNews and you just saw like media coverage, press releases, social media mentions blow up in like the early winter of 22 going to 23. But then it really took the year by storm. Right. ChatGPT in the classroom. You know, I hear from teachers all the time who are like figuring out which of their students is actually learning the assignment and which of the students are just using chat GPT to do their work. By the

way, kids out there, the teachers know it gets pretty obvious. Chat GPT might be the start, but it still requires your editing. You can't just turn in ChatGPT. Interestingly, you've also seen business begin to embrace it. But I think one of the interesting numbers of 2023, the number came out at the just recently, last couple of weeks, that showed only 4% of businesses are finding a use for AI so far. What? Wow. Just four? 4%.

4.4%. Let's round up to five. And another 6.5% believe they'll have a use for it in 2024. So for all of the hype, there's a lot of businesses out there, sort of compare it to crypto as in, I know we don't love crypto on this podcast, but as in one of the knocks is no practical purpose. And so many businesses so far see the hype, are interested in learning more, but don't see a daily practice for it. Now, we did see in unemployment numbers in 2023, the first people losing their jobs to AI. They started to track those numbers. And that was pretty remarkable. I remember that happening around the summer. Now, with all the hype of AI began the concern of AI in earnest, right? You saw the letter from Elon Musk and a bunch of the tech

entrepreneurs who were like, whoa, we could destroy ourselves, like regulate, regulate us, regulate us. You saw Sam Altman, the former head of ChatGPT, now the head again of ChatGPT, going before Congress and saying, please regulate us. We need rules. And one of the interesting comparisons I like to make for people is that the internet itself, many people might not know this, was developed by the Pentagon, by the government. It was this new technology that was effectively controlled in its development by the U.S. government in academia, right, at certain universities. And that was the first internet system.

AI is being developed by for-profit companies. And it's an important distinction there because for-profit companies want to make money off the thing. And that turned out to be one of the questions we still have as of this recording as to why Sam Altman was pushed out of ChatGPT. Because the accusation was that he's moving too quickly, that he's not putting enough safeguards in for developing AI that will eventually destroy us all, right? And, you know, the concern, the dire scenario, et cetera. So that's been one of the more interesting things I've been watching with AI is governments realizing we're behind the eight ball here. We have to do something.

Right. And we talked about this a lot on the show. Originally, OpenAI, the company that created ChatGPT, was founded as a non-profit, but the CEO, Sam Altman, created a for-profit subsidiary of the company that could take outside investments, although the returns on those investments would be capped. And then the board of directors was supposed to act as this moral leash, this moral compass for the company. So that was supposed to be this big system of checks and balances that would prevent open AI from prioritizing profit, right, over societal consequences. Then we had Elon Musk famously coming out saying that Altman discovered something nefarious about AI. And that was the reason he was ousted. Whether or not Musk is right, still very much TBD.

Yeah. And you saw almost all the OpenAI employees rally around Altman, right? You know, that crazy weekend where he was fired and then had a job at Microsoft. And then by the beginning of the week, beginning of the next week, he was back at the CEO and it pushed out the board. And to your point about the board members being nonprofit folks, you know, Altman helped transition OpenAI from a nonprofit company to a for-profit company. Is that something we want around a technology that many people legitimately are nervous about? Now, at the same time, I don't want AI to be a negative story for 2023. We certainly saw breakthroughs in terms of how it's being used in medicine, in science, in a whole bunch of areas.

In finance. In finance, where you can run numbers for money, to make money, like where you can put a whole bunch of data in there that would take humans or otherwise other machines a long time to process and be able to utilize it for good, right? It's like the internet, it's like social media, it's like everything. It's like, it can be used for good, it can be used for evil. But with AI, we get a little nervous about it because it's the robots. It's the machines. Are they going to get too smart for us?

Yeah. So let me ask you something. You mentioned the people who lost their jobs to AI over the last year. There were a lot of journalists in that category. You, Mosh, are an exceptional journalist. So how are you thinking about the role of AI in the industry? And are you doing anything to safeguard your work right now? Good question. Probably not enough. And now that you ask it after this podcast, I'd be like, am I doing enough to protect myself?

One way we're using AI right now is as a video editor. So we will run our podcasts and video through a program called Opus AI, O-P-U-S. Opus literally will go through it and identify clips being like, we think these are the four or five most interesting clips that will get traction on social media for you. And again, that eliminates a lot of work, right? You know, if you know this as a journalist, you got to go through the whole show. You got to clip it. You got to edit it. But by the way, those are jobs for video editors, right? Those are jobs for producers, et cetera. But as a small startup with just a couple employees,

we're trying to find ways to punch above our weight. We're trying to find ways to be able to output these days on TikTok and Snapchat and Instagram and all the various social media properties and YouTube. And so finding ways to ensure our content is going everywhere by utilizing AI is certainly one thing we're looking at. I'm going to think more about it because I have to spend several more decades in this business. So I have to make sure I'm staying a bit one step ahead of Sam Altman and the robots. Right, right.

So here's a story for you that Jason Pfeiffer, my co-host of my other pod, Help Wanted, told on the show. When the phonograph was first invented in the late 1800s, which was the first music recording device, there were people who thought that the invention would be the end of the music industry. They thought that live music would go extinct. And even crazier, they thought that babies would grow up talking like machines. I mean, some real bananas stuff. Sure. But what ended up happening was the creation of a new revenue stream for musicians. And obviously, we were just talking about Taylor Swift and how much she made off her tour. So clearly, live music is far from dead. And the lesson here is that when there's a new technology that changes the world,

you can find new opportunities if you decide to learn the technology. And I can't be too Pollyanna-ish here. I know that AI is going to replace some jobs. It already has. But I really like what you said about how you're using AI to make your show smarter and to reach more people. I think that's the smart way to think about AI. And I'll tell you why I'm not personally worried about you.

You have a personality-driven show. You have a community around you. AI cannot replace a community. And your community loves you. Like, you just did an awesome in-person interview with Secretary of State Blinken, and your audience was so excited to see you do such a dope thing. I mean, I loved reading the comments on your videos from people saying, so cool to see that you're doing this, and we're rooting for you. And no one has those warm fuzzies about AI. The State Department isn't booking the robot to interview the Secretary of State. No, you bring up a very good point. And that's why people like you and people like me aren't as worried because if you're building your own community and you have more personality-based reporting or interviewing style, ideally AI ain't going to replace that anytime, but not anytime soon. Now, I will say that if you're a journalist working at a larger company and you're churning

out copy on a certain desk, et cetera, that's where you might be a little more concerned or in the case of the example I brought up, like a video editor that's looking for roles, et cetera, as the AI gets smarter on that, that becomes concerning. But at the same time, I think, you know, you can look back, you brought up the phonograph, we can bring up the internet, we can bring up the printing press, you can bring up various technologies over time where there has been a concern that like that technology will eliminate certain jobs. And, you know, I was reflecting, I think we were posted a news story from 1989 about this new Christmas trend of computers, people buying computers.

They're not quite sure what they're going to do with the computers, but they're hearing about these computer things. And you look back at that, you're like, oh, my God, that was 1989, the year Taylor Swift was born. Look how much has evolved since then. Look how much evolved in that decade of the 90s around technology. So AI is here and then it could blow up. And so the question is, do we have the right safeguards around it? Are we thinking about it the right way?

And are we prepared for its impact on the larger jobs economy? Yeah, well, that was one of the big questions and one of the big demands that came out of our fourth big story of 2023, which was all of the union activity. And the AI question was a big point in the actor and writer's strike. Yeah. But that was not the only group

that fought to unionize in 2023. Nice segue there. Well, thank you. That's why they pay you the big bucks. So it wasn't just the actors and the writers, right? Hold on to your wallets. Money Rehab will be right back. One of the most stressful periods of my life was when I was in credit card debt. I got to a point where I just knew that I had to get it under control for my financial future

and also for my mental health. We've all hit a point where we've realized it was time to make some serious money moves. So take control of your finances by using a Chime checking account with features like no maintenance fees, fee-free overdraft up to $200, or getting paid up to two days early with direct deposit. Learn more at Chime.com slash MNN. When you check out Chime, you'll see that you can overdraft up to 200 with no fees if you're an og listener you know about my infamous 35 overdraft fee that i got from buying a seven dollar latte and how i am still very fired up about it if i had chime back then that wouldn't even be a story make your fall finances a little greener by working toward your

financial goals with chime open your account in just two minutes at Chime.com slash MNN. That's Chime.com slash MNN. Chime feels like progress. Banking services and debit card provided by the Bancorp Bank N.A. or Stride Bank N.A. Members FDIC. SpotMe eligibility requirements and overdraft limits apply. Boosts are available to eligible Chime members enrolled in SpotMe and are subject to monthly limits. Terms and conditions apply. Go to chime.com slash disclosures for details. I love hosting on Airbnb. It's a great way to bring in some extra cash, but I totally get it that it might sound overwhelming to start or even too complicated if, say, you want to put your summer home in Maine on Airbnb, but you live full time in San Francisco and you can't go to Maine every time you need to change sheets for your guests or something like that. If thoughts

like these have been holding you back, I have great news for you. Airbnb has launched a co-host network, which is a network of high quality local co-hosts with Airbnb experience that can take care of your home and your guests. Co-hosts can do what you don't have time for, like managing your reservations, messaging your guests, giving support at the property, or even create your listing for you. I always want to line up a reservation for my house when I'm traveling for work, but sometimes I just don't get around to it because getting ready to travel always feels like a scramble, so I don't end up making time to make my house look guest-friendly. I guess that's the best way to put it. But I'm matching with a co-host so I can still

make that extra cash while also making it easy on myself. Find a co-host at Airbnb.com slash host. And now for some more money rehab. This was the year of union strikes, at least in modern day speaking, not quite what we saw in the post-World War II era, et cetera. And that's something to keep in perspective here as we talk about the union story. That said, the union story, a huge story. More than half a million workers went on strike in the U.S. this year. And actually, it would have been a million, but because of the threat of strikes, they actually were able to prevent some of the bigger strikes this year, including the one at UPS. By the way, one thing I learned with the UPS threatened strike here, first of all, the company caved to the nearly

400,000 workers there. That would have been a huge, I mean, think learned with the UPS threatened strike here. First of all, the company caved to the nearly 400,000 workers there. That would have been a huge, I mean, think about the impact UPS has on the economy. They got the strongest contract in years. I didn't realize that the company, until this new contract, was not obligated to put air conditioning in those UPS trucks. What? Yeah. Like, they had a pretty raw deal, which is why the union here struck a big deal for the UPS workers this year. So they did not go on strike.

But it's the strikes that did happen that also saw a major impact, right? You mentioned the actors and the writers. Among their issues, that that economy has changed, the streaming economy. I used to be able to do a show if my name is David Schwimmer or Jennifer Aniston, right, called Friends or Jerry Seinfeld. And it would be sold into repeats, it'd be sold in syndication. And I'd see checks coming in from around the world for the rest of time. And if I was on a successful show, I'm good. In the streaming era, that's not the case, right? If my show goes on Netflix, etc, there's no syndication, there's no repeats, etc.

I'm making sense on the dollars, the same complaint musicians have about streaming versus the CD era, right, the tape era, etc. And an issue that they have faced with an economy. So the actors and the writers are like, we're not seeing the dough. I worked on hugely successful shows on, you know, Netflix and Hulu and Apple TV. And I'm seeing bupkis. I'm seeing nothing from all of this. So they went on strike. And in addition to that, you mentioned the AI thing, right? They're like, oh my God, my voice can be replicated by AI. My writing can be replicated by AI. I can ask Chet GPT to write me an episode of whatever TV show. And by the way, some of the dialogue is actually pretty funny and pretty adept if you feed enough information into the system. Well, that concerns me as a writer and actor. So they go on strike.

By the way, one of the things that you're going to notice in Q1 and Q2, first half of 2024, you might not see as many new seasons of TV shows or movies as you were expecting because of the strike in 2023. But you did see the power of these unions. They stuck together. They went for several months and they were able to get a major deal for themselves that they were happy with. I mentioned the UPS threatened strike. The auto workers, another huge strike of this year. The UAW hit all three of them, GM, Ford, and Stellantis. They were able to get one of their biggest raises in decades. And so ultimately, you know, I looked at these numbers. Bloomberg Law put together that in the first quarter of 2023, there was a 7% wage hike.

That was the biggest single quarter raise in 2007. That was just the first quarter of 23. They haven't even done the numbers for the rest of the year. But we did see those huge kind of double-digit wage increases. Probably not surprising, right? Unemployment's pretty low. It's still a competitive job market. So the workers still, it's still a workers market versus the employer market.

I mean, we love a workers market, but not all the unionization efforts were successful this year. You did see them at Starbucks and at Amazon go up against companies. And you're going to see this at Tesla against Elon's companies, right? Who are like, there will be no unionization here. And the fines, the ramifications for these larger employers are still not there as far as the government's concerned. The laws are still very employer friendly. And so it'll be interesting to see, you know, whether there's any movement at

Washington to kind of back up these union workers. You did see, by the way, interestingly, with the UAW lines, Trump and Biden both lend them support. So you do see kind of like put their fingers to the wind. You do see where the politicians see where the American people stand on this. What it means long term is a question mark. Right. But let's just keep looking back for a second and just say that the writers strike and the actors strike ended with deals that the writers and the actors were very happy with. So to tie a bow on the A.I. story, one of the big wins in the writers's strike was that we saw the limitation of how AI can be used in scripting. Rules around AI. How novel. Okay, I am out of good transition. So let me just say that our fifth and final story for 2023 is about oil and clean energy and everything in between.

Yeah, you know, it's so interesting because you grow up, I mean, our generation, right? It's so interesting because you grow up, I mean, our generation, right? Like hearing about OPEC, Saudi Arabia, and you're like, oh, you know, we're so dependent on the rest of the world when it comes to our energy. This is a reminder to all of you that the biggest producer of natural gas and oil in the world is the United States of America. And that was only reinforced and grew in 2023. Pretty remarkable story because of the backdrop here. So we began the year gas prices

at major highs, and that they dropped throughout the year for a variety of reasons. And because we know, you know, you've gone into this on this podcast, it's much larger than one thing, the president can't push a button and lower gas prices, increase gas prices. You know, they're always like, oh, it's the other people who have made gas prices high. And then when gas prices drop, they're like, you're welcome, America. Neither is true. Neither is true. Because, you know, as we know, things are complex in the world.

But they dropped over time. One of the reasons they're dropping is also U.S. production hitting a record high this year of oil. And it's interesting because of the fact that it's happening under a Democratic president. So you're not hearing about it. You're hearing Republicans say, you know, not drill, baby, drill. We got to drill more. And Democrats saying, hey, we increase production, but don't be too loud about it. Why?

Because so many people on the left, environmentalists, are not happy about that necessarily. So Democrats don't gloat about it. And so you don't typically hear about it. Republicans say we could be doing more. And it does come against the backdrop. We should mention this. The 2023 was the hottest year, we believe, in 125,000 years. Now, they go back into records, et cetera.

You know, we have recorded history through the mid-1800s. But based on the record, it appears this was the hottest year in 100,000 plus years, which, by the way, is leading most of us. There was a huge climate conference at the end of the year. One of the agreements that came out of that, by the way, was that we will gradually transition away from fossil fuels, which, by the way, the fact that all the world's countries were able to agree to that is pretty novel. It's sort of a let's hold hands and all wish this away together. No real rules put in there, no enforcement mechanism. to that is pretty novel. It's sort of a let's hold hands and all wish this away together. No, no real, no real rules put in there, no enforcement mechanism. But, you know, I find the transition to a clean economy, yet we're hitting hot, you know, production highs when it comes to oil and gas and the climate record all to be a really interesting, both, you know,

larger environmental story. But at the end of the day, we know this. This is an economic business story. It is. And a lot of the stories that make this such a big part of the mosaic of 2023 are the stories of businesses making green advancements or nations getting involved in these conversations. Most you talked about COP 28. But on the show, we also talk about what we can do on the individual level, too. And it's not just like the obvious stuff, take shorter showers. But the less obvious stuff, the equally easy stuff, tips on investing, like investing in funds that mimic the S&P 500, but don't include any oil stocks, or just simply investing in sustainable companies, showing the world that sustainability is not a charity. It's good business that can lead to real change. Oh, totally. You know, you saw, by the way, a huge investment.

It's not just happening here around the world, but here in the US with the infrastructure plan, et cetera. The clean energy economy that's been created around that, the chips plants that are being built around that. There's huge investment happening, companies building that stuff. You can do well all those companies that, you know, being good for the planet

can actually be good business. And by the way, when we're talking about economic impact here, when we're talking about record heat this year, it's not that you just have to stay indoors and hang out and pump your AC. There are huge economic ramifications. By you staying indoors, that's leading more people this year not to go out and shop. There's a whole bunch of people who have to work outside

who could not work outside this year, right? In construction and agriculture, etc. So you look at an impact of hundreds of billions of dollars this year by the record heat. So climate and the fact that we're not doing enough about climate change has huge ramifications. So either you invest the money now in transitioning the economy, or you're going to pay for it later, and economic impact. For example, we were just talking about energy. One of the reasons gas prices went up over the summer is because record heat led refineries in the U.S. not to be able to work at 100 percent because at a certain temperature outside, they can't run as efficiently. Well, what does that mean? You're not refining as much oil.

Well, now less oil is available. Well, ultimately, the same amount of demand. Well, prices does that mean? You're not refining as much oil. Well, now less oil is available. Well, ultimately the same amount of demand. Well, prices went up. And so you actually saw this year for practical purposes across Europe, across China, across the US, record heat have an impact in the hundreds of billions of dollars in terms of lost efficiency, lost wages. So you are starting to see where that actually hits our pocketbook. So you have, again, a question of, do you want to pay for it now? Or do you want to pay for it with weather? And so I think that's one of the interesting things to think about climate and think about all that. And you have people in business who are in terms of numbers and bottom line. Yeah. So that's our final top story of the 2023 economy wrapped. Let's just recap for a second. In 2023, we saw the rise of the Shikonomi. The Fed pulled off that soft landing. The AI revolution began in earnest. It was hot union summer and the U.S. took some real steps away from oil, but also some steps toward it. So to really wrap the wrap, what's the big story that you're focused on for 2024? So I'm closely watching the election. I think everybody is.

Ultimately, it's a politics story. It's a future of the nation story. But it's an economic story. Where are we going economically? We've never been in more debt in this country, right? How are we going to get ourselves out of that? How do we deal with a lot of the direction of the economy, taxes, etc.? You know, that's one thing we'll be watching very closely is how do Americans vote? We know that Americans typically vote,

their biggest issue is the economy, is how they're feeling right now. And how do they feel next November? Early voting will begin in September in some states. How will they feel in the back half of the year about the economy and where they want it to go? Money Rehab is a production of Money News Network. I'm your host, Nicole Lappin. Money Rehab's executive producer is Morgan Lavoie. Our researcher is Emily Holmes.

Do you need some money rehab? And let's be honest, we all do. So email us your money questions, moneyrehab at moneynewsnetwork.com to potentially have your questions answered on the show or even have a one-on-one intervention with me. And follow us on Instagram at moneynews and TikTok at moneynewsnetwork for exclusive video content. And lastly, thank you. No, seriously, thank you.

Thank you for listening and for investing in yourself, which is the most important investment you can make.