Tangle - Stock market turmoil and economic uncertainty.

Episode Date: August 6, 2024

The global market disruption. On Monday, leading indices used to gauge the investor market across the globe plunged. In the United States, the S&P 500 slid by 3%, the Dow Jones Industria...l average dropped 2.6%, and the Nasdaq Composite index decreased by 3.4%. In Europe, the pan-European Stoxx index fell 1.5%, its worst one-day drop in over a year, while London’s FTSE 100 fell 1.8%, its worst one-day performance in nine months. Meanwhile, Japan’s Nikkei Stock Average plunged 12.4%, the worst single day for Japan’s flagship index since the day after Black Monday in 1987.You can read today's podcast⁠ ⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠, our “Under the Radar” story ⁠here and today’s “Have a nice day” story ⁠here⁠.You can catch our trailer for the Tangle Live event at City Winery NYC. Full video coming soon!Check out Episode 5 of our podcast series, The Undecideds. Please give us a 5-star rating and leave a comment!Today’s clickables: Enjoy the intro! (0:00), Quick hits (1:51), Today’s story (3:50) RIght’s take (7:13), Left’s take (11:12), Isaac’s take (15:29), Listener Question (20:28), Under the Radar (22:54), Numbers (23:37), Have a nice day (24:48)You can subscribe to Tangle by clicking here or drop something in our tip jar by clicking here. Help share Tangle.I'm a firm believer that our politics would be a little bit better if everyone were reading balanced news that allows room for debate, disagreement, and multiple perspectives. If you can take 15 seconds to share Tangle with a few friends I'd really appreciate it — just click here and pick some people to email it to!Take the survey: Do you think the U.S. is headed for a recession? Let us know!Our podcast is written by Isaac Saul and edited and engineered by Jon Lall. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75. Our newsletter is edited by Managing Editor Ari Weitzman, Will Kaback, Bailey Saul, Sean Brady, and produced in conjunction with Tangle’s social media manager Magdalena Bokowa, who also created our logo. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Starting point is 00:00:00 Oh, that coffee smells good. Can you pass me the sugar when you're finished? Whoa, whoa, whoa, what are you doing? That's salt, not sugar. Let's get you another coffee. Feeling distracted? You're not alone. Many Canadians are finding it hard to focus
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Starting point is 00:00:29 Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book, Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu, a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight.
Starting point is 00:00:49 Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. From Searchlight Pictures comes A Real Pain, one of the most moving and funny films of the year. Written and directed by Oscar-nominated Jesse Eisenberg and starring Eisenberg and Emmy Award winner Kieran Culkin, A Real Pain is a comedy about mismatched cousins who reunite for a tour through Poland to honor their beloved grandmother. The adventure takes a turn when the pair's old tensions resurface against the backdrop of their family history.
Starting point is 00:01:16 A Real Pain was one of the buzziest titles at Sundance Film Festival this year, garnering rave reviews and acclaim from both critics and audiences alike. See A Real Pain only in theaters November 15th. Hi, I'm Isaac. Hi, I'm Coco. Okay, you want to say after me, say, good morning. Good morning. Say, good afternoon.
Starting point is 00:01:41 Good afternoon. Say, good evening. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. Say, Good evening. Good evening. Say, I'm Isaac Saul. I'm Isaac Saul. Say,
Starting point is 00:01:52 And this is the Tangle Podcast. This is the Tangle Podcast. Good job! From executive producer Isaac Saul, this is Tangle. Hey, everybody, and welcome back to the Tangle podcast. I'm your host, Isaac Saul, getting an assist from my niece, Coco, today. Crazy day in the news. No surprise here. Most of you listening to this probably know by now that Vice President Kamala Harris has chosen Tim Walz to be her running mate in the 2024 election.
Starting point is 00:02:39 That is not the topic of today's edition. That news just broke a few minutes ago. not the topic of today's edition. That news just broke a few minutes ago. And today we're going to be talking about the stock market and the economy and some of the uneasy unsteadiness we had yesterday. And tomorrow, of course, we'll be breaking down the Kamala Harris running mate pick. And I've got lots of feelings about that. Lots of feelings about today, too, mostly about how nobody really knows what's going on. And that's a little preview of my take. But before you get there, I'm going to pass it off to John Law, our producer, for today's main story. And I'll be back for my take.
Starting point is 00:03:21 Thank you, Isaac. A ridiculously cute guest intro today. I love it. We should do stuff like that more often. Welcome, everybody. Here are your quick hits for today. First up, Vice President Kamala Harris chose Minnesota Governor Tim Walz to be her running mate. Separately, Harris earned the majority of roll call votes from delegates, officially making her the Democratic nominee for president. Number two, several U.S. personnel were injured in a rocket attack at a military base in Iraq. Number three, in one of the biggest antitrust trials in over two decades, a federal judge ruled that Google violated antitrust laws by holding a monopoly on search and text advertising.
Starting point is 00:03:59 Number four, Bangladesh's Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina resigned and fled the country after mass protests against a quota system for government jobs ended with demonstrators storming the official residence. The resignation ended her 15-year rule. And number five, at least four people were killed in Florida after Hurricane Debbie made landfall as a Category 1 storm. We begin with our top story. Markets around the world have dropped amid fears that the U.S. economy is heading for a slowdown. Following the reactions from Asia and Europe, U.S. markets opened with a significant sell-off. The Nikkei index out of Japan fell by more than 12 percent at close. That's the biggest one-day dip it has seen since 1987. And the stock market is opening in the red this morning after a rough finish last week on a
Starting point is 00:04:56 weaker-than-expected jobs report. The Dow's down more than a thousand points as that global sell-off intensifies. The Dow that you're looking at right now is down 2.6 percent. Tech stocks, the Nasdaq and the S&P 500 are down even more than that. And the S&P 500 generally is what's inside of people's retirement savings accounts. On Monday, leading indices used to gauge the investor market across the globe plunged. In the United States, the S&P 500 slid by 3 percent, the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 2.6 percent, and the Nasdaq Composite Index decreased by 3.4 percent. In Europe, the Pan-European Stocks Index fell 1.5 percent, its worst one-day drop in over a year, while London's FTSE 100 fell 1.8%,
Starting point is 00:05:45 its worst one-day performance in nine months. Meanwhile, Japan's Nikkei stock average plunged 12.4%, the worst single day for Japan's flagship index since the day after Black Monday in 1987. Monday's dip follows several days of poor economic indicators in the U.S. On Thursday, the Department of Labor released its latest jobless claims report, which showed an increase of 14,000 claims over the previous week to a total of 249,000, the highest figure in over a year. Then, on Friday, the DOL published its July jobs report that showed 114,000 jobs added in July, missing expectations, while the unemployment rate hit a three-year high at 4.3%. The unemployment rate has now risen by half a point over the previous three months,
Starting point is 00:06:32 a threshold former Federal Reserve economist Claudia Somm used to identify the early stages of past recessions, commonly known as the Somm Rule. Investor concerns led to a sell-off at the end of last week, with the Dow Jones Industrial A average falling nearly 1,800 points in a two-day span. Then on Monday, the Dow Jones' largest one-day loss since September of 2022 prompted economists to speculate that the market dip could portend to a coming recession. The main factor that is staying power is the economy's slowdown, Wells Fargo head of global investment strategy Paul Christopher said in a report. Investors have been watching household financial stress build for the past two years, but during that time, job growth remained above its December 2009 to December 2019 average of 180,000 new jobs per month. Another factor many economists believe to be driving the global
Starting point is 00:07:20 downturn is the interaction of changing interest rates with carry trade in the Japanese yen. For years, the interest rate in Japan has been set at zero, encouraging many investors to borrow yen. However, the Bank of Japan agreed to raise interest rates last week, potentially prompting investors to sell off assets to cover losses. Others believe persistent interest rates combined with overvalued tech stocks have led to a temporary market correction. Market concerns have led some economists to push for the Fed to hold an emergency meeting to cut interest rates now to stave off a recession. However, many economists are cautioning that worries about a recession are premature, noting that the S&P 500 and NASDAQ indices are both up over 9% so far this year, while GDP grew by an inflation-adjusted 2.8% in the second
Starting point is 00:08:06 quarter. On Tuesday morning, trading in Asia showed the downward trend reversing, with Japan's Nikkei rising 10% and the yen giving back some of its gains against the dollar. In the United States, all major indices rose over 1% during the morning session. Today, we'll get into what writers from the right and the left are saying about the economic news, and then Isaac's take. We'll be right back after this quick commercial break. From Searchlight Pictures comes A Real Pain, one of the most moving and funny films of the year. Written and directed by Oscar-nominated Jesse Eisenberg and starring Eisenberg and Emmy Award winner Kieran Culkin, A Real Pain is a comedy about mismatched cousins who reunite for a tour through Poland to honor their beloved grandmother. The adventure takes a turn when the pair's old
Starting point is 00:09:02 tensions resurface against the backdrop of their family history. A Real Pain was one of the buzziest titles at Sundance Film Festival this year, garnering rave reviews and acclaim from both critics and audiences alike. See A Real Pain only in theaters November 15th. Whether renting, renewing a mortgage, or considering buying a home, everybody has housing costs on their minds. For free tools and resources to help you manage your home finances, visit Canada.ca slash ItPaysToKnow. A message from the Government of Canada. First up, let's start with what the right is saying.
Starting point is 00:09:40 The right is worried about the market downturn, suggesting a recession could be imminent. Some say the sell-off is driven in part by Biden administration policies. Others urge caution, arguing dramatic moves could worsen the problem. The Wall Street Journal editorial board said the easy money reckoning arrives. The sell-off in global stocks that began Friday and continued on Monday is in part a correction from sky-high values, especially in tech shares. But it may also be the start of a reckoning for a decade and a half of excessive spending and easy money that is going to arrive eventually. How soon and rough the reckoning will be is the
Starting point is 00:10:15 great unknown, the board wrote. The fear is real, and Wall Street and Washington are blaming the Federal Reserve. The theory is that no sooner had Chairman Jerome Powell signaled last Wednesday that he wasn't cutting interest rates immediately than a poor U.S. jobs report on Friday suggested a recession is nigh. The clamor of the Fed to save the day reflects that it's the only game in town. Congress is gridlocked on economic policy, except for more spending and bad tax and trade ideas, the board said. But cheap money is never free, and it can't last forever. It builds distortion and excesses that are unsustainable and must eventually be addressed. That's what the Fed had to do by raising rates to arrest inflation, and part of that bill is now
Starting point is 00:10:55 coming due. In the Washington Examiner, Tiana Lowe-Dosher asked, are markets panicking more about Bidenomics or Biden-Harris foreign policy? The market movement seems to be less about a fear of imminent recession and more about the perils of geopolitical chaos sown in part by the failures of Joe Biden's presidency and now the increasing odds that Vice President Kamala Harris succeeds in beating former President Donald Trump for a second term in office, Dosher wrote. The long-needed correction of asset bubbles inflated by rampant deficit spending for the past three and a half years, the inflationary fiscal policy of Bidenomics, has collided headlong into practical ramifications of Biden's foreign policy
Starting point is 00:11:33 and the highest odds in months that Trump actually loses to the de facto extension of the Biden doctrine. Sure, some of the sell-off may be usual desperation we see from Wall Street when it wants to goad the Fed into doing its bidding and reduce the price of borrowing with a premature rate cut. But part of it is the basic calculus that every investor, like every world leader, is weighing in their heads. If you are Iran, or one of its proxies, do you begin your barrage of attacks on American allies such as Israel now, when the White House is effectively empty, or do you wait until Trump is in office, Dosher said. A justified market correction has run alongside the exogenous reality that the American electorate may give us four more years of bad fiscal policy and even worse foreign policy. In City Journal, Alison Schrager wrote, just another volatile day or something worse. One might write this off as
Starting point is 00:12:23 just another day of volatility. The worry, though, is that this is something much worse, the start of a bear market and a long-feared recession. It's too soon to tell. Markets have been jittery for a long time. But the turmoil does show that we have become over-reliant on monetary policy as the solution to our economic problems, Schrager said. It also seemed unlikely that inflation would be defeated with a significant slowdown. A soft landing had never happened before. Despite all these concerns, markets mostly kept climbing and the economy remained strong, though it never felt completely secure. Many are already calling the Fed's decision not to cut rates last week a great error.
Starting point is 00:12:59 Wharton's Jeremy Siegel even called for an emergency 75 basis point rate cut now, and another in September. This is the sort of action you'd expect only if the U.S. were in the midst of a grave financial crisis. It's not clear how a Fed rate cut last week would have changed things, Schrager wrote. If anything, the current unpredictability shows how aggressive monetary policy, especially in the case of Japan's central banks keeping rates near zero for a decade and its yield curve control can create distortions that cause trouble. All right, that is it for what the right is saying, which brings
Starting point is 00:13:39 us to what the left is saying. The left is not concerned about the broader health of the U.S. economy, but acknowledges troubling signs in the latest jobs report. Some say the Fed should stick to its plan of a September rate cut. Others say recessionary fears are justifiable given the economic data. In his blog No Opinion, Noah Smith said the U.S. economy is not crashing. There's been a longer, slower decline over the past week, but it doesn't feel like an abrupt crash. Certainly, comparisons to 1987, when stocks lost a fifth of their value in a single day, seem a bit overblown, Smith wrote. Zooming out, we see that as of this writing, even after this week's decline, stocks are still up almost 10% for the year so far. That's actually a really good performance. The S&P 500's annual average
Starting point is 00:14:25 return is about 10.5%, historically speaking. So 9.9% in just seven months is better than usual. And over the past year, even after this week, the market is still up by 15.5%, an unusually good performance. What's interesting here is that the economic data coming out doesn't actually look particularly bad. And yes, that includes the dreaded SOM rule. And the economy certainly doesn't seem to have gotten abruptly worse in a way that should make stocks crash, Smith said. Indicators of labor market tightness may have fallen, but they're just about where they were before COVID when the economy was solid. My favorite labor market indicator, the prime age employment rate, is still just about as high as it's ever been and actually went up in July. In other words, there is a little bit of labor market weakness, but overall, the economy looks pretty good.
Starting point is 00:15:13 In Bloomberg, Marcus Ashworth argued an emergency Fed rate cut would be a mistake. There's nothing broken in the U.S. economy, so there's no justification for the monetary authorities to step in and mitigate losses for overextended equity holders. The fabled Fed put is a break glass lever only to be used in the event of a proper emergency, and we're not there yet, Ashworth wrote. Friday's July employment report came in weaker than economists anticipated, but hurricane barrel effects make it hard to discern any worrisome trend, as opposed to simply a single month of less robust payroll gains. The latest corporate earnings season is also pretty decent across the board, albeit with a handful of exceptions.
Starting point is 00:15:52 Emergency rate cuts do happen, but they're relatively rare and are only employed when the economy is facing a sudden seizure. The last pair were in March of 2020, in response to the pandemic, when interest rates were lowered by 150 basis points to zero, Ashworth said. The Fed is aware that it's been keeping official rates restrictive for possibly too long, but it doesn't need to overreact, especially in an election year. Easing cycles often start with a half-point cut, and this time such a move may be justified, but at the right time and place, at a scheduled meeting rather than an emergency response to an overdue correction in the market. In the New York Times, Paul Krugman wrote, the economy is looking pretty recessionary. The United States probably,
Starting point is 00:16:36 probably hasn't entered a recession yet, but the economy is definitely looking pre-recessionary, and policymakers, which right now basically means the Federal Reserve, need to move quickly to head off the risks of serious economic deterioration, Krugman said. It's already clear that the Fed made a mistake by not cutting rates last week. Indeed, it probably should have begun cutting rates months ago. Unfortunately, we can't turn back the clock. But the Fed's Open Market Committee, which sets short-term interest rates, can and should make a substantial cut, probably by a half a percentage point rather than its usual quarter point at its next meeting. Why do I say that the economy looks pre-recessionary?
Starting point is 00:17:13 The most important factor is the unemployment rate, which has been gradually trending up over the past few months. Friday's employment report triggered the SOM rule, which says that a significantly large rise in the unemployment rate is a strong indication that a recession has started, Krugman wrote. The appraisal of the labor market by consumers surveyed by the conference board has deteriorated. Amazon has warned that consumers seem cautious, and so on. None of this screams recession, but it does point to a rising risk of a near-future recession. All right, let's head over to Isaac for his take. All right, that is it for what the left and the right are saying, which brings us to my take. So economist Noah Smith's number one rule for writing about the stock market is that nobody really knows why stocks go up or down, even though everyone pretends to know. Smith has a doctorate in economics from the University of Michigan, and he taught economics at Stony Brook University.
Starting point is 00:18:16 I have a bachelor's degree in nonfiction English writing from the University of Pittsburgh, and I write a newsletter about politics. So suffice it to say, if a respected economist's number one rule is that nobody knows why stocks go up or down, I am not going to pretend that I do. But since part of my job is trying to understand this stuff, I've developed a pretty good rudimentary idea of what might be happening and some plausible explanations for what might be coming. From what I've read, there seem to be three big things driving yesterday's sell-off. First, interest rates in Japan went up. I put a lot of trust into what my favorite economics writer Matt Levine has to say, and that seems to be what he thinks. Here are the basics. For a long time, Japan's central banks set interest rates at zero. This meant an investor could borrow Japanese yen without interest, convert it to a
Starting point is 00:19:05 currency like U.S. dollars, then invest that money in assets like tech stocks. If the stocks performed well, they could pay off the borrowed yen and turn a profit. This is called a carry trade. The strategy relies on the Bank of Japan keeping interest rates low, but in July, it raised its interest rates. Unfortunately, this happened right around the time the Department of Labor released a bad jobs report. So if an investor borrowed yen to buy U.S. dollars and then interest rates went up, they'd suddenly need more money than expected to pay back the yen. Investors commonly resolve this shortfall by selling stocks. Thus, the sell-off. Number two, the bad jobs report. This one is a pretty standard traditional market driver.
Starting point is 00:19:43 July produced fewer new jobs than economists expected, and unemployment ticked up yet again. Simply put, fewer jobs means a worse economy. By now, you've probably heard about the SOM rule. We actually spoke to Claudia SOM, the woman who created the rule this morning. She cautioned that just because the rule was triggered, it does not mean a recession is a done deal. Instead, SOM said the rule is more of a warning signal. When the unemployment rate starts increasing steadily over short periods of time, typically that's happening because there's less demand for workers, which is a sign of there's less spending, there's less investment, and this dynamic feeds on itself. So while she says the direction of travel and the unemployment rate is worrisome,
Starting point is 00:20:23 it's not necessarily a harbinger of a recession. Finally, it seems a lot of people, aka the market we might call them, were expecting interest rate cuts. When interest rates are high, borrowing money is more expensive, which cools the economy. The Fed has been doing that for the last couple of years to combat inflation, and it's been pretty effective, so a lot of people thought they would have cut interest rates by now to safely encourage more spending. However, the Fed left interest rates unchanged last Wednesday, which, combined with number one and two, might have led investors to sell overpriced assets. To repeat, I don't know which of these explanations is right or wrong, but I do know that the combination of all of them might be really bad. We could be headed
Starting point is 00:21:03 toward a recession or already in one, though I don't think we are. This isn't financial advice, but I personally don't think it's time to panic. For several years, a chorus of economists insisted we were approaching a recession or already in one. And yet here we are, August of 2024, still speculating and still experiencing a strong but complicated economy with poor consumer sentiment and inflation over 3%. Also, most of what we are seeing is pretty normal. The Atlantic's Derek Thompson noticed that there is a 64% chance of a 10% correction in the S&P 500 in any given year. Our stock market is coming off an all-time high, and our economy is in the midst of a very strong post-pandemic recovery. Inflation is falling. The uptick in unemployment, which doesn't usually rise gently, could very well be a healthy sign of approaching full employment rather than a metric pointing to
Starting point is 00:21:52 a terminal diagnosis. There are plenty of optimistic ways to look at all of this, and as of this writing, Tuesday morning, the market really does seem to be stabilizing, with stock futures bouncing back. Writing about economics is always difficult because expectations and belief play such a big role. In my typical world, predictions can be factually disproven. But in economics, everyone believing in a pending recession could very well bring it to fruition. That doesn't just affect market watchers and lowly political journalists, but policymakers who know that interpretations of their actions can impact the future as much as their actions themselves. All this is to say, I don't know what precisely caused Monday's market downturn, but we have some good ideas, and we'll need a lot more
Starting point is 00:22:34 data before we can say anything definitive about where the economy is headed. We'll be right back after this quick break. A Real Pain is a comedy about mismatched cousins who reunite for a tour through Poland to honor their beloved grandmother. The adventure takes a turn when the pair's old tensions resurface against the backdrop of their family history. A Real Pain was one of the buzziest titles at Sundance Film Festival this year, garnering rave reviews and acclaim from both critics and audiences alike. See A Real Pain only in theaters November 15th. Whether renting, renewing a mortgage, or considering buying a home, everybody has housing costs on their minds. For free tools and resources to help you manage your home finances, visit Canada.ca slash It Pays to Know.
Starting point is 00:23:35 A message from the Government of Canada. Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book, Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu, a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. Alright, that is it for my take, which brings us to your questions answered. This one's from Sophie in Amsterdam, Netherlands. Sophie said,
Starting point is 00:24:17 how do you decide how to phrase your quick hits? Obviously, a few lines can never do a story justice, so I imagine it's tough to write them while sticking to Tangle's values. And how do you select the hits in the first place? If you answered these in a previous newsletter, sorry. Okay, so for context, Sophie was referring to our quick hit from July 23rd, which read, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. reportedly floated working for the Trump White House as he considered endorsing Trump, according to the Washington Post. The Trump campaign said it declined the offer, and then we cited the report, which we
Starting point is 00:24:49 linked to. So we do have a few guidelines with quick hits that we follow, which were helpful for this story since it was a little complicated. First, we want to try to stick to the wording used by the reports that are breaking the story, unless we have a good reason to make a change. Simplifying wording or avoiding repetition in a summary. We considered changing the phrasing of floated working for to suggest that a cabinet positioned for himself or something else, but we thought their wording was deliberate, so we went with what the Washington Post used in their reporting. Which leads us to point two, which is to be as simple and succinct as possible. We used phrasing here that we felt conveyed the story as accurately and briefly as possible.
Starting point is 00:25:29 Lastly, we want to make sure we're qualifying when necessary. The story about R.F. Kennedy Jr. we linked to wasn't widely corroborated, but it was instead the findings of a single reputable source. We said reportedly to convey that the story had been reported, but not broadly confirmed. This is similar to how we use allegedly to describe actions a person has been accused of, but not legally convicted of. As for the selection process, that's a little easier. We decide on quick hits as an editorial team based on what's appearing on front pages of major outlets, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, Fox News, the Washington Post, etc., that we know are impactful or that are creating a lot of buzz on social media. We also tend to pick stories that relate
Starting point is 00:26:09 directly to previous coverage. There is an update on a story we covered or referred to in previous newsletters. More than anything, though, we are answering the question, what are the five stories our readers need to know? All right, that is it for our reader question today. I'm going to send it back to John for the rest of the podcast and go spend some time with my unbelievably adorable niece, Coco. I'll see you guys tomorrow. Have a good one. Thanks, Isaac. Here's your under the radar story for today, folks. Over 300,000 Americans moved to flood or fire prone counties last year, despite the threats posed by an increasing number of severe climate events.
Starting point is 00:26:48 The data, drawn from the Census Bureau, the real estate firm Redfin, and the First Street Foundation, a nonprofit that analyzes climate risk, showed that counties most exposed to floods and fires gained more population than they lost from July 2022 to July of 2023. This continues a years-long trend of Americans disproportionately relocating to areas with a high risk of climate-related disasters. The Washington Post has this story and there's a link in today's episode description. All right, next up is our numbers section. The number of points the S&P 500 fell
Starting point is 00:27:23 between July 16th of 2024 and August 5th of 2024 is 480.87 points. The number of points DSMP 500 fell between February 19th of 2020 and March 23rd of 2020 is 1,148.75 points. That was at the onset of the COVID-19 recession. The number of points DSMP 500 fell between October 2007 and February 2009 during the Great Recession was 1,241.60 points. The percentage of Americans who rate economic conditions in the U.S. as poor is 46%, according to a July 2024 Gallup survey. The percentage of Americans who rated the economic conditions in the U.S. as poor in July of 2023 is 42 percent. The percentage of Americans who say economic conditions in the U.S. are getting worse is 70 percent. The percentage of Americans who say they are not worried about losing their job is 63 percent, according to a July 2024 YouGov survey. And the percentage of
Starting point is 00:28:21 Americans who think their financial situation will worsen in the next 12 months is 17%. All right, and last but not least, our Have a Nice Day story. Minnesota bus driver Jane Arden Verhulst gave her own shoes to a rider who was experiencing homelessness, driving the rest of the route with only her socks. Arden Verhulst is known for her happy demeanor, demonstrated through the playful nickname she gives to her regulars. One regular writer who witnessed Arden Verhulst's generosity said she hopes the receiver of the shoes gained a little bit of hope because that kind of receiving kindness and hope can actually be a thing that propels you towards choosing to get help. Fox 9 has this story and there's a link in today's episode description.
Starting point is 00:29:03 Fox 9 has this story and there's a link in today's episode description. All right, everybody, that is it for today's episode. As always, if you'd like to support our work, please go to retangle.com and sign up for a membership. We'll be right back here tomorrow for Isaac and the rest of the crew. This is John Law signing off. Have a great day, y'all. Peace. day, y'all. Peace. Our podcast is written by me, Isaac Saul, and edited and engineered by John Wall. The script is edited by our managing editor, Ari Weitzman, Will Kabak, Bailey Saul, and Sean Brady. The logo for our podcast was designed by Magdalena Bacoba, who is also our social media manager. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75. If you're looking for more from Tangle, please go to readtangle.com and check out our
Starting point is 00:29:50 website.

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