The Indicator from Planet Money - Argentina's bailout, a new way to cool data centers, and a cold holiday hiring season

Episode Date: September 26, 2025

It’s Indicators of the Week! It is that show where we parse the most fascinating financial numbers in the news and bring them to you. On today's show: Argentina needs a bailout, Microsoft’s new way to cool data centers, and retail hiring is not looking like it’s in the holiday spirit.Related episodes:  A radical plan to fix Argentina's inflationWhat $10 billion in data centers actually gets youFor sponsor-free episodes of The Indicator from Planet Money, subscribe to Planet Money+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org. Fact-checking by Sierra Juarez. Music by Drop Electric. Find us: TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Newsletter.  See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

Are you that friend, the one who's constantly recommending podcast episodes to anyone who will listen? Subscribe to NPR's Pod Club newsletter and nerd out with us. You'll get fresh podcast recommendations every week handpicked by the people that live for this stuff. Subscribe at npr.org slash podclub. You can also find the link in the description for this episode. NPR. This is the indicator for Planet Money. I'm Adrienne Ma.

And today I'm joined by the wondrous Waylon Wong. What an intro. Thank you. And the dazzling Daryon Woods. I'm here to dissect. I'm here to analyze. You're not here to make friends. You're here to talk about the news. Friends are incidental. They could come along as well. Would you say friends are a positive externality talking about the news? Friends with a positive externality we made along the way.

Put that on a tote bag. I think we just found some new merch. And for all that analysis and friendship, it is... Indicators of the week. It is that show where we parse the most fascinating financial numbers in the news. On today's show, Argentina needs a bailout. A new way to cool data centers? And holiday retail hiring is not looking so festive so far.

That's after the break. Whalen Wong, why don't you go first? My indicator is $20 billion. That is the size of a lifeline the U.S. might throw to our Argentina. Argentina, as you might know, is kind of a perennial economic basket case. Its current president, Javier Malay, is a close ally of President Donald Trump. And so the U.S. has a particular interest in helping out Argentina right now. Could you just recap what sort of help does Argentina need right now? Yeah, so the Argentine peso has been plummeting in value.

Earlier this month, Buenos Aires province held elections. They were pretty important. And Malay's party lost very badly, and that sparked a sell-off in the peso. Now, Malay, you might remember, came into office with really big plans. He was going to tame inflation, balance the budget. But then voters were unhappy with the austerity measures he put in. And then there's been this huge corruption scandal involving his sister who's in the government. She's been accused of taking bribes. And so all of this is taking a toll on investor confidence and the Argentine peso.

So how was the U.S. government going to help out? Well, as of this recording, the two countries don't have a finalized deal, but U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Besant announced on social media that they're negotiating this $20 billion swap line. This is a kind of loan where essentially the U.S. gives American dollars to the Argentine Central Bank. Argentina then uses those dollars to buy pesos. And that would have the effect of pushing up the value of the peso? Exactly. And the Argentine Central Bank has already spent more than a billion dollars of its own. money trying to prop up the currency. But with the Pesos still falling, it's like, you know,

throwing money down a hole. And so this is kind of a break from recent news with the U.S. The administration has been hostile to the idea of foreign aid or America first. Yeah, I mean, we got rid of U.S. AID, right? But President Trump really likes Malay. On the social, he called Malay a very good friend, and he said he will never let you down. Never let you down. I mean, tell that to the Argentine peso. It sounds like a Rickro. What are you talking about this song? Is that what we're talking about? The American taxpayer has been Rickrolled.

Okay. I think, Dary, you have just nominated yourself to go next. So I want to talk about an innovation that might help with the world's energy problems. We are in the middle of this global surge and electricity demand due to all those data centers being built for artificial intelligence. and video calls and so on. And a lot of that power is used for cooling. Right. Nobody wants an overheated computer chip.

Yeah, as we all know, our phones and laptops don't work well when they're hot. As much as 40% of the electricity used in data centers can be for cooling in some cases. That's my indicator of the week. So if you could reduce that 40% of energy used for cooling in data centers, that is a lot of power saved.

And just this week, Microsoft announced a possible way to do just that, microfluidics. Ooh, I've never heard that term before. Yeah, it sounds futurity. It's kind of exciting what they're doing. So rather than having a cooling plate over the entire silicon chip, they're funneling these tiny channels of coolant into the silicon itself. So imagine tiny braided rivers, the width of a piece of hair or like the veins of a leaf.

That's the way the coolant might be delivered to chips. in the future to stop them overheating. So how real is this right now? Is it really happening? It's just in the lab at the moment, but the lab results are good. Microsoft's announcement said that the company's microfluidics were up to three times better than cold plates at removing heat. And investors seem to be taking that news seriously. A company called Vertive Holdings provides cooling systems for data centers, and its stock price

fell about 5.5% on the day of Microsoft's announcement. Bad news for vertive, but good news for running data centers more cheaply. That's some very cool news, Darian. See what I did there? Thank you. Okay, well, that I guess just leaves me in my indicator of the week, which has to do with the upcoming holiday shopping season. So the indicator is 500,000.

Around this time each year, big retailers start hiring tons of temporary seasonal workers to help them deal with the oncoming hordes of holiday shoppers. But a staffing firm called Challenger, Gray, and Christmas, they predict that for the first time since 2009, which is just after the Great Recession, for the first time since then, retailers will hire fewer than 500,000 seasonal workers. And they're basing this in part on the fact that fewer companies right now

are announcing their holiday hiring plans. Then company name has nothing. to do with Christmas itself, I'm assuming. No, but it's like a perfect name for a holiday jobs report, actually. Nominative determinism where I guess their name has determined what they're doing. It's so fun to say. Challenger, great in Christmas, says this could be a sign of uncertainty among companies who are dealing with all sorts of things right now, including tariffs and inflationary

pressures. And it could also be a sign that they're planning on relying more on automation and permanent staffers to try and get through the. holidays. In short, they say that it looks like companies right now are planning to do more with less during the holidays. Ominous sign for the economy. I mean, it's not totally bleak on the hiring front. There are some companies that have announced their hiring plans. For example, there is Spirit Halloween, which a lot of people know. They sell Halloween stuff. And they said they'd be hiring 50,000 seasonal jobs this year. And also, Bath and Body Works is looking for.

for 30,000 seasonal jobs. So that is a lot of scented candles. We're going to have to buy some more scented candles, Adrienne. We are the problem. Do you guys have a favorite bath and bodywork scent? Are you, you know, sunripe and raspberry, cucumber melon? Or do you go for, you know, they're like masculine branded sets like oak and teak and whatever, mahogany? Dynamite.

Boot. Berenced steak. seven, sent a candle called clenched fist. This episode was produced by Angel Carreras and engineered by Robert Rodriguez. It was fact-checked by Tyler Jones. It was edited by Cake and Canon and the indicators of production of NPR.