A phantom debt menace

Marketplace All-in-One

Marketplace

News, Business

4.5 • 1.4K Ratings

🗓️ 8 May 2024

⏱️ 16 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Increasingly popular buy now, pay later services allow shoppers to split their purchases into smaller, recurring payments. We’ll get into why these loans are blurring economists’ understanding of today’s consumer debt landscape. We’ll also discuss President Joe Biden’s climate and infrastructure spending spree, and the knock-on effects of parents dying from drug overdoses. Plus, singer Tyla’s sandy Met Gala look, and forgotten 100-year-old love letters make us smile.

Here’s everything we talked about today:

- “More than 320000 U.S. children lost a parent to drug overdose from 2011-2021” from Axios

- “Playbook: Biden’s race to Trump-proof his legacy” from Politico

- “Biden’s biggest challenge: How do you even spend $1.6 trillion?” from Politico

- “‘Buy Now, Pay Later’ Has Americans Racking Up Phantom Debt” from Bloomberg

- “Video: See moment Tyla is carried up Met Gala steps” from CNN

- “Tyla’s sand-covered Met Gala 2024 gown was chopped in half after the red carpet” from Page Six

- “When to use buy now, pay later services” from Marketplace

- “Hidden love letters spark historical mystery in Baltimore” from The Baltimore Banner

We love to hear from you. Send your questions and comments to makemesmart@marketplace.org or leave us a voicemail at 508-U-B-SMART.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Do you ever wonder what's happening behind the scenes of the multi trillion dollar fashion industry?
0:05.6	In the new podcast fashion people, Puck correspondent and 20-year fashion veteran Lauren Sherman
0:11.6	and a rotating cast of industry insiders discuss what
0:15.0	fashion people are really talking about behind the scenes of the star-studded
0:19.1	business. From creative director Switcheroos to M&A drama, DTC Downfalls, and Met Galway. from Creative
0:23.7	Director Switcheroos to M&A drama, DTC Downfalls, and Met Gala Mishaps.
0:26.3	Fashion People, a presentation of Odyssey in partnership with Puck,
0:29.8	is available now wherever you get your podcasts.
0:32.8	Hello everyone, I'm Kimberly Adams.
0:38.8	Welcome back to Make Me Smart, where we make today make sense.
0:45.0	And I'm Amy Scott, filling in for Ky Risdahl today.
0:48.0	Thanks so much for joining us. It's Wednesday, May 8th, and you know the drill.
0:52.0	Today we're going to do some news then some smiles and as
0:55.8	Kai says well get out of your hair. I actually have two to news items the first one is sort of following up to the conversation
1:05.9	we were having yesterday about you know things getting a little bit easier on the consumer
1:11.1	debt side of things and whether or not people were carrying as much debt as, you know, they used to be.
1:18.0	And then I saw after the show this interesting article in Bloomberg about By Now Pay Later loans and how
1:28.0	there is not much transparency around these sort of short-term loans you think like a firm and Klarna and after pay those sorts of things.
1:39.0	And because we don't have as much transparency around loans like that as we do with some other types of debt,
1:46.2	it's making it more difficult to get a full picture of what the consumer debt landscape
1:51.3	looks like right now.
1:53.4	And so here in this article it says, time and again, these companies have resisted calls for
	...

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