NPR. Now, now, curiosity, where are you speaking to me from today?

I'm speaking to you from my office in the West Wing of the White House.

Oh, nice. That's a pretty big office for the West Wing. It's a pretty good job.

That's Nira Tandon and the pretty good job she's talking about it's her role as domestic policy

advisor to President Biden.

As part of that job, Nera heads the White House Domestic Policy Council.

Which oversees a variety of issues for the president,

health care, education, consumer protections, which is why we are engaged in this work.

And by this work, Nira is referring to a new initiative aimed at trying to serve and protect American

consumers. They're calling it the Time is Money Initiative. It's an array of

actions the Biden Harris administration is taking to stop out corporate shenanigans that waste consumers time and money.

Like for example making it unnecessarily difficult to cancel a subscription, get an airline

ticket refund, or file an insurance claim.

Classic economic theory suggests that in a competitive market,

companies will want to treat their customers well,

or else they'll lose their customers to competitors.

So why does the White House want to intervene in this area of the free market?

This is the indicator from Planet Money, I'm Whelan Wong.

And I'm Greg Rizalski. Today in the show,

Why the White House wants to regulate how companies treat their customers.

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