Brain-controlled iPhones, a Japanese asset buy-a-thon, and Trump tax cut debt

The Indicator from Planet Money

NPR

Business

4.7 • 9.2K Ratings

🗓️ 16 May 2025

⏱️ 9 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

It's ... Indicators of the Week! Our weekly look at some of the most fascinating economic numbers from the news.

On today's episode: Japanese asset buyers make it rain, an iPhone ... powered by the brain?! And, how are we going to pay for these Trump tax cuts? We explain!

Related episodes:
What's going to happen to the Trump tax cuts? (Apple / Spotify)
Slender Starbucks, Medicaid at risk, and the gold card visa (Apple / Spotify)

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Transcript

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0:00.0	NPR.
0:11.7	This is the indicator from planet money.
0:14.1	I'm Darien Boards here with the wondrous Waylon Wong.
0:17.1	Wondrous Waylon Wong. Wow. What a Friday treat. Hi, Daryan.
0:21.5	We also have the ginomous intellect of Jeff Groh from Planet Money. Welcome.
0:28.9	That is the nicest thing anyone's ever said to me.
0:31.7	Oh, wow. I feel so affirmed. We just log off.
0:35.0	We have work today. Oh, no.
0:37.2	It's indicators of the Week. Yay!
0:39.2	Yay! We are here, as always, to bring you the most fascinating snapshots from the week of economic news.
0:46.8	And on today's show, Japanese asset buyers make it rain. iPhone powered by the brain.
0:53.1	Ooh. And how in the world are we going to pay for Donald Trump's tax cuts?
0:57.6	We will explain.
1:04.7	It's indicators of the week.
1:06.6	Whalen, your first.
1:07.8	Okay, my indicator is 8.2 trillion yen.
1:12.9	That's about 56 billion U.S. dollars.
1:16.5	And that is the net amount of Japanese stocks and bonds purchased by foreign investors in the month of April.
1:24.1	Now, according to the Financial Times, this was the biggest shopping spree by foreigners for Japanese assets since the government started tracking this data in 2005.
1:33.3	Okay, I'm thinking April was notable because?
1:37.3	Well, to jog your memory, at the beginning of the month, President Trump made this huge tariff announcement.
1:43.3	This then kicked off a bit of a freak out in financial markets, you might recall. And something really weird happened with U.S. Treasuries. I talked about this in yesterday's episode. Prices for U.S. government bonds went down. That means investors were selling treasuries. Right. And that's like super weird because treasuries are supposed to be this safe haven that everyone buys when they think stuff is in trouble.
	...

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