Can Congress tackle housing affordability?
Marketplace Morning Report
Marketplace
4.5 • 927 Ratings
🗓️ 13 March 2026
⏱️ 9 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The Senate passed a bipartisan bill yesterday that aims to take on housing affordability by increasing the housing supply and cutting red tape. But it has a tough road ahead in the House and possibly the White House. This morning, we'll dig in. Also on the show: GDP growth was revised down to just 0.7%. Plus, China's latest five-year plan aims to transform the country into a tech-driven global power, while boosting domestic demand.
Transcript
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| 0:31.8 | Oops, we revised it again from Marketplace. I'm Sabrina Beneshore in for David Brancaccio. The U.S. economy didn't |
| 0:39.2 | grow nearly as fast as initial estimates suggested. The Bureau of Economic Analysis revised GDP |
| 0:44.9 | growth down dramatically. Christopher Lowe's chief economist at FHN Financial, New York. Chris, |
| 0:50.9 | how bad was it? Yeah, it was already weak. Remember when GDP was reported late |
| 0:58.1 | because of the shutdown, it was only up 1.4%. Well, half of that growth is now gone. It was revised |
| 1:05.6 | to 0.7%. The biggest downward revision came from consumption. The other big downward |
| 1:15.6 | revision was business investment in structures, equipment, and intellectual property. |
| 1:23.0 | The private sector does a lot of business with the public sector. That's probably weakness in sales |
| 1:31.6 | that would have gone to the government had it been open throughout the quarter. |
| 1:37.3 | Earlier this week, we got one reading of inflation, the consumer price index. It was kind of |
| 1:42.0 | stable year over year. Today, we got a new reading of |
| 1:46.2 | inflation, and it looks like inflation got worse, at least in January. How significant is that? |
| 1:51.7 | It's a big deal. This is the PCE deflator. That is the deflator for personal consumption expenditures. |
| 2:00.0 | It's viewed as a more accurate inflation reading. |
| 2:04.1 | And the reason it's a big deal that it diverged in January is because it has been divergent |
| 2:12.8 | since November. The reading this morning core core PCE inflation was up 3.1% from a year ago. That's the |
| 2:24.5 | highest year-on-year rate since January of 2024. So deteriorating inflation is the kind of thing that raises eyebrows at the Fed. |
| 2:36.6 | Chris Lowe is Chief Economist at FHN Financial. |
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