Yes, it's true.

Stocks do go up as well, gang.

We will talk about that and the week it was from American Public Media.

This is Marketplace.

In Los Angeles, I'm Kyle Rizzdahl. It is Friday, today, Friday. Friday, this one is the

6th of February. Good as always to have you along, everybody. Let us state right here at the outset

that even if one were inclined to believe that the stock market is the economy, two days trading

is a very small data set on which to base

your analysis. And in point of fact, one might do better taking, oh, say the past five days in our

collective economic lives as a guide. So that is what we are going to do. Courtney Browns at Axios,

Heather Long is the chief economist at Navy Federal Credit Union. Hey, you too.

Hi, Kai.

Hey, Kay.

Heather Long, let me begin with you, and I will acknowledge here that none of the three of us are market analysts in any way, shape, or form.

But as a way to get on to the equity markets in a roundabout way, could you discuss, for me, please, the fundamentals of this economy right

now? What do you think? Well, you're right. There's two big factors at play. Number one is the one we

always talk about, and that's what's the consumer doing. And that's where you see the K-shaped economy

with the top 20 percent really driving the spending growth right now and everybody else kind of hanging on or treading water.

And then the other big one is the AI economy.

And it was just staggering this week as all these big tech companies said they're going to invest $600 billion in AI this year, which is greater than

the budget that the entire Japanese government or German government spends on their countries.

I mean, that's how mind-bogglingly large this is.

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