Consumers were pessimistic before the war. Now what?
Marketplace
Marketplace
4.6 • 8.5K Ratings
🗓️ 9 March 2026
⏱️ 26 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Consumer sentiment was already trending negative before the war in Iran started, a war that so far has precipitated climbing oil prices and geopolitical uncertainty. The question is, how much more pessimistic can U.S. consumers get? Also in this episode: Commodities prices surge, we give a brief history lesson on the oil crises of the 1970s, and supermarkets compete for a slice of the Lone Star State’s growing population.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The oil markets wake up to the war. From American public media, this is Marketplace. |
| 0:16.6 | In Washington, I'm Kimberly Adams in for Kyrisdahl. It's Monday, March 9th. Good to have you along. |
| 0:22.9 | It's been a little more than a week since the U.S. attacked Iran, starting a war in the Middle East. |
| 0:28.4 | And today, the oil markets finally seem to notice. The price for a barrel of Brent crude soared to over $100 before coming back down. We haven't seen this kind of shock to the |
| 0:39.8 | system since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022. To help explain what all this means for the American |
| 0:45.2 | consumer and the broader economy, we called up Catherine Rampel at MS Now and the Bullwork. |
| 0:51.3 | We hear from her on the occasional Friday. Catherine, good to speak with you on a Monday, a wild, wild Monday. Hey. |
| 0:58.4 | A wild Monday. Thanks for having me, Kimberly. |
| 1:01.3 | Yeah, so anybody who's driven by a gas station last week will have already seen the gas prices are up. How much of the impact from the war is already reflected in those prices that we're seeing at the |
| 1:12.3 | pump and how much worse are they going to get? Well, it does depend, obviously, what happens with oil, |
| 1:19.1 | and it has been a roller coaster in the last 24 hours, let's say, where, as you mentioned, oil |
| 1:26.8 | had shot up. I think touching as high as $119 a barrel, and it's say, where, as you mentioned, oil had shot up. |
| 1:27.8 | I think touching as high as $119 a barrel, and it's now left. |
| 1:32.5 | I had looked anyway. |
| 1:33.3 | It was below 90, in part because of things that Donald Trump is saying. |
| 1:37.9 | So, you know, he can move markets. |
| 1:39.5 | So who knows? |
| 1:41.4 | But at the very least, if there is a sustained disruption in this rate of Hormuz, |
| 1:47.9 | you should expect gas prices to continue rising. |
| 1:52.1 | And that's because at this point, the problem is not only that shifts tankers that would be |
| 1:58.3 | carrying energy can't get through. It's that the countries that are |
| 2:03.7 | producing the oil are running out of places to store it because they can't ship it out. So I had |
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