Could a private company deliver U.S. mail better than the U.S. mail?

I'm David Brancaccio in New York.

President-elect Donald Trump confirmed at a news conference yesterday that he's, quote,

looking at privatizing the U.S. Postal Service.

The post office ended its accounting year with the net loss of $9.5 billion.

Marketplace's Henry Ep reports.

Retired postal workers get a pension, which means in the past year, the USPS had to pay a lot

into its pension fund, says James O'Rourke at the University of Notre Dame.

In funding that pension, that unfunded pension requirement, those monies had to come out of current revenue.

Put aside the pension costs, which the Postal Services Management can't do much about, he says,

and last year's loss doesn't look as bad. Still says Rick Geddes at Cornell, the USPS has a lot of

other fixed costs because it has to deliver to every address in the country six days per week.

And even though it's delivering more packages, thanks to the rise of e-commerce, so are other private companies.

The postal service is in a competitive marketplace in the parcel delivery business. So that constrains their ability to raise rates.

And the FedExes and UPSs of the world aren't obligated to deliver to the most remote parts of the

country. They rely on the postal service to handle that. I'm Henry App for Marketplace.

There's news today. Retail sales rose more than expected in November, but we looked into the fine print and see a lot of that was people buying cars and trucks to replace vehicles lost during the hurricanes.

To help us with this, let's bring in the founder of the personal finance site, Jared Dillion Money.

Jared, welcome.

Thank you for having me. I mean, at first blush, it looks like this number, Jared Dillion Money. Jared, welcome. Thank you for having me.

I mean, at first blush, it looks like this number. Retail sales came in higher than expected,

but you say look under the hood. Yes, the headline number came in at seven-tenths, but X-autos and

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