Gains for the greenback
Marketplace All-in-One
Marketplace
4.5 • 1.4K Ratings
🗓️ 2 January 2025
⏱️ 8 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Bloomberg calculates that the U.S. dollar made its biggest gain last year in nearly a decade. And it starts 2025 with some momentum for further gains, continuing a rally that started in early fall when the Federal Reserve started cutting U.S. interest rates amid persistently strong economic growth. Also, Amazon’s RTO push is hampered by a lack of office space, and more Texans turn to microgrids for energy resilience.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | From all of us at Marketplace, we wanted to say, happy new year, and give a special thanks to everyone who stepped up to donate and helped get us ready for what will be a busy news year ahead. |
| 0:11.5 | Let me tell you, the support of our marketplace investors is so important to helping us keep our public service newsroom running strong. |
| 0:19.2 | If you didn't have a chance to donate yet, |
| 0:21.1 | it's never too late to support the information you rely on. Give now at marketplace.org |
| 0:27.3 | slash donate. Note to companies, return to office policies require office space. |
| 0:35.7 | I'm David Brancaccio. On this first workday of the new year, Amazon's office |
| 0:40.2 | workforce is supposed to return to a full work from work, not from home schedule. There's been a lot |
| 0:46.1 | of pushback from employees, and the company may be struggling to live up to its end of the bargain. |
| 0:50.4 | With reports, some of its offices don't have enough room for people coming back. Marketplaces |
| 0:55.3 | Nova Saffo has more. Amazon's CEO, Andy Jassy, has said that workers need to return to offices |
| 1:01.4 | full-time in order to maintain a strong company culture and to make it easier to collaborate and |
| 1:06.6 | invent. Many Amazon workers apparently are unimpressed. There have been anecdotal reports of |
| 1:11.9 | employees quitting over the in-office mandate. And Bloomberg says the company delayed the |
| 1:16.8 | requirement for thousands of employees in several cities because it doesn't have enough work spaces |
| 1:22.1 | for them and won't for months. UPS, Boeing, and other large firms have issued similar mandates. |
| 1:27.2 | Despite those high-profile |
| 1:28.5 | examples, though, government data shows that the portion of the overall U.S. workforce that's |
| 1:33.3 | teleworking has actually increased over the last two years from 18 to 23 percent. I'm Novosafo for Marketplace. |
| 1:41.1 | As we've been tracking, the widely owned S&P 500 stock index went up 24% in the year |
| 1:47.0 | just ended. It's the second year in a row above 20%, 10% is the average. Meanwhile, the U.S. |
| 1:53.4 | dollar went up 6% in 2024, closing out New Year's Eve on its high of the year. This is great |
| 1:59.3 | if you're a U.S. traveler abroad or a buyer of imports, but not great if you're a U.S. traveler abroad or a buyer of |
... |
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