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Make Me Smart

Political dysfunction dents the U.S. credit rating

Make Me Smart

Marketplace

News, Business

4.65.4K Ratings

🗓️ 3 August 2023

⏱️ 14 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

The credit rating agency Fitch bumped the United States’ credit rating down a notch this week despite the country’s strong economic performance. We’ll hear what Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen had to say about it and get into why political dysfunction is at the root of the downgrade. Plus, why a carbon-free future likely depends on nuclear energy. And what musical beat is the U.S. economy grooving to?

Here’s everything we talked about:

    We want to know what you’d pick as the economic anthem of the moment! Leave us a voicemail at 508-U-B-SMART or email us at [email protected].

    Join us tomorrow for Economics on Tap. The YouTube livestream starts at 3:30 p.m. Pacific time, 6:30 p.m. Eastern. We’ll have news, drinks, a game and more.

    Transcript

    Click on a timestamp to play from that location

    0:00.0

    Did you know the video game industry is worth more than $300 billion dollars a year,

    0:04.7

    bigger than movies and music combined? Marketplace Morning Reports' skin in the game series

    0:10.5

    explores what this booming industry can teach us about the economy and jobs,

    0:15.2

    listen to skin in the game, and more from Marketplace Morning Report wherever you get your podcasts.

    0:22.4

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    So go on, swap your sports uniform for a period-proof one. Explore the Puma

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    Modibody Active Collection today.

    0:57.4

    Hey everybody, I'm Kyle and Rizzo, welcome back to Make Me Smart, where we make today

    1:01.9

    make sense. And I'm Kimberly Adams. Thank you for joining us on this Thursday. It is August 3rd,

    1:08.3

    and today we are going to play some audio from this week in the news and give you a bit of analysis

    1:14.8

    on the other side. Can not freaking believe it is August, but that's not the point of this

    1:20.2

    project. Alright, first clip, here we go. I remember sitting in the White House with President Obama's

    1:26.8

    climate czar team and they told me back then that it was impossible for the US to hit their 80%

    1:34.3

    clean energy goal by 2050 without new and existing nuclear power plant. So that is a clip from

    1:43.0

    a conversation I had earlier this week with Tim Eccles of Georgia's Public Service Commission.

    1:48.8

    And it was, we were talking about the new nuclear reactor that came online at Georgia's plant

    1:54.6

    Vogel. And this is like the first new from scratch nuclear reactor to come online in the United

    2:01.6

    States in decades. And it's going to, you know, once that reactor and another one that's coming

    2:07.8

    online soon is up and running, it's probably going to provide like half a million people's homes,

    2:15.0

    half a million homes with electricity in Georgia, Alabama, I think in Florida. And it's definitely

    ...

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