"Running out of that buffer"
Marketplace All-in-One
Marketplace
4.5 • 1.4K Ratings
🗓️ 28 May 2026
⏱️ 25 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The personal savings rate fell to just 2.6% in April — a low not seen since June 2022, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis. That means Americans have, on average, less cash leftover at the end of the month. Gas and grocery price inflation are partially to blame. Also in this episode: Office real estate looks a little K-shaped, one city tries to relieve budget problems with trademarked merch, and Kai breaks down the April PCE report and Q1 GDP revision.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The macroeconomic news of the day today brought to you by the letters G, D, and P, and P, C, and E. |
| 0:10.8 | From American public media, this is Marketplace. In Los Angeles, I'm Kyle Risdell Thursday today, 28 May. Good as always to have you along, everybody. |
| 0:32.2 | I'm Laura Veldcamp, and I'm a professor at Columbia Business School. I am Professor Tara Sinclair. |
| 0:37.4 | I'm chair of the |
| 0:38.1 | economics department at the George Washington University. We made some calls this morning to help |
| 0:42.2 | us sort out the two big economic data points of the day, PCE, the April personal consumption |
| 0:47.8 | expenditures price index, which is a fancy way to say inflation. Also, an update to first |
| 0:53.5 | quarter gross domestic product. |
| 0:55.9 | There's a lot to unpack here. It's not very good news. Inflation looks too high. Growth looks |
| 1:00.7 | too low. And neither of those are the direction that we wanted to see. The first one I opened was the GDP |
| 1:04.9 | report. And I went, uh-oh, because it's downward revisions. We don't like those. |
| 1:10.7 | We'll start where Professor Sinclair started Q1 economic growth. That is what this because downward revisions, we don't like those. |
| 1:14.3 | Well, start where Professor Sinclair started Q1 economic growth. |
| 1:16.3 | That is what this GDP report measures. |
| 1:22.3 | It fell four tenths percent from an earlier estimate to 1.6 percent annualized. |
| 1:25.5 | The next thing I did was scroll down and was like, okay, where did it come from? |
| 1:31.0 | And seeing that it came from both the consumption and investment side, those two sides that really tell us what's going to be happening in future quarters, that was a big area of concern. This is a deer in the headlights moment for |
| 1:38.2 | American businesses. While businesses are stopping and freezing and asking what's going on and what |
| 1:43.2 | should they do next. |
| 1:49.5 | They're not investing. They're not hiring. They're not expanding. And GDP is not growing as much as it should be. That's GDP. We will do PCE. Now, prices were up 3.8% in April. That is including food |
| 1:57.9 | and energy. That markers the highest. It's been since May of 2023. |
| 2:02.6 | Gasoline prices went up massively last month. And this gas price increase that we just saw is |
... |
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