The following podcast contains explicit language.

Hello and welcome to Slate Money, our weekly podcast, guiding you through the important

business and finance news of the world. I'm Felix Salmon of Fusion in New York. And on the show

this week, we're going to be talking all about happy endings.

In more ways than one.

Not in that way.

I think we are actually going to be talking about that way.

The Fed is ending its highly controversial quantitative easing program.

And I think people are not generally pretty happy about that.

Then there's the whole question of American apparel, Dov Charnie, and all manner of endings, happy and maybe not so happy there.

And for dessert, we'll talk about the end of publicly traded cupcakes, because, you know, there was a point in time not so long ago when you could buy cupcakes on the NASDAQ.

And, of course, we'll wrap up with our numbers, lightning round as we do every week.

Let me ask Kathy O'Neill and introduce her as well, the head of the lead program for data journalism at Columbia University.

Kathy, what is your number this week?

Felix, my number is 27.

27?

Hmm.

Jordan Weissman, the Moneybox columnist at Slate.

What is your number?

My number is 46,410.

That's four significant figures.

And my number, my number is 25.

...