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Slack.com slash DHQ. It's a Friday, so we will review, of course, we'll talk water out

west and then we'll go to the movies. From American public media, this is Marketplace.

I'm Lars Angeles, I'm Kyle Rizal. It is Friday today, the 9th of December. Good as always

to have you along. Everybody, a little recap is what we do at the top of the show on Fridays.

The past five days in this economy here to help make sense of it all is city-ready. He

helps run things at Politico. Hey, Steve. Hey, Kay. Just you and me today, man. Just you

and me today. So, look, I want to ask you first of all about the American consumer. We

got from the University of Michigan this morning their consumer sentiment number. It was

up and I want to know why. With inflation still high, falling but high, with talk of recession

in the air, why do we still feel okay? Gas prices, baby. That's what's happening. That

is really the thing that holds up the American consumer. That's the thing that we see when

we look at that consumer sentiment index. It's the thing that goes into retail sales, especially

in this moment of the economy. We've had a two-track situation for consumers throughout

the year. Obviously, inflation is bad. It's hurting a lot of consumers. It's creating

problems. But what the higher end consumers have been able to do is work right through it.

Lower end consumers were dealing with all of this inflation and now they're getting some

relief. That is a huge differentiator because obviously we've had strong wage growth. We've

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