NPR.

This is the indicator from planet money.

I'm Daryan Woods.

And I'm Waylon Wong.

I don't know about you, Daryan, but lately, I've been seeing some things in the news that have shaken my idea

of what it means to do business in America. Are you talking about Zoran Mamdani's idea of

opening government-owned grocery stores in New York City? Well, that definitely got tongues wagging,

I will say. And then just this month, the Pentagon acquired a stake in a rare earth mining company.

And that's after the government took what's called a golden share in U.S. steel.

The quintessential American economic myth is that the free market, not the government, decides

which businesses deserve investment and a shot of success. Now we see the Trump administration

becoming a partial owner in private businesses. And this is actually history repeating itself.

The U.S. used to have a national investment bank. This was a government-run entity that took on

different forms during its life. It bought up stakes in private banks and

developed new manufacturing industries. It even created the 30-year mortgage.

Economist Chris Hughes has studied the history of this bank. It's sort of shocking how few people

know that we had a national investment bank for 20 years in the United States.

And it was popular on both sides of the aisle, started by a Republican,

and incredibly helpful in getting us out of the Depression

and then in preparing us for the war effort.

And it fizzled.

Today on the show, Chris tells us the story of this bank,

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