Planet Money

Germany's parliament votes next week on whether to go ahead with the next phase of the Greek bailout.On our recent trip to Germany, we talked to lots of people who think parliament should block the bailout. That's understandable, given the painful changes Germany went through to get its own house in order a few years back.But a surprising number of people told us they do support a bailout — often for very idealistic reasons."We need Greece, we need Spain, we need Italy," a cab driver told us in Frankfurt. "It's the ending of war and it's the beginning of a new future. It's the dream for European peoples."

On today's show: Toxie, Planet Money's pet toxic asset, died last year. But we learned recently that she may rise from the grave.And she could theoretically earn us $75,000 — which is astonishing, given that we bought her for only $1,000. If we do make a profit, all the money will go to charity.Toxie was (is!) a mortgage-backed security — one of the complicated financial instruments that were the heart of the financial crisis. When we bought Toxie, we bought into a pool of thousands of mortgages around the United States.Recently, that particular pool became the subject of a lawsuit.According to the lawsuit, the mortgages in the pool were a lot shoddier than they were supposed to be.

The unemployment rate is disastrously high in the U.S. and much of Europe. But the rate in Germany is just 6 percent — and it's declining.We spent a week in Germany learning their secret recipe. On today's show, we hear the how country transformed its labor market a few years back — and how it still has the scars to prove it.

In a classic game of chicken, two cars race toward each other. The loser is the person who swerves out of the way of the oncoming car.As it turns out, chicken is something that game theorists have devoted a lot of thought toChicken is also a pretty good metaphor for the way Congress handled the debt-ceiling debate.On today's show, we talk to Steven S. Smith, a political scientist at Wash U. who studies Congress for a living. He takes us deep inside the debt-ceiling-as-game-of-chicken metaphor. And he explains why the supercommittee may actually work out a deal.

In Germany, a cab driver can quote you the inflation rate off the top of his head. A big bank has a contest to guess how much a basket of groceries will cost in 10 years. And a newspaper editor says: "There are two things in German psyche that are important: monetary stability, and soccer."On today's show, Caitlin and Zoe report from Germany, where the fear of inflation runs deep. It goes back to the years after World War I, when Germany experienced one of the most catastrophic bouts of hyperinflation in the history of the world — an economic disaster that helped lay the groundwork for the rise of the Nazis.

On today's show: A financial crisis that began with the popping of a huge housing bubble and led to a stock market plunge and a banking crisis.That's right. It's a show about Japan in the 1990s.We talk to Adam Posen, who argues that the U.S. can learn a lot from Japan's mistakes. Posen is an economist at the Peterson institute and the Bank of England.

Everybody's worried about Europe's economy. What's the worst that could happen?Bank runs, political riots and falling governments, for a start. Also, the end of the euro as we know it.On today's show, David Beim, a finance professor at Colubmia's b-school, lays out a worst-case scenario for Europe.

Europe is borrowing money to bail out countries that got in trouble by borrowing too much money.On today's Planet Money, Satyajit Das explains that European countries aren't actually putting their own money into that big euro-zone bailout fund. Instead, the fund will borrow from investors around the world — the same investors who are growing wary of lending to a bunch of countries in Europe.What's more, the fund will be guaranteed by the countries that use the euro. So the more the fund is used, the more countries that are already struggling — countries like Spain and Italy — will be on the hook for potential losses.Note: This podcast originally aired December of '10.

With their current leader, Moammar Gadhafi, on the run, Libya needs to start thinking about its next big challenge — what to do with the massive amount of wealth they as a country possess in oil. It sounds strange to worry about a huge influx of money, but almost all countries that find oil suffer from the natural resource curse.There is, however, one notable exception — Norway.An Iraqi geologist named Farouk al-Kasim advised Norway on how to organize its oil industry, and he is credited with helping it escape the resource curse.Today on the podcast, he tells us how he did it.

The hacker group Anonymous has been grabbing headlines this year for attacking the websites of Sony, the Egyptian government and Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART). Unlike other cybercriminals, the group doesn't appear to be hacking these websites for financial gain — so why do they do it? Why do they spend so much time and effort shutting down these sites? Today on the podcast we talk to some close observers of Anonymous to find out how they operate and what they want.

Switzerland's economy is in great shape. Low debt. Low unemployment. Tons of exports.In recent months, this economic strength has created a huge problem for Switzerland. Panicked investors around the world, who see Switzerland as a safe haven, have been buying Swiss francs like mad.That made the value of the franc shoot up — which in has caused big problems for Switzerland.On the show today, we look into the franc's crazy rise.

For years, Estonia played by the rules and did everything exactly the way it was supposed to. It made cut after cut and, just a few months ago, the country finally got what it wanted: It joined euro. Despite the euro's troubles, Estonia's still doing well. It has the highest growth rate and the lowest public debt of any EU country. On today's podcast, we talk to Estonia's president.

Every day, all around the world, people do business in U.S. dollars — even when their business has nothing to do with the U.S. The dollar is the international language of money. It's essential for global trade. This provides huge benefits for the United States. U.S. businesses can trade in their own currency. Our government can borrow money more cheaply. Mortgages and student loans are cheaper, too. For the moment, the dollar's dominance seems secure. Safe-haven currencies like the Swiss franc are too small to replace the dollar. And bigger currencies like the euro and the Chinese renminbi have problems of their own. On today's show, we hear about how people use the U.S. dollar Brazil and South Africa. And we talk to an economist who says the dollar's days as the world's lone reserve currency may be numbered.

You would never look at a map of the Hudson River, point to the spot where the Tappan Zee Bridge is, and say, "Put the bridge here!"The Tappan-Zee crosses one of the widest points on the Hudson — the bridge is more than three miles long. And if you go just a few miles south, the river gets much narrower.Our question for today's show: Why did they build a three-mile-long bridge when they could have built a much shorter, cheaper bridge nearby?Our search for an answer leads us to a forensic engineer, the Statue of Liberty, and a governor who wanted to be an opera singer.

Italy is in trouble. The country is getting sucked into Europe's debt crisis, and leaders around the continent are trying to figure out what to do about it. On today's show, we talk to a few Italians who describe how common tax evasion is in Italy, and how big the unofficial economy is. We also talk to Andrew Balls, head of European portfolio management at PIMCO — a guy whose job is figuring out whether to lend money to Italy. He says Italy isn't in such bad shape. Yes, it's debt is high. But its annual deficit is small, it didn't have a housing crisis and its banks are in decent shape. Italy's problem is that investors are getting nervous about its neighbors — Spain, Greece and Portugal. And that tends to spill over.