Planet Money

Newspapers around the country are cutting their staffs and trying to figure out how to stay afloat. NPR's David Folkenflik checks the future with media entrepreneur Steve Brill and media thinker Jay Hamilton. Plus: Blogger Ryan Avent's seriously bad timing.

Mortgage backed securities are a major part of the reason the economy is such a mess right now. So have the current troubles been enough to kill off securitization all together? Joe Nadilo, managing editor of Asset Backed Alert thinks not. Plus, are the latest earnings reports from banks real or just a bunch of hocus pocus? And a listener letter.

Even pirates need a business plan. J. Peter Pham, an analyst of African affairs at the James Madison University, looks at the economics of guns, captains, and $2 million dropped into the sea in waterproof containers. Plus: Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner meets Elizabeth Warren on Capitol Hill.

General Motors announced 1,600 layoffs today, part of its efforts to stave off bankruptcy. But with the White House setting a deadline of June 1, says Steve Jakubowski of the Bankruptcy Litigation Blog, GM is not exactly in the driver's seat. Plus: Who wins in the government's latest, latest plan for banks. And a book review with gusto.

Major American banks have begun reporting, of all things, profits! Doug Elliot former investment banker at JP Morgan and now banking expert with the Brookings Institute, reveals what you should make of those numbers. Hint: We're all still looking at a world of pain, but at least the decline seems to be leveling out. Plus: Supervisors, if the workers are sitting around waiting for the company to fold, expect a little gallows humor, OK?

Millions, billions, trillions, godzillions. There's a reason you can't keep it all straight. With help from Wisconsin school teacher Bob Peterson, the Planet Money Players calculate their way, in dollars per second, to the AIG bonuses. Plus: A closer look at America's biggest creditor, China.

A couple of bigs from the Minnesota Federal Reserve wrote a book five years ahead of its time. Gary Stern and Ron Feldman's Too Big to Fail: The Hazards of Bank Bailouts hit the world in 2004. It's getting more relevant by the day. Plus: Enron's mark-to-market scandal and a look at the Nantucket classifieds.

The Wall Street Journal says the Treasury Deparment is now aiming to extend help to life insurers as part of the TARP program. It's a complicated endeavor, one that runs the gamut from your premiums to mortgage-backed securities. Rolfe Winkler of Option Armageddon walks us through. Plus: An IT recruiter reports wage cuts of 30 percent and more.

What's a lovely coat in London got to do with delicious pita in Cairo? Take the new fashion for not shopping, add a huge toll for the Suez Canal, and you've got your answer, in wheat. Plus: A self-employed listener checks in.

Gather 'round, economy nerds. This week the Financial Accounting Standards Board gave banks a break from mark-to-market accounting. Alex Blumberg and Adam Davidson tease apart the knotty questions of what this means, why this matters, and who won what. Plus: China gets almost nothing it wanted out of the G20 summit. And listener Aimee Ennis checks in from a neighborhood on hold.

For ordinary folks just trying to save money, feeling safe is all about the FDIC. Chana Joffe-Walt tracks an FDIC takeover of a failed bank. Then John Bovenzi, the FDIC's chief operating officer, tells us why his agency can still handle the load. And economist Adam Posen has the good seats for the G20 economic summit in London.

President Barack Obama has a plan for the American automobile industry, as Chrysler and GM seek more loans from the government. Chrysler plant worker Joe Grassi considers the news that Washington wants his company to partner up with Fiat. Yale Law School professor Jonathan Macey says the government was right to ask GM CEO Rick Wagoner to step down, even if the request was unprecedented. Macey has been calling for Wagoner's ouster for months. Plus: If Americans are saving too little and the Japanese are saving too much, how much would be just right? The market knows, says economist Kent Smetters of the Wharton school of business.

The Treasury Department released a framework for regulating the financial industry this week. The plan calls for creating a systemic risk regulator to manage "certain large, interconnected firms and markets." Adam Davidson lays out what that job might look like. To analyze the effectiveness of the other plan the Treasury Department announced this week, the one to get toxic assets off bank balance sheets, you need to decide whether you think the banks have a solvency crisis or a liquidity crisis? Gregg Berman of Risk Metrics Group explains the difference between the two, using $50 million and an envelope. Plus, in search of bad guys with Neil Barofsky, the Special Inspector General for the TARP.

Adam Davidson breaks down three theories on whether the Treasury's new plan for toxic assets will actually work. And our global recession anger tour takes off with stops in China, Sweden and Egypt. In China, NPR correspondent Lisa Lim gives us the view from students and teachers at the China Center for Economic Studies in Shanghai. Sweden comes to us, when Swedish Public Radio reporter Linnea Ericsson stops by the studio to talk layoffs and unions. And from Egypt, Dr. Hani Henry shares the story of Cairo's own Bernie Madoff.

The Treasury Department unveiled the details of a public-private investment program to help banks get toxic assets off their books today. The plan calls for using $75 to $100 billion from the TARP, Troubled Assets Relief Program, along with funding from private investors, to buy as much as $500 billion worth of these assets. In another Planet Money Radio Dramatization, David Kestenbaum and Caitlin Kenney explain how it's expected to work. The new program already has its critics, but Columbia Business School professor and former investment banker David Beim isn't one of them. Beim says he thinks it's a good plan for the country. Plus: The success of the program has big implications for the Obama Administration and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner. U.S. policy analyst Sean West of Eurasia Group tells us how he thinks it will play out, politically.