Planet Money

Imagine if we built cars the same way we build houses. First, a typical buyer would meet with the car designer, and tell them what kind of car they want. Then the designer would draw…

This past January, researchers uncovered that Black taxpayers are three to five times as likely to be audited as everyone else. One likely reason for this is that the IRS disproportionately audits lower-income earners who…

Right now, the economy is running hot. Inflation is high, and central banks are pushing up interest rates to fight it. But before the pandemic, economies around the world were stuck in a different rut:…

Right now, the economy is all over the place. And when things get confusing, we look to basic economic indicators to help explain what’s going on. Today, we’re bringing you two episodes of our daily…

It’s been a month since the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank touched off the worst episode of banking turmoil since 2008. While the financial system appears to have stabilized, we’re still reckoning with what happened.…

Puerto Rico’s beaches are an integral part of life on the island, and by law, they’re one of the few places that are truly public. In practice, the sandy stretch of land where the water…

In the first half of March, three banks – Silicon Valley Bank, Signature Bank, and Silvergate – all had relatively classic bank runs and collapsed. Which sparked some major banking stress. As a result, the…

Earlier this month, we saw the largest bank collapse since the 2008 financial crisis. For many of us, seeing Silicon Valley Bank’s meltdown brought us right back to that time 15 years ago, at the…

Richard J. Lonsinger is a member of the Ponca tribe of Oklahoma, who was adopted at a young age into a white family of three. He eventually reconnected with his birth family, but when his…

Sometimes you hear these stories about an airplane that suddenly nosedives. Everyone onboard thinks this is it, and then the plane levels out and everything is fine. For about 72 hours, people and companies that…