Marketplace Morning Report

Amazon Prime Day starts today and runs through Friday. Consumers are expected to spend $26 billion over those four days, and they’ll have plenty of help from AI. Today: a primer on Amazon’s big AI shopping experiment. Then, will a new U.K. prime minister mean an altered trade relationship with the EU? And later, Congress is pushing forward with homebuying restrictions for institutional investors, but the plan may not be foolproof.

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Marketplace Morning Report is more than a radio show. Check out our original reporting and financial literacy content at marketplace.org — and consider making an investment in our future.

Stories featured in this episode:

Investors are buying up Sunbelt homes. Could a congressional ban help?

Last night, the Senate passed the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, a bill aimed at making it easier to build housing and bring down the cost of both buying and renting. Home prices have jumped about 50% in the past six years, and rents are up nearly 30% nationally. Today, we’ll delve into why it seems impossible to construct new, low-cost housing. Then, we’ll check in on the economy of Northern Ireland 10 years after Brexit.

Every story has an economic angle. Want some in your inbox? Subscribe to our daily or weekly newsletter.

Marketplace Morning Report is more than a radio show. Check out our original reporting and financial literacy content at marketplace.org — and consider making an investment in our future.

Stories featured in this episode:

The shortage of affordable housing hits lowest-income households particularly hard
10 years on, what Brexit has meant for Northern Ireland

Former Federal Reserve Chair Alan Greenspan died today. He was 100. Greenspan served under four presidents in his five terms as central bank chair. This morning, we're joined by Julia Coronado — she’s the founder and president of MacroPolicy Perspectives and once worked alongside Greenspan — to discuss his economic legacy, his role in boosting Fed transparency, and his particular way of communicating. Then, from the latest season of Marketplace's "How We Survive," we dive into the ocean’s vast potential to store carbon.

Every story has an economic angle. Want some in your inbox? Subscribe to our daily or weekly newsletter.

Marketplace Morning Report is more than a radio show. Check out our original reporting and financial literacy content at marketplace.org — and consider making an investment in our future.

Stories featured in this episode:

From “How We Survive”: A Carbon Burial at Sea

Congress is working on a bipartisan bill to address housing affordability by, among other things, making it easier to construct homes. One provision would place limits on the number of single-family homes that companies and institutional investors can purchase. The idea is to prevent deep-pocketed investors with all-cash offers from competing with regular buyers. Investors say they aren't the problem. So, who's right? This morning, we head to Las Vegas to find out. But first, businesses around the globe are pessimistic about how the war is affecting the economy.

Every story has an economic angle. Want some in your inbox? Subscribe to our daily or weekly newsletter.

Marketplace Morning Report is more than a radio show. Check out our original reporting and financial literacy content at marketplace.org — and consider making an investment in our future.

Stories in this episode:

In Las Vegas, institutional investors crowd out prospective homebuyers

With midterm elections just months away, the top economic concern for voters is the cost of healthcare. That's according to a recent poll from the health policy nonprofit KFF.

With that in mind, the “Marketplace Morning Report” team traveled to southwest Alabama to learn more about how policy decisions at the national level lead to consequences for health care access in local communities across rural America.

Many of the people we met often have to travel hours for basic healthcare needs. And experts say that’s a fate that lies ahead for even more communities because of changing federal policies.

In the absence of action to address health care shortages, many communities are turning within, leaning on each other and their own resilience to navigate the complicated landscape of what services remain.