Planet Money - The Rest of the Story, 2024

Episode Date: December 27, 2024

After the gift exchange comes another great holiday tradition: returns season. Once again, we are joining the fun in our own Planet Money way. We are returning to stories from years past to see what's changed since we last reported them. It's an episode we call The Rest of the Story.We have updates on zombie mortgages, student loan forgiveness, Argentina's economy under its self-described anarcho-capitalist president, and the best place in the world to give birth to twins. Plus, a return to... returns.So while you're looking for that holiday sweater in a better size, or waiting in line to trade in your Dutch oven for an air fryer, take a listen to all our latest little audio gifts. And see you in 2025!This episode was hosted by Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi. It was produced by Sam Yellowhorse Kesler, and edited by Keith Romer and Jess Jiang. It was fact-checked by Sierra Juarez and engineered by Cena Loffredo. Alex Goldmark is Planet Money's executive producer.Help support Planet Money and hear our bonus episodes by subscribing to Planet Money+ in Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org/planetmoney.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hey, it's Amanda Aronschek. The year is almost over. You've heard a lot of pitches asking you to support NPR. To the many of you who have given, thank you. Now, if you are sick of these pitches, chances are you are a heavy podcast listener that you get a lot out of NPR podcasts like Planet Money, The Indicator, Up First, the NPR Politics podcast. In order to make all our shows possible, NPR has sponsors. Sponsors slot messages into podcast episodes. You hear them every show unless you don't. That is just one of the things we offer supporters who sign up for NPR+. Sponsor-free episodes of more than 25 different NPR podcasts, including this one.

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So please, take a few minutes to save hours of time in the coming year and support NPR. Go to plus.npr.org, get sponsor-free episodes as well as bonus episodes, merch discounts, and other perks across more than 25 NPR shows. That's plus.npr.org. The link is in our episode notes too. And thanks. This is Planet Money from NPR. Lindsay Powell has been a card carrying member of Recreational Equipment Incorporated for over a decade. That's the outdoor goods store more commonly known as REI, which also happens to be an NPR sponsor.

And one of the things she's loved most about REI is their famously generous returns policy. If you purchase something with us and you're not happy with it for any reason, you can return it. No questions asked, not a big deal. REI will give you a full year to return the stuff you buy. And Lindsay would take them up on that offer a lot, sometimes going to extreme lengths to put some piece of gear to the test. I remember like purchasing like a John G jacket and I had it claimed to be waterproof and I literally like wore it in the shower because I was like, so this is going to be waterproof.

Well, let's test it, you know. How long did you stay in the shower? I think it was like five minutes or so. It was like a tropical monsoon. Yeah. I'm like, this is not working. But a couple months ago, Lindsay got a sort of stern email from REI, letting her know that her days of freewheeling returns had come to an end.

Hello, REI member. REI recently updated part of its return policy. When we reviewed your account, we found that the number and frequency of returns you've made far exceeds what we typically see for members. The email explained that going forward, Lindsay would no longer be allowed to return anything she bought from REI ever again.

I was in shock. I thought it was a spam email. I didn't believe it. And Lindsay was not the only person to have gotten this email. So approximately 3,300 members, or less than 0.02% of our 24 million members have been limited in their ability to make returns.

This is Ken Vohler. He's in charge of operations for REI stores. And he says the customers who received this notice had been using their policy in a way that had gotten really expensive for the company. On average, this group had a return rate of almost 80%. So that means that if they purchased $1,000 worth of gear from us, they returned $800 worth of that. And more than half of that gear had been used. We saw customers buying an entire season's worth of ski gear. So skis, boots, clothing, using that gear for the entire season and then returning it

all once they were finished. Okay, so they're using it like a free rental service, basically. Exactly. And what REI is up to here, it kind of represents the latest chapter in this larger story about returns that I've been following for a while. A few years ago, I reported a Planet Money episode about what happens to all the stuff that we as consumers send back every year and why more and more companies have started offering generous returns policies in the age of online shopping. But lately, that trend seems to be reversing.

At least a little bit. Though it can seem like a lot for people like REI member Lindsay Powell. She says she understood why the company would want to crack down on people using the store like a lending library. But she says that she herself was not in that camp. She actually went back to all her REI purchases from the past decade and made a spreadsheet in order to double check. And what she found? So, it was pretty gnarly because I realized that I've spent close to $11,000 with them between 2014 and 2024.

And of that $11,000? I returned $3,142.56. So your return rate is something around 30%, is that right? Yeah. So not 80%. And yes, 30% may still sound like a very high rate of returns.

But Lindsay says most of the things she returned, she'd ordered online and sent back pretty quickly after figuring out they didn't fit right. For Lindsay, the main issue here is that she says she never got any warning before losing her returns privileges, and that she wouldn't have shopped the way she did if she'd known there was this secret limit. REI's Ken Bowler wouldn't comment on particular customers, but he says that over the years the company has tried giving warnings to some problematic over-returners. They've tried putting people on probation,

but none of it worked. And he points out that Lindsay and everyone else who got their return privileges revoked are still welcome to shop at the store. Whether anyone will take them up on that offer is less clear. Do you think you'll ever buy anything from REI ever again? No, definitely not. No. I'm done. I'm done with that store.

I would rather have a root canal versus going to that store again. Lindsay's decided that if REI won't let her return the things she buys, she won't return to REI to buy anything in the first place. -♪ Hello and welcome to Planet Money. I'm Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi. Today's episode is actually gonna be all about returns, of a different sort. We're going to return to some of our favorite

episodes from the past few years to find out what's happened since we put our microphones down and hit publish. As part of an annual tradition we called The Rest of the Story after the program by the radio legend Paul Harvey. Now, the rest of the story. Today on the show, what's happened with all these student loans that President Biden tried to forgive? Where is the best place in the world to give birth to twins? And how is Argentina fared after a year under the economic guidance of a man with the nickname El Loco?

That's all coming up on the rest of the story. on the rest of your commitment. We'll help you draw up plans and have experts weigh in on how to stay motivated and kind to yourself throughout the month. Search LifeKits Dry January wherever you get your podcasts for the tools you need to pull it off from NPR. For our first update, we've called Planet Money co-host Kenny Malone to the studio. Hello, Kenny. Hello, let's do this. I'm excited. Let's go. Kenny, two years ago, you signed yourself maybe one of the more whimsical episodes we've ever done. Yeah, you may recall that former Planet Money co-host Robert Smith and I, we attempted to attend five different New York area sporting events in a single day. It was chaos. There they go, there they go, there they go. All right sports event number two. It is the Jets versus, one second. The Chicago Bears.

The Bears! This is a dumpster fire. This is an actual dumpster fire. It was a real dumpster fire. But along the way, we tried to pay as little as possible to get into all of these events. Oh dude, I got 10 bucks. Wait, what, what, what, where, where, where, where, for two tickets? Yeah, dude. That's right, you got some $10 tickets to a Jets game,

not bad. That's right, some would say you should be paid to go to a Jets game, but yes, yes, we did pay $10. That's next time. Now, the reason we went to these events is because even though inflation was going through the roof then, sports ticket prices were actually going down.

And so, Alexi, my update is that now, even though inflation has slowed down, sports ticket prices are now actually going up, like way up. Okay. So like basically the exact opposite price phenomenon has happened since your story. Yeah. A 180 degree turnaround.

So, you know, when we did our story about two years ago, ticket prices had dropped 17.7% year over year, one year after our story, they were up 25%, like even higher than before the drop. So this rise in sports ticket prices is part of a phenomenon that has earned its own name that I think you're gonna like. It's called, ready?

Funflation. Funflation. What? We should have cooked that up. We didn't, and it does, cooking it up, since it reminds me of the Funfetti cake with the little sprinkles. But yes, this is apparently how economists

are talking about the rush of demand and thus increased prices for live events that I guess we missed during the pandemic. Sports have seen the biggest jump in ticket prices, but the consumer price index category that tracks movies and theater and concerts like altogether has also generally outpaced inflation. So it appears we reported that original sports ticket story in the exact window before the funflation, the brief window of like whatever you would call the opposite of funflation, I don't know. Right, like couchflation or bumflation.

Bumflation, yes, yes. All right, Kenny, thank you so much for your update. Thank you, Alexei. ["The New York Times"] Next up, we have NPR's long-time education correspondent, Cory Turner, or as I like to think of him, the student loan whisperer. Cory, welcome back. Thanks for coming.

Hi, Alexi. Thank you for staying on brand, but let's go full volume. So you're here to give us an update on a student loan episode you did around a year and a half ago. Yeah, it was August, 2023. And a lot has happened since then. In that episode, I was talking about President Biden's big new student loan repayment plan, the saving on a valuable education plan, or if you love acronyms, SAVE. He rolled it out after the Supreme

Court struck down his big effort to outright forgive billions of dollars in federal student loan debt. As repayment plans go, Save is radically more flexible and generous and forgiving than anything that has come before. I want to give you one example here, Alexi. A borrower I've spoken to a few times over the past year, his name is Carlos Sanchez of Texas, he took out a ton of student loan debt to put his three children through state schools. Before he enrolled in SAVE, his monthly payment was over a thousand dollars. After going through the process of the SAVE plan, it was whittled down to just over $400.

And that was a huge relief. So SAVE was making a real difference for Carlos. But something about the fact that you're here right now, Cory, tells me that maybe that is not the case anymore. Ah, the rest of the story, Alexi, is that Carlos did not have much time to enjoy those save benefits. After making a couple of payments at the lower level save plan amount, I'm feeling pretty good that I'm on the right path.

Turmoil began again. That turmoil was a bunch of Republican state attorneys general sued the Biden administration, arguing that the save plan is illegal. And I got notified from my loan provider that my loan was going to be put into forbearance until this litigation was settled. And Corey, this is way bigger than just Carlos, right? This is like a lot of people. Way bigger. It's happening to all of the roughly 8 million people who are enrolled in the SAVE plan and are now in the student

loan equivalent of limbo. Okay, so what exactly is the legal argument here? Why do some folks think that SAVE might be illegal? Because of the cost. Really, Alexi. By one estimate, the plan could cost $475 billion over 10 years, which would make it maybe more expensive than Biden's original loan forgiveness plan, which was obviously struck down by the Supreme Court. And so those

Republican state attorneys general, I mentioned earlier, they have been arguing in court over the past year that look, this is civics 101. President Biden created the save plan, but only Congress has the power of the purse, not the president. And if Congress had wanted to spend nearly half a trillion dollars on a loan repayment plan, it would have. And is this argument working? Like where do things stand legally at the moment? Or waiting for the next ruling.

But the courts have already issued an injunction, which is a fancy way of saying nobody can use save until they figure out if it's legal. Okay, so borrowers are in Forbearance then I mean explain explain what this means. What should borrowers know moving forward here? Yeah, it means nobody has to make payments until the court decides if save is legal Also interest is not accruing But you know, there are a lot of borrowers for whom this confusion, this limbo, is just too much. And so for them, they should know they have a few other options. The Ed Department is reopening to older repayment plans. Though I should say a court ruling against SAVE, if it's broad enough, could actually take them down too. If borrowers

want a safer bet, they could jump over to the one income-based plan that Congress created itself, which means it's safe. It's called IBR for Income Based Repayment and it offers some loan forgiveness, but because of its rules, there are going to be some borrowers who may not qualify for the plan. What is clear at this point is that just about any other plan compared to SAVE is probably going to mean an increase in borrowers' monthly payments. So Cory, I assume a lot of borrowers are probably just going to stick this out to kind of see what happens, but what would you say are the chances that SAVE somehow survives all of this? I don't have a crystal ball, obviously, but I would say the only way it survives is for

three unlikely things to all happen. And that is for the courts, for the incoming Trump administration, and for Congress, which will soon be controlled by Republicans, to all three decide that they want Save to stick around. Is that impossible? No. But boy is it unlikely. Cory Turner, thank you so much for the update. You're welcome, Alexi. Okay, next up we have Planet Money's Amanda Oranchik. Hi Amanda. Hello Alexi.

How are you? Nice to see you. Good to see you. What have you brought for us? Well now I know that this episode is not a competition, but I win. Of course, all you do is win Amanda. But what are you talking about? What do you mean you're winning?

Well the premise of this episode is to bring you updates on our stories that ran over the past couple years and my update is the most up datiest because my update is of two episodes that I did about Argentina. Okay an update on Argentina I'm interested but this is our last segment before the break so we've only got about two minutes and 45 seconds. Oh that is not enough time. Argentina elected this totally radical new president, Javier Millet, and boy has he changed a lot.

I distilled it down to 75 questions here is the list. Amanda. Yeah. Amanda, this is like a little poem. Now we only have like two minutes, 20 seconds. Are you ready? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Are you ready?

Go, go, go. Okay, okay, starting it now. Here we go. Okay. So first question. Did Argentina dollarize? No. Millet promised to replace the collapsing peso with the U.S. dollar to dollarize, but he has not done that. Not yet, anyway. Is the peso still excrement? What? Yeah, that is how Millet described the peso and no it is complicated because there is a black market rate and an official rate for the peso but it is much stronger than it was. Has inflation in Argentina gone down? Yes by a lot the monthly inflation rate was just over 25% last December at one

point inflation Argentina was the highest in the world. This past October, it went down to 2.7%. Okay. A lot better. A lot better. What changes did Millet actually make? Okay. I'm going to list through these real fast. And I'm going to only answer the economic policy changes.

We're going to put the cultural stuff aside, the political stuff aside. Okay. So he cut more than 30,000 government jobs. He reduced the number of government ministries. He devalued the peso. He cut subsidies on energy. He cut subsidies on transportation. He cut pensions.

He cut government salaries. He cut public works. He wasn't kidding when he said he was going to bring a chainsaw to the state. How much time is left? Just about a minute. Oh God. Okay, so skip ahead to question 68.

I have not gotten to the bad stuff yet. Okay, okay, okay. What are the downsides of this kind of shock therapy, as it's sometimes called? Okay, so skip ahead to question 68. I have not gotten to the bad stuff yet. Okay, okay, okay. What are the downsides of this kind of shock therapy as it's sometimes called? Has the cost of living gone up? Yes, all those cuts to subsidies mean that heating your home costs more,

taking public transit costs more, groceries cost more. There was a recession this past year. Before Melee was elected, 42% of the country lived below the poverty line, Now, 50% do. What about homelessness? Homelessness is up in Buenos Aires. Look, Millet came into office saying that this was going to be really hard, and it has been, for many people, really hard.

Okay, we've got about 28 seconds left. Last question. A year since he became president, do people like Javier Millet? You know, many people do. When the last guy left office, his approval rating was down to 18%. Millet's approval rating is nearly 50%, which in Argentina, that's not bad.

He is doing many of the things that he said he would do. Hopefully all of this shock therapy will turn into more jobs and higher wages and investments and growth. Alright, Amanda, you did it. Thank you so much for that update on the fate of an entire nation. Yeah. Next time, more time, please. We'll see about that. Coming up after the break, we return to a housing market horror story from earlier this year and learn

about the surprising work benefits that some people get for having twinsies. We are back, it's the rest of the story, and for our next update we're going to revisit an episode about a kind of mortgage that seemingly will not die. Mortgages that kind of rise from the grave and return from the dead. For that, we are joined by NPR investigations correspondent Chris Arnold, hello Chris. Hey, Alexi, glad to be here.

So why don't we start with reminding our listeners what your original story was all about? Okay, so it was about zombie mortgages, which are about as scary as they sound. Better than boring. Better than boring, but you still do not want to have one of these pop up if you own a house. Sure. These are loans that come from way back,

2005, 2006 during the housing bubble. And back then, a lot of people got two loans when they bought a house. And the first mortgage was the bigger one for most of the money that they needed to borrow to buy the house. And then they got a smaller second mortgage to basically cover the down payment.

Then the housing crash happened and millions of Americans were facing foreclosure. Right, so there was this big national effort to renegotiate and modify people's mortgages so they wouldn't lose their homes. And as part of that, homeowners say they were told that these second mortgages so they wouldn't lose their homes. And as part of that, homeowners say they were told that these second mortgages were being forgiven

so they could keep on paying their main mortgage. Right, which all seemed great, except that homeowners are now getting calls from debt collectors who say, you know what, that loan didn't die, you owe me the money. Sometimes it's twice what people borrowed in the first place and they're demanding payment

on these old loans. Yeah, and if homeowners don't pay, these companies will foreclose on their houses. And Chris, you found these zombie mortgages were coming back to haunt a lot of people. Yeah, thousands of people. And we did an episode back in May about a woman named Karen McDonough.

She's a nurse who lives in Quincy, Massachusetts. And in the episode, we told how one morning she looked out her window and she was just shocked to see this group of men gathering on her lawn. And there was one guy who was like in charge with a clipboard. And he goes, we're selling your house. And I'm like, what are you talking about?

He goes, don't pretend that you don't know what I'm talking about. And I go, I actually don't know what you're talking about. So he told Karen that her home was being foreclosed on and auctioned off. And this is the house that Karen had owned for 17 years. She'd raised her kids in this house and she'd been making payments on it.

So this was of course, like really upsetting for Karen. Yeah, I was like shaken. I'm being evicted from my house that I've been making monthly payments on and that I'm current with. And since this episode aired, a lot of other media outlets picked up the zombie mortgage story citing your investigation.

But what has happened since then, Chris? Well, one thing is that government officials have also been looking at this issue. And after a story came out, I interviewed the attorney general in Massachusetts, Andrea Campbell, and it was pretty cool. She actually knew about our episode. If you listen to Karen's story from Quincy,

she's still scared about the outcome of her case. And her story, like so many others, is so compelling about the ongoing harm. And her office has started to take some action. It turns out the AGs there have been investigating one of these companies that's been foreclosing on people's homes. The company is named Franklin Credit Management.

The AG alleges it was breaking state and federal law by trying to collect on these debts. The company did not admit wrongdoing, we should say, but to avoid the risk of litigation, it struck a settlement with the A.J. It not only addresses the issue of zombie mortgages, which we see as completely unfair practices against our residents, but most importantly, gets the monetary resources these borrowers deserve,

the restitution they deserve, and $10 million in debt relief. And what she's talking about with the $10 million there is that the company basically agreed to forgive all of the mortgages it controls for people in the state of Massachusetts, and that's more than 500 loans. All right, so pretty good start here

and definitely a huge boon for all the people who are getting out of these mortgages. But on the other hand, you found there are many thousands more at risk of losing their homes this way, right? Yeah, I mean, for sure that this settlement involved just one company and what they're doing in just one state. So Karen McDonough, the settlement doesn't help her. She's still trying to get ownership of her home back from a different company that foreclosed on it. But consumer law groups are hoping that there will be more to come with the government cracking down. And so is the Massachusetts AG, Andrea Campbell.

We hope that other states where they may have a portfolio of borrowers, that those AGs are also paying attention. That they are of course in communication with our office on how we might help them get a similar outcome. And Alexi, I can tell you that NPR's investigations unit is also paying attention and we're talking to more homeowners

and finding more companies that are doing this. So stay tuned. All right, we definitely will. Chris Arnold, thanks so much for keeping us up to date on everything, Zombie Mortgage. Absolutely, glad to do it. Finally today, we are joined by Planet Money co-host Mary Childs, who has just returned from parental leave. Mary, welcome home.

Oh, thank you, Alexi. Good to be back. Good to have you. Now, Mary, not only have you been on parental leave, but you actually had twinsies, which you mentioned in an episode back in March where you went shopping for the best parental benefits offered by governments around the world. That is correct.

I went shopping out of necessity and Sweden won. Of course Sweden had some of the best social benefits in the world. I know, right? But what is your update exactly? Are you going to tell me you moved to Sweden? No, I wish, Alexi. I don't understand why no one has called me. I remain open to employment in Sweden,

but here's my update. My episode was about benefits that parents can get in different countries, but I did not talk at all about the benefits for parents of multiples, which is the term of art among those of us who have had more than one baby at one time, like twins or triplets or God forbid, quadruplets. Multiples.

Yes, multiples. I actually learned that the offering in Sweden is even better than I realized because they give additional leave for each additional baby. Wow, that sounds like a great deal. Well, when it comes to multiples, it's kind of buy one, buy another. So I don't know that it's like a deal,

but in Sweden, they really do offer 180 days more per marginal child, on top of their existing offer of 480 days for a baby. Not bad. I know. So only a few countries in the world do this, these Scandinavian countries, as again, you might expect, but also Poland, Laos, Azerbaijan, Lithuania, and Dora.

But again, this is unusual because in most countries, it doesn't matter how many babies you grew, it is just one birth event. I'm gonna say that Sweden and Lithuania and companies on the right side of history on this one. You gotta give those babies more time to bond and develop. I mean, imagine if the she-wolf who raised Romulus and Remus had gone back to work after only 480 days.

Rome might never have gotten built. Yeah, that's exactly right, Alexi, and I'm so glad that you see this. Rome famously needs more days to be built. Obviously, there are more babies to care for and to bond with, but here's why more leave may be medically indicated. Because it's typically a more complicated pregnancy for whoever is growing the babies. And it is also riskier for the infants themselves. Because twins, triplets, etc. are more likely than singletons to need time in the neonatal intensive care unit. They are more likely to have health

complications, etc. Even more reason for more time. And guess what, Alexi? You are going to be hearing more about this because the incidence of multiple babies at a time is rising. We're getting more multiples? The multiples are multiplying. Because yes, more people are using fertility assistance treatments, doing IVF, etc. and that increases your chances. But that's not the only reason. And no one is talking about this, but they should. Another factor that increases your chances of multiples? Advanced maternal age. Okay?

So, as more people are having kids later in life than they used to, you can expect to see more twins and more people asking for longer parental leave. And or trying to emigrate to Sweden. Ah, exactly right. Please come visit me. You know I'm there. That'll be our next rest of the story. Perfect. Please come visit me. You know I'm there. That'll be our next rest of the story.

Perfect. Today's episode was produced by Sam Yellow Horse Kessler and edited by Keith Romer and Jess Jang. It was fact-checked by Sierra Juarez and engineered by Sina Lefredo. Alex Goldmark is our executive producer. Special thanks to Edward Gilliland, Mariana Lutzi, Nicholas Saldias, Ivan Verning and Rashik Zahid. I'm Alexi Horowitzgazi, this is NPR.

Thanks for listening.