#243: The Frankenstein Mortgage from NPR: Planet Money Podcast

The 30-year, fixed-rate mortgage -- the bedrock of American home ownership -- is a weird loan. In an ordinary market, you'd have to pay a really high interest rate to get a 30-year fixed, if you could get it at all. Only the intervention of the government -- and the creation of Fannie Mae -- turned the loan into America's plain-vanilla mortgage. On today's Planet Money, Bethany McLean and Joe Nocera (authors of All the Devils Are Here, a book on the financial crisis) walk us through the 30-year-fixed and the history of Fannie and Freddie. And they talk about where we go from here. Listen to the podcast.

#230 Planet Money: Pietra Rivoli's T-Shirt Travels from NPR: Planet Money Podcast

Okay we admit it, we stole our idea to make a t-shirt and report every part of the process from Pietra Rivoli, who wrote the book, The Travels of a T-shirt in a Global Economy. Pietra followed the story of her t-shirt across three continents and along the way she learned about the many factors outside the market that impacted its production.

Download the podcast here. See also: The Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy: An Economist Examines the Markets, Power, and Politics of World Trade, Outlines & Highlights for Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy: An Economist Examines the Markets, Power, and Politics of World Trade by Pietra Rivoli, ISBN: 9780470039205