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Complaints are rife that the video game industry treats female employees and female players as outsiders or worse. But it wasn't always that way.

Laine Nooney, a doctoral candidate at Stony Brook University, has been looking at the contributions of Roberta Williams, who in the early 1980s co-founded one of the early video game companies, Sierra Online.

"[Williams] was actually the designer of the first home computer adventure game with graphics," says Nooney. The game was called Mystery House and was a murder mystery set in an abandoned Victorian house.

As adventure games took off in the early ‘80s, Sierra Online became one of the largest independent producers of home software in the country.

According to Nooney, at the time, developers and players did not see gaming as stictly a "guy's thing."

"[Williams] had a passion project about encouraging families to play together," says Nooney, who notes that Williams railed against the couch-potato stereotype of gamers.

To hear more about Roberta Williams and the early days of video games, click on the audio player above.

Teachers, here's one for your social studies students: According to new research from the Pew Research Center, Twitter is a bad way to predict public opinion. Turns out, just because a lot of people tweet something does not necessarily mean the public at large agrees. Tweets can run more conservative or more liberal than the general public.

But, one conclusion is clear: "Twitter is full of haters," says Slate tech blogger Will Oremus. "Haters" may be a bit strong. But the study shows that negativity rules in social media.

"When [President Obama] nominated John Kerry for Secretary of State, the reaction on Twitter was overwhelmingly negative. Everybody was making fun of Kerry, but the general public, Pew found, was actually rather supportive of the Kerry nomination," Oremus says.

To hear more about the relationship between Twitter and public opinion, click on the audio player above.

Global oil markets are steady this morning after the death of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. Venezuela holds the world's second largest oil reserves.

For more on the economic impact of Chavez's death, Marketplace Morning Report host Jeremy Hobson speaks with the BBC's Irene Caselli in Caracas.

In Venezuela, some are mourning, and some are not, for Hugo Chavez, the country’s polarizing president, who died yesterday. Supporters see him as a champion of the poor. Critics say he ruined the country’s economy. Chavez’s economic legacy is a mix of both.

If you consider the impact of Hugo Chavez by traditional economic benchmarks, like inflation, he ended on a low note.

Javier Corrales is a political science professor at Amherst College.

“He’s leaving the country in the midst of a serious economic crisis. A very large fiscal deficit. A devaluation was announced that is going to have enormous inflationary effect, as well as productivity declines everywhere,” says Corrales.

The country’s economy is less diversified than when Chavez took control. Venezuela is now almost totally reliant on oil revenues.

But, for a long time, oil profits worked in his favor, allowing Chavez to invest heavily in his populist agenda. Corrales says other Latin American leaders had mounted similar progressive campaigns in the past, but always ran out of money.

“What Chavez was able to do was to sustain that much longer than any other Venezuelan president or Latin American president simply because the oil windfall that Venezuela enjoyed between 2003 and today has been enormous,” says Corrales.

At the same time Chavez depended on the oil industry, he also undermined it. When oil industry administrators went on strike early in Chavez rule, he fired 18,000 industry workers. Oil production levels fell.

“Large numbers of its revenues were going, rather than to reinvestment in the industry, were going directly to fund social programs,” says Alejandro Velasco, assistant professor of Latin American Studies at New York University. “The criticism is that an oil company shouldn’t have as its major focus social missions. It should have as its major focus the production of oil.”

But from the perspective of the poor, Chavez was seen almost like a god. He focused the country’s oil wealth on improving the lives of the dispossessed.

“It’s meant a tremendous amount both in economic assistance. But more significantly, I would say, it’s meant more in terms of how people imagine their roles in society. No longer cast aside. No longer marginalized,” says Velasco.

The poor have been empowered, both economically and politically.

“It’s really undeniable. And even the opposition has had to come to terms with, that no longer can you sort of take for granted the voices of those who were economically marginalized. Now they have formed sort of an integral part of peoples' political calculus,” says Velasco.

But by starving the private sector, Chavez may have also worked against the interests of the unemployed in Venezuela.

“Chavez has hurt the poor by making sure that the private sector in Venezuela underperforms. The job growth, the investments that you see in the private sector are very weak. They’re not generating job growth,” says Corrales.

Corrales says that reforming the country’s oil industry would not only help the economy, but would also help the poor in the long run.

The inside of a Harley-Davidson factory looks a lot like what you’d expect -- workers in jeans, black T-shirts and bandanas. 

But there's no soundtrack in the background. At least, not anymore.

Citing safety concerns, the company announced that music would no longer be allowed on the assembly line -- no tunes piped-in through speakers and no portable radios at its manufacturing plants. 

“We love the fact that Harley-Davidson is associated with cool things like music," says Harley spokesperson Maripat Blankenheim.  "However, when it comes to our plants, safety is a priority. Music is not.”

The idea, she says, is to eliminate distractions and improve performance.

“These are folks working on a line, they work in teams, so it’s really important to be able to hear what’s going on in the work around you,” Blankenheim says.

There are federal rules for how loud a workplace can be, but no specific rules about music in factories. So individual companies have to decide whether it’s safe, and how music impacts the bottom line.

At the Milwaukee company Helios Solar Works, employees make solar panels while listening to Internet radio. Line worker Josh Drane says it helps him get through what can be a pretty monotonous day.

“We tend to perk up when we hear one of our songs played. But beyond that it’s just nice to have ambient background music instead of just the very mechanical sounds of the line operating,” Drane says.

Managers at the Helios Solar Works plant believe music makes employees more productive. And there’s plenty of research to support that idea. Teresa Lesiuk is a music therapy professor at the University of Miami. She surveyed information technology professionals and found they overwhelmingly reported positive effects of music in the workplace.

“It was calming to them or it provided some excitement when they were needing it. For some others, it was more nostalgia to the music, and somehow that was helpful to them in their work,” Lesiuk says.

But Lesiuk does say that for some factory jobs, like driving a forklift, music would certainly be a distraction.  And even a danger.

The stock market is rising like a balloon, and that has a certain levitating impact on investors. Who's most susceptible to news that the Dow is peaking? Richard Peterson with the stock data firm MarketPsych says it's the people on the sidelines.   "Those people who pulled out money in the financial crisis are going to feel a real pang of need to get back in," he says.   But if you invest heavily in the stock market right now, he says you risk overpaying. It's better to put in a little at a time, because prices tend to go down immediately after a spike.   "So if you feel the urge and you want to scratch the itch, so to speak, it's better to wait a week to a month before you start putting money back into the markets," Peterson says.   Chris Thornberg with Beacon Economic says the Dow's increase is not a false rise. The market is in an overall recovery, so investors can feel good about getting back in, if they do it calmly and slowly.   "Keeping what I would have to say is a difficult but nevertheless necessary confidence that in the long run things will get back to where they should be," he says.   Meaning, they must maintain the confidence not to sell off a lot of stock if...make that when...the market dips back down.  

This final n...on the way o... damn you, Dubner.

Okay, I'll think of something new. But anyway in the interests of equal time, this note today from the Speaker of the House John Boehner.

"While I'm disappointed the White House has chosen to comply with sequestration by cutting public tours," Boehner says, "I'm pleased to assure you that public tours of the United States Capitol will continue."

As well, I'm sure will the sequestration tit-for-tat.

 

The government of Venezuela announced today that President Hugo Chavez died at the age of 58.

Marketplace's Scott Tong reported on Chavez's legacy back in January. "Early on in his administration, Chavez took control of biggest piece of the economy: oil," Tong reported.

"He ran the place," Tong said today. "And several people I talked to said the Chavez model goes to the grave with him."

Read Tong's story on the economics of Chavez here.

Americans lost about 40 percent of their net worth between 2007 and 2010, thanks to the recession and stock market collapse. So if you heard the news about the Dow, you may be thinking: Have I made back the money I lost?

James Angel, who teaches finance at Georgetown’s McDonough School of Business, says it all depends on what you did when the market dropped.

“If you panicked and sold when the market went down you probably bought high and sold low, so you’re out of luck,” he says. If on the other hand, you viewed the dip in the market as a buying opportunity, “you’re probably really happy today.”

But, before you get overly excited, consider what Jeremy Siegel, who teaches finance at Wharton, has to say: “The Dow is not the whole market.”

And Siegel notes that only a little over half of Americans own stock. According to a Gallup poll, that’s down from 65 percent of the country before the recession.

Matt Coffina, editor of Morningstar’s newsletter, StockInvestor, says when it comes to concerns about investments, many Americans’ thoughts don’t stray far from home.

“For the typical household, the value of their house probably matters more to their personal wealth than the value of their stock holdings,” he says.

Coffina says that in terms of people’s well-being, even more important than their investments, is their income. But he points out that in general, household income has been stagnant for the last five years. Today’s Dow reflects corporate profits growing much more quickly then household income.

“Unless you’re Mitt Romney, I don’t think you’re feeling all that wealthy, or all that well off,” he says.

But good news for the 50 percent of Americans who do own stock can means good news for the rest of the country. If investors feel better about their wealth, they’re more likely to spend it.
We asked you on social media how the Dow's high has affected you, if at all. Here's what you said:
[View the story "The Dow hits a record high -- how does this affect you?" on Storify]
Weigh in on the comments below or by tweeting us @MarketplaceAPM.

Despite market euphoria today, one could quibble about the Dow closing at an all-time high. The index isn't inflation-adjusted. It's just 30 big companies. So as economic indicators go, the 117-year-old index has its problems. 

Turn your gaze away from the skyward green arrow on Dow graphics and you see a broader economy that’s a rather mixed bag for ordinary Americans. The positive news of rising home prices mingles with a murky job picture and payroll tax hike.

“Put it together and you have an economy that’s still moving forward,” says Mesirow Financial chief economist Diane Swonk. “But it certainly isn’t booming, and the Dow would leave you feeling as if everything’s booming.”

She adds that much of the corporate profit fueling stock surges is not from strong sales or overall economic strength, but company’s slashing budgets. The stock markets are also up because the Fed has been flooding the economy with cheap money.

Even if the much-hyped Dow ultimately presents a rather limited picture, it can have a psychological impact. The wealth effect is the economic concept that when share prices go up, people will spend more because they feel richer. When the Dow smashes through a barrier, it could open wealthy wallets a little wider.

“There is an impact, there’s no question about it,” says Wichita State University economics professor William Miles, who researches the wealth effect.

Miles adds that it’s felt strongest among high earners, those who tend to have more wealth in stocks. It’s worth nothing that not all economists believe the wealth effect has a major impact.

One place where Dow milestones absolutely always have an impact is CNBC. Broken records are heralded with extensive coverage and flashy graphics. The network plans ahead for big Dow days, even if it can’t predict them.

“We’re always preparing,” says Nik Deogun, the network's senior vice president and editor-in-chief of business news. “Obviously, the days you prepare for it usually aren’t the days it happens.”

When it does happen, like Tuesday, he says it gets “adrenaline and energy” flowing on set and in the newsroom.

“People know that they’re playing on a big stage and they wanna do the best job possible at moments when there are more people watching,” Deogun says.

There’s a lot the Dow doesn’t tell us about the broader economy. But it does put on a good show.

Kai Ryssdal: One could quibble -- should one choose -- about the close on the Dow today. It's not inflation-adjusted, some will say. It's just 30 companies, after all.

So as economic indicators go, the Dow has its problems. But it is worth a moment -- 90 seconds perhaps -- to consider what it does mean. To put a 117-year-old market index into some modern-day context. Marketplace's Mark Garrison drew the short straw today.

Mark Garrison: Turn your gaze away from the skyward green arrow on Dow graphics and you see a broader economy that’s a rather mixed bag for ordinary Americans. Among the positives: rising home prices. On the negative end, a murky job picture and payroll tax hike.

Diane Swonk: Put it together and you have an economy that’s still moving forward, but it certainly isn’t booming and the Dow would leave you feeling as if everything’s booming.

Mesirow Financial chief economist Diane Swonk points out that much of the corporate profit fueling stock surges is not from strong sales, but budget cutting.

Swonk: We don’t want to see profits from cost-cutting alone. We wanna see profits from improvements in the economy.

The stock markets are also up because the Fed has been flooding the economy with cheap money. When share prices go up, there’s an idea in economics that people will spend more because they feel richer. That’s called the wealth effect, something Wichita State economist William Miles specializes in.

William Miles: There is an impact, there’s no question about it. I think it tends to be concentrated on people in the upper income brackets, because they’re the ones that own the most stock.

So a rising Dow could open wealthy wallets a little wider. It’s worth nothing, not all economists think the wealth effect has a major impact. One place where Dow milestones absolutely always have an impact: CNBC.

Nik Deogun is the network’s Editor in Chief.

Nik Deogun: We’re always preparing and, obviously, the days you prepare for it usually aren’t the days it happens.

When it does happen, like today, he says it gets the adrenaline flowing on set.

Deogun: People know that they’re playing on a big stage and they wanna do the best job possible at moments when there are more people watching.

There’s a lot the Dow doesn’t tell us about the broader economy. But it does put on a good show. In New York, I'm Mark Garrison, for Marketplace.

Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez has died at the age of 58, according to AP reports. Besides his geopolitical influence, Chavez's legacy will be an economic one -- the socialist strongman fused his ideas and his country's oil money to refashion the country, for better or worse.

Chavez economics starts with Chavez ideology. He took office in 1999, pledging to fight corruption and share the wealth.

"People tend to vote with their pocketbooks, even here," said business publisher and consultant Robert Bottome in Caracas, back in January*. "And so Chavez was offering a change. He was going to get the economy growing again. Throw the bastards out. He has tremendous personal appeal."

Early on in his administration, Chavez took control of the biggest piece of his country's economy: oil.

Foreign companies like ExxonMobil and Conoco Phillips operated there. But Bottome says Chavez was unsatisfied with the royalty payment negotiated in a contract. So he doubled it.

"And then he doubled it again," Bottome said. "He didn't like the tax scale. And then finally he said he didn't like my partners. So he told them from now on instead of being majority owners and operators, you can be minority partner if you like. And I am going to run the show. "

Speaking of show, Chavez hosted his own talk show every Sunday. As in him talking.

"He once fired all the top management of the national oil company" during the show, said former Venezuelan trade minister Moises Naim, now with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "In other instances of his show, he would nationalize a bank or the electricity company."

What you and I consider independent economic data is hard to come by in Venezuela.

But there's no question Chavez spent money on the poor -- on health care, appliances, subsidized gas. And he drove out lots of foreign companies and private-sector investors.

Pomona College historian Miguel Tinker Salas said Venezuela's now a hybrid economy -- part socialist, part consumption capitalist.

"You can have on the one hand a discourse about socialism, but the malls are full," Tinker Salas said in January. "Venezuela is the highest consumer of scotch whiskey per capita in the world."

Chavez also sent money to neighboring countries, often in the form of cheap energy.

Some were friends of the ideological revolution, like Cuba. Others were marriages of political convenience.

"So if there are votes in organizations that come up about Venezuela," said Michael Shifter of the Inter-American Dialogue in Washington, D.C., "those countries are more likely to be influenced if get good deal on oil to vote with Venezuela as opposed to against Venezuela."

It's been a potent fusion of power, ideology, and economic leverage, says Shifter.

Which raises the question: is this how every strongman economy tends to work?

"I don't think it necessarily has to go this way," Shifter said. "You have Evo Morales who is a close ally of Hugo Chavez. But the Bolivian economy is much better managed than the Venezuelan economy."

Today, Venezuela faces double-digit inflation, billions in debt, and remains highly dependent on the oil sector. When energy prices fall, the economy goes with it.

And yet the socialist experiment continues.

Why? Oil money to bankroll it, said Moises Naim at Carnegie.

"That allows you to experiment, and provides you a cushion to cover your mistakes," Naim said. "The 'oil curse' allows for sustained bad ideas to linger over time."

On his show late last year, Chavez picked a successor.

"I don't think there's any going back," said Tinker Salas. "Venezuela has changed. People who have been in power are not going to retreat into the margins any more. Venezuela will not change, whether Chavez is there or not."

*UPDATED: This article is an updated version of a story on Hugo Chavez that ran on Marketplace in January.

In the middle of Shanghai, there’s a secret neighborhood.

It's the size of a city block, and it's surrounded by a 10-foot wall. Inside is a field of weeds where stray cats prowl through the charred corpses of old homes. It’s a strange scene -- particularly here, in the middle of Shanghai’s old French Concession, which has some of the most expensive real estate in China. But for the past decade, this lot has sat here, undeveloped and oblivious to the most rapid economic boom in modern history going on all around it.

But there are people here. And they’re aware. Kang Chenggeng sneaks past a police officer guarding the only entrance to this neighborhood to show what’s left of his home. "My home," he says, his voice muffled by a cold gust of wind.

A decade ago, this was a quiet alleyway neighborhood called Maggie Lane. Officials from the Shanghai district of Xuhui had plans to sell the land to a developer to build a luxury condominium complex. Maggie Lane residents say Xuhui officials tricked them into leaving their neighborhood, telling them their homes were of historical importance, the government would rebuild them, and afterwards, residents could move back.

Xuhui government officials refused interview requests from Marketplace.

Kang says as Maggie Lane’s residents started to leave, they discovered officials had lied to them. The government changed the legal designation for the land, changed the resettlement terms, and suddenly they weren’t able to return to their homes. If they wanted new housing elsewhere, they’d have to forfeit much of their resettlement compensation for it. Kang and a dozen others stayed put. "The demolition crew cut my water and gas, and they took my front door off the hinges," remembers Kang. "I wouldn’t leave. Then they broke my windows and poured buckets of raw sewage into my home. I still didn’t leave. Then, when it was raining hard, they used an excavator to smash my roof in. Everything got wet, so I left." 

Kang’s been homeless ever since. Sometimes he comes back here to check on his old home. He looks through the hole in the roof that’s still there. Sunlight shines through it onto broken glass, piles of bricks and splintered lumber.

From the shattered window of Kang’s old kitchen, you can see what’s left of the home of Zhu Shuikang and his wife Li Xingzhi. According to Chinese court documents, on the night of January 9th, 2005, two employees of the developer set fire to the couple’s home to try to get them to leave. Another neighbor, Chen Zhongdao, remembers that night. "The fire alarm went off, but we didn’t go outside to see what was going on because we were scared of getting beat up by the developer’s thugs," recalls Chen.

Zhu Shuikang was an elderly man who had fought and survived the Korean War as a Chinese soldier decades ago, but he was no match for the developer.

He and his wife burned to death in their bed.

Months later, two employees of the developer were given reprieved death sentences, another got life in prison, and the Xuhui government built a wall around the neighborhood, letting it sit as unfinished business for future leaders to take care of. "I believe the new leadership will take a tougher stand on these illegal takings," says Li Ping, an attorney in Beijing for the property rights group Landessa.

He says tackling illegal land seizures will be a priority for incoming president Xi Jinping. Li’s confident China’s new leaders are ready to increase compensation and give fair resettlement packages to people like the residents of Maggie Lane. He says local governments have taken land from 40 million people in China, and the pace hasn’t slowed down. It’s beginning to threaten social stability, he says. "According to current pace of land expropriation, they will add three million people every year," says Li. "If compensation is not adequate, you basically add three more million dissidents each and every year."

The challenge, says Li, will be to give local governments more legal options to make money. As it stands, local governments hand over most of their tax revenue to the central government, so taking land from residents and selling it to developers is an irresistible temptation.

Chen Zhongdao still lives inside his half demolished home. He says every year or two, Xuhui officials send a demolition crew to try and force them off the land. "I’ve told the men in the crews that if they try to take me from my home, I’ll strap a gas canister to myself and we’ll all die together," says Chen.  "I’ve told them: I’m 60 years old, you guys are only 40. You have your lives ahead of you. I’m not afraid to die."

So far, the Xuhui government hasn’t tested Chen’s threat. Instead officials have allowed Chen and his neighbors to stay here, living in their partially demolished homes. Officials paid off the developer, losing money for the district, and then re-designated Maggie Lane as land for public use, yet a wall remains around it.

A few weeks ago, the district sent a crew to install new gas lines for Chen and his neighbors. He doesn’t know what to make of this, but he’s optimistic that change is afoot, China’s new leadership may help people like him, and maybe someday his house will again feel like home.

What does it take to get hired in this economy? For recent graduates, it's strong internship experience on their resume and better written and oral communications skills.

That's according to the results of a survey conducted by Marketplace and The Chronicle of Higher Education asking employers to weigh in on what they look for in today's recent grads. Marketplace's education correspondent Amy Scott explored that data in a sort of mock interview setting yesterday, and reported on the importance of internships on the Morning Report.

Do you have questions about the survey and its results?

Amy will be available for a live chat on Twitter on Wednesday, March 6 at 2 p.m. EST. Get your questions in early, either by commenting on this page -- or by tweeting @AmyReports or @MarketplaceAPM with the hashtag #HowToGetAJob, and Amy will answer them tomorrow.

Meanwhile, here is the survey report, in full:

 

 

The Role of Higher Education in Career Development: Employer Perceptions by

 

 

There is no shortage of athletics on television. There’s ESPN, the new-ish NBC Sports network, and various and sundry teams that have their own cable channels.

Today, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation announced it’s getting in on the game. The company is already in movies, publishing and cable news, but it’s still not satisfied.

"News Corp. looks at sports and says, ‘Look, that’s a market that we can exploit,’” Michael McCann says. He heads the Sports and Entertainment Law Institute at the University of New Hampshire School of Law.

Sports is a pretty safe bet. We can TiVo sitcoms. We can watch a whole season of “Homeland” in one weekend. But the game? According to David Berri, a sports economist at Southern Utah University, most of us want to watch it live.

“You will sit there, and you will sit there through all the advertisements,” he says.

A sports network needs sports, of course. Gabe Feldman directs the Tulane Law School Sports Law program, and he says that, when it comes to broadcast rights, FOX is in pretty good shape. Better shape than, say, NBC Sports. FOX already owns expensive rights to broadcast baseball, NASCAR, soccer and football.

According to Feldman, the next time a new TV contract comes up for renewal, the bidding war will be even fiercer.

“ESPN is in the middle of paying $1.9 billion a year for Monday Night Football,” he notes. “They now have another potential competitor there.”

Cable providers pay more to carry ESPN than any other channel, and if broadcast rights go up, odds are your cable bill will too.

Sports economist David Berri says News Corp. has ambitious plans, and it recognizes something important: You can’t just air games 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

“People also seem to like, and I don’t quite understand this part...they do seem to like the whole sports discussion thing.”

ESPN has SportsCenter. Fox Sports 1 will have one of Notre Dame’s biggest fans. Regis Philbin will host “Rush Hour,” a sports talk show that will air every day.

What it's going to feel like once our budget cuts really kick in?

We might be able to find a few clues from Europe.

The Europeans call it austerity, and -- yes -- it's more severe than what the United States is about to experience, but there may be a few object lessons to be learned from the European Union.

Take Ireland. That country has been subject to strong austerity measures since 2008. One problem, according to Dublin-based journalist Louise Williams, is that it takes quite a while to get a grasp on the true amount of pain the country's headed towards.

"Quite radical cuts are announced and then very intense lobbying takes place, then what we shift into is a process of negotiations and deliberations and then kind of a gentle chopping away of services."

Williams says that uncertainy makes a recovery more difficult.

"This shifting sands makes it very difficult for us, even as a nation, to know what's next."  

Spain has faced steep budget cuts more recently. Some of its citizens have reacted angrily and protested in the streets. Miguel-Anxo Murado, a journalist in Madrid, says that austerity affects more than peoples' pocketbooks.

"The fact that it is the government, the state that is affecting this austerity agenda, has caused many people to lose confidence in the government, in the state."

And those big, national mood shifts might be around to stay. Even after 5 years of austerity in Ireland, Williams says that things are still grim.

"I know we're moving into spring time [...] but you don't feel it here, you really don't. There's a paring back of public services and there's a sense that it'll never end."

But, Murado continues, the U.S. may be in a better position than these European countries.

"We don't have that autonomy in deciding our own economy, because we're part of the European Union. And in Spain even when the politicians of a country --  the elected representatives --  don't want something to happen, it happens anyway. That's quite a different sort of problem."

As impacts of the sequester start to take effect around the country, no state is expected to take a bigger economic hit than Virginia. Home of the Pentagon and much of the defense industry, Virginia is bracing for Department of Defense cutbacks that could furlough almost 90,000 employees and reduce work hours by about 20 percent. Those in Virginia's large military population might be physically farther away, many in Iraq or Afghanistan, but they're expected to feel the reverberations of the sequestration as well. Governor of Virginia, Republican Bob McDonnell, spoke with Marketplace Morning Report host Jeremy Hobson about the months ahead and how his state is preparing.

The Dow gained nearly 100 points this morning, topping 14,225 and breaking into record territory. While most economic stories these days lament the sequestration and tepid GDP growth, the markets appear mostly unfazed.

This weekend, New York subway and bus riders were hit with their fourth fare hike in five years. That money is collected with every swipe of a Metrocard -- a piece of technology that was introduced 20-years-ago and becomes more obsolete by the day. Despite the cards slow slide into obsolescence, riders must now pay a dollar surcharge if they lose or discard their card.

The regulator overseeing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac has announced a new idea to reform the mortgage giants. It involves starting a joint venture to bundle mortgages into securities that people can invest in. 

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were taken over by the government during the housing crisis. At that time they were bleeding red ink. But last week, Freddie Mac announced it made $11 billion in 2012.

“They’re doing as good a job as anyone could want,” says Guy Cecala, who publishes Inside Mortgage Finance, “and it’s unclear whether we could create a system that would be as efficient and as profitable as what’s currently in place right now.”

That’s exactly what the new plan hopes to do. It would create a new entity that would be responsible for the final steps in turning mortgages into securities for investors.

But not everyone likes that idea. Ken Posner, with Capital Bank Financial, says it would allow more  government involvement in the mortgage market.

“When you create a new entity, you haven’t closed the door all the way,” he explains. “You’ve left it open a crack.  And that could come back to haunt you.”

Congress and President Obama have the final say on government housing policy -- and whether Fannie and Freddie stay or go. 

The Dow gained nearly 100 points this morning, topping 14,225 and breaking into record territory.

While most economic stories these days lament the sequestration and tepid GDP growth, the markets appear mostly unfazed.

"I think the markets are looking ahead, they think the recovery is going to continue over the next six to nine months and that profits will continue to improve," says Gus Faucher, senior economist with the PNC Financial Services Group. 

Faucher notes that, despite worries about Europe, here in the U.S., the job market is slowly improving, housing sales are up, and GDP is at is highest level ever.

"This isn't the world's greatest recovery, but on the other hand it is continuing," says Faucher, who believes the stock market bounce could help increase household wealth and bolster consumer spending.

China's National People's Congress convenes today as it concludes its once-in-a-decade transition of power. In his final address to the Congress, outgoing Premier Wen Jiabao set an ambitious economic growth target of 7.5 percent.

BBC correspondent John Sudworth in Shanghai joins Marketplace Morning Report host Jeremy Hobson to explain how China plans to achieve that level of growth.

This weekend, New York subway and bus riders were hit with their fourth fare hike in five years. That money is collected with every swipe of a Metrocard -- a piece of technology that was introduced 20-years-ago and becomes more obsolete by the day. Despite the cards slow slide into obsolescence, riders must now pay a dollar surcharge if they lose or discard their card.

That has some straphangers, like Rich and Jean Wasicki, grumbling. Every six weeks, the couple come to New York from Buffalo to visit their son, a student at Fordham University. Each time, they buy a Metrocard and, after using it, throw the card away. When Rick Wasicki was informed that the practice will now cost him a dollar per card, he blurted, “Ridiculous! Absolutely ridiculous.”

Wasicki said it’s a lot to ask a Buffalo guy to keep track of his New York City Metrocard. But the NY Metropolitan Transportation Authority says it costs $10 million a year to produce those cards. Plus, there’s the extra cost to cleaning up cards that riders toss on the ground.

Jean Wasicki countered that the NY MTA profits from some of those discarded cards. “Half the time we put dollars, as out-of-towners, on that card that we ultimately don’t end up using,” she said. “And so those are dollars that the MTA has in its pocket.”

Riders do leave about 50 million unredeemed dollars on Metrocards each year. But the NY MTA says that’s not extra revenue. It costs the authority the same amount of money to run subway trains on a schedule, whether Wasicki uses all the value on her Metrocard or not.

Naomi Rosenberg, who commutes by the 1 train to her job at a non-profit serving the homeless, wondered why New York can’t get rid of the Metrocard for something more convenient, like the Transit Card used in Chicago, where her mom lives.

“My mom has a plastic credit card. It’s basically connected to her credit card, her transit card,” Rosenberg said.

Her mom’s transit card draws money directly from her bank account, and refills automatically. “You don’t have to keep track of old cards. It’s not paper, it’s plastic,” she added.

The New York plan was to swap out its Metrocard last year for a bank card with a computer chip that would let riders pay their fare. But not enough banks signed up, and the program was scrapped.

The NY MTA is now building its own transit card. The new technology must be ready by 2019, which is around the time the Metrocard turnstiles and vending machines are expected to wear out. In the meantime, the authority expects to collect $20 million a year from the new Metrocard replacement fee, one dollar at a time.