Marketplace - American Public Media

There are an estimated 40 millions guns in India -- and as concerns rise about safety, the number of applications for gun licenses is growing.

Tanmay Chatterjee is a spokesperson for the group Indians for Guns. Chatterjee says, "More and more women are enquiring about the procurement process and are applying for licenses. The rise in the number of applications is very sharp."

But getting a gun license can take years. First, you have to prove there's a direct threat to your life. So the black market for guns is growing, says gun-dealer Joydeep Biswas, whose family has been in the gun business for five generations.

"A large chunk of people want it for self-defense. So yes, people want it for their own personal safety. And they will buy illegal arms irrespective of whether the government gives them a license or not."

One estimate puts illegal gun ownership in India at more than 85 percent of the total. And that, says Biswas, is wiping out businesses like his. "This is a dying trade. We are here because our family has been doing this for generations. In the cases of the gunshops, the new generation is not coming in. We are probably the last generation."

Many of the black market guns are made in India, but they're also coming in from neighboring Nepal and Bangladesh. And as regulation of gun ownership remains tight and concerns about safety grow, the balck arms market will likely continue to thrive.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez made a surprise return to his country Monday after spending over two months in Cuba for cancer treatment.

The political climate and economy in oil-rich Venezuela has grown increasingly uncertain during his absence, as observers criticized the Venezuelan government for lacking transparency on his health. The calls eventually prompted the government to release photos of a smiling Chavez just days before his return.

"He had been a micro-manager of basically everything," Federico Barriga, a Latin America economist for the Economist Intelligence Unit, says Venezuela is an economy recovering from a double-digit deficit, stagnant growth and increasing inflation, but that without Chavez there was a lack of certainty. "His ministers weren't sure about how to take the economy forward."

Barriga also said that if Chavez's health deteriorates again, or new elections come up, the country may be required to adjust economic policy.

The dreaded federal budget axe known as the sequester is scheduled to fall on March 1. Congress and the president can only avoid the across-the-board cuts by coming up with a deficit reduction deal. The sequester standoff is causing widespread uncertainty and stress -- and not just for the more than four million federal workers. The cuts would be felt across the country in places that might surprise you, like a science lab in Baltimore.

Housing is on the economic stat agenda this week. We get new-home starts and building permits on Wednesday. That’s a good indicator of where homebuilding and new-home sales are heading. Then on Thursday, existing-home sales are reported. That’s a barometer of how much consumers are starting to jump back into the market to buy a first-home or trade up, or move to a place where the sun shines a little brighter and there are more jobs.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez made a surprise return to his country. Chavez has been in Cuba for more than two months receiving cancer treatment. During that time, the political situation in oil rich Venezuela has become increasingly uncertain.

And finally, the Denver Airport is dealing with an unusual problem: Bunnies. The little guys have caused thousands of dollars worth of damage to cars by nibbling on wiring under the car. One proposed solution? Fox urine, which apparently spoils rabbits' appetite for car parts and probably everything else.

The company that owns Maker's Mark, the brand known for bottles that are hand-sealed with wax, is backing down from a decision to dilute its bourbon.

In order to meet growing demand and prevent supply shortages, the spirits maker announced last week that it would dilute the alcohol content of its bourbon -- from 45 percent alcohol to 42 percent.

Though two of the company's heirs, Rob and Bill Samuels, assured customers the new Maker's Mark formula would taste the same, loyal fans revolted on social media -- and the company took note.

On Sunday, Maker's Mark bowed to customer complaints and reversed their decision to weaken their bourbon:

"Effective immediately, we are reversing our decision to lower the ABV of Maker’s Mark, and resuming production at 45% alcohol by volume (90 proof). Just like we’ve made it since the very beginning."

A win for fans of Maker's Mark, whose spirits are safe at 90 proof, but be warned if you're a bourbon drinker: The supply problem is industry-wide.

Michael Veach is the author of "Kentucky Bourbon Whiskey: An American Heritage." He says in  recent years bourbon has been on a roll.

"The problem is that these last 10 years the industry has been growing faster than anyone thought it would," Veach says.

That is a problem for aged whiskey because the bourbon distilling now won't be out of the casks for another six years. Beam, Inc., which owns Maker's, said it had't anticipated the increase in popularity and didn't age enough to keep up with current demand.

The company that owns Maker's Mark, the brand known for bottles that are hand-sealed with wax, is backing down from a decision to dilute its bourbon.

In order to meet growing demand and prevent supply shortages, the spirits maker announced last week that it would dilute the alcohol content of its bourbon -- from 45 percent alcohol to 42 percent.

Though two of the company's heirs, Rob and Bill Samuels, assured customers the new Maker's Mark formula would taste the same, loyal fans revolted on social media -- and the company took note.

On Sunday, Maker's Mark bowed to customer complaints and reversed their decision to weaken their bourbon:

"Effective immediately, we are reversing our decision to lower the ABV of Maker’s Mark, and resuming production at 45% alcohol by volume (90 proof). Just like we’ve made it since the very beginning."

A win for fans of Maker's Mark, whose spirits are safe at 90 proof, but be warned if you're a bourbon drinker: The supply problem is industry-wide.

Michael Veach is the author of "Kentucky Bourbon Whiskey: An American Heritage." He says in  recent years bourbon has been on a roll.

"The problem is that these last 10 years the industry has been growing faster than anyone thought it would," Veach says.

That is a problem for aged whiskey because the bourbon distilling now won't be out of the casks for another six years. Beam, Inc., which owns Maker's, says it hasn't made enough to keep up with demand. So Rob Samuels, the grandson of Maker's founder, announced a solution.

A vote in the European Parliament tomorrow could deal a fatal blow to one of the key measures for tackling climate change.

Europe’s emissions trading system aims to make it more costly for companies to emit harmful greenhouse gases, but the system is creaking at the seams. There are too many so-called carbon permits in circulation; the price of the permits has slumped and the cost of emitting carbon has now fallen to a derisory $5 a ton. That’s not much of a deterrent against pollution. 

Tomorrow the European Parliament votes on a potential remedy. The influential environment committee will decide  whether the European Commission should be given the power to halt the issuing of new permits and so drive their price up again.

Mark Nicholls, Editor of  Environmental Finance Magazine, says a great deal is riding on the vote:

“There’s lots of interest in emissions trading as a solution to climate change, but if the EU’s system is seen to be collapsing, it could damage the credibility of the approach,” says Nicholls.

If the European system does fall apart, the Chinese might well shelve their plans for emissions trading. And  it could undermine confidence in some of the systems that are already up and running in the United States.  

For two decades, international calls --- made through traditional phone companies --- had been growing at a clip of about 13 percent a year. Then things hit a speed bump.

"We saw about 9 percent growth in 2011 and estimate about five percent growth in 2012," says Stephan Beckert, an analyst at the research and consulting firm TeleGeography.

Meanwhile Skype's international calls grew about 45 percent. Beckert estimates that Skype handles about one-third of the international calls being made today.

Charles Golvin, an analyst at Forrester, says international calls were once a high-profit business for traditional phone companies but today, "it's a small part of their business, they don't feel the pinch."

Golvin says phone companies have moved onto data. Selling data plans for smartphones is a growth spot for companies like Verizon and AT&T.

And as more Voice-over-Internet calls, like the ones made on Skype, move from the desktop to the smartphone -- that means selling more data -- and the phone companies will make out just fine.

Not happy with your career? It might be time to look at who your friends are, according to the new book, Friendfluence: The Surprising Ways Friends Make Us Who We Are.

According to author Carlin Flora, it all starts with the friends we make as teenagers. "If you are from a lower socio-economic status and you befriend people in a higher socio-economic status, it sort of opens up vistas for you. You see other people's parents and their careers and it helps you envision yourself in those careers," she says.

As we get older, we may experience something akin to career peer pressure -- adapting to the high or low career standards of our friends.

"In a more tangible sense, if you are hanging around friends who are doing well, they are going to give you more opportunities to say, invest in venture or they are going to give you tips," says Flora.

To hear more about how friendships can affect your career choices, click on the audio player above.

To buy software, Apple users turn to the Apple app store, and Android users sign into Google Play.

But there are some new privacy questions for Android users. A software developer in Australia, the maker of an app which generates phrases poking fun at former Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating, raised the red flag. The developer discovered that when you buy something from Google Play, the app makers collect quite a bit of information about you.

"There are some valid concerns for people about how far and wide their information is being shared," says Chester Wisniewski at the computer security firm Sophos.

According to Wisniewski, users may think of digital storefronts or online payment tools as a way to limit personal data exposure. Buyers share their information centrally with an organization they trust, such as Google, Amazon or PayPal, rather than random software or app vendors. But it appears not all digital storefronts operate in the same way.

"Apple is literally an Apple storefront...It's almost like they've got a warehouse full of apps and you buy the thing directly from Apple as if you walked into an Apple store," says Wisniewski. "In the case of Google, what they are doing is they are more the payment broker -- I think that is the philosophical difference."

Since you are reading the news here, we're betting you're curious about the future of how we'll get information. A startup called Thirst has just launched an app for iPhone-iPads that is trying to re-invent the way we get news online.

"We're trying to change the way people consume information on the web, and so we've built a newspaper that is personalized for each person and allows people to discover, share, and discuss content easily," says Thirst CEO Anuj Verma.

To make your newspaper, you set up an account through Facebook or Twitter and to tell it what you like -- the always fascinating sport of curling or the politics of Madagascar. It pulls data from your social media friends, too.

There are already so-called "social reading" apps such as Flipboard. But Verma says his is different. Thirst is organized by topic, and its algorithm learns what you like. Verma says we should be going through a revolution and his company is a start.

"People are now reading on their phone but the technology underneath the hood hasn't really changed at all. People shouldn't be reading the same thing even if they go to the same platform. Having a personalized experience with what you are reading, is, I think, the future of consumption," says Verma.

And this final note, the longtime owner of the L.A. Lakers died today after battling cancer. Jerry Buss was the man who brought the razzle dazzle of Hollywood to the NBA.

He not only led the  Lakers to 10 league championships, but he was one of the most innovative businessmen in sports.  Court-side seating,  the Laker Girls,  marquee line-ups with stars like Shaq, Magic and Kobe.  

Forbes recently listed the Lakers' worth at a billion dollars. Buss paid about $67 million for the team back in 1979.

And this final note, the longtime owner of the L.A. Lakers died today after battling cancer. Jerry Buss was the man who brought the razzle dazzle of Hollywood to the NBA.

He not only led the  Lakers to 10 league championships, but he was one of the most innovative businessmen in sports.  Court-side seating,  the Laker Girls,  marquee line-ups with stars like Shaq, Magic and Kobe.  

Forbes recently listed the Lakers' worth at a billion dollars. Buss paid about $67 million for the team back in 1979.

The dreaded federal budget axe known as the sequester is scheduled to fall on March 1. Congress and the president can only avoid the across-the-board cuts by coming up with a deficit reduction deal. The sequester standoff is causing widespread uncertainty and stress -- and not just for the more than four million federal workers. The cuts would be felt across the country in places that might surprise you, like a science lab in Baltimore. 

Jennifer Elisseeff doesn’t work anywhere near the marble halls of Congress. She’s much more at home among tangles of test tubes and microscopes.  

She teaches biomedical engineering. She’s gave me a tour of her labs at the Johns Hopkins Medical Campus in Baltimore, where she showed me tissue samples under the microscope.

The tissue that Elisseeff peered at is supposed to resemble knee cartilage. Her research focuses on re-growing body parts. She starts with cells she grows in the lab -- they’re attached to a sort of scaffolding that can be inserted into the body. 

“Just like you put scaffolding -- construction workers put scaffolding as a building is being built and then they take the scaffolding down after it’s finished,” she explained.

Elisseeff’s scaffolding is designed to biodegrade when the body is finished with it.  This is all pretty whiz bang stuff and it doesn’t come cheap. About 75 percent of Elisseeff’s  funding comes from the National Institutes of Health and the Defense Department. And those grants could be chopped as part of the across-the-board sequester cuts. Elisseeff says the uncertainty of the sequester is wearing on the scientists in her lab.

"When there is that stress and the uncertainty, it does affect people’s energy and excitement for building something,” she says.

Elisseeff contemplated the cuts’ consequences: Reductions in her staff of 25, slower, scaled–down research. She’s frustrated and suffering from sequester stress. One way she copes? Reassuring herself that Congress and the president would never let this happen.

“Part of me sees it as a political game," she says. "And so I’m not fully certain how much of it will be executed. But I think it’s a terrible game to play that will affect people’s lives.”

And could drive top scientists to other countries that would gladly fund their research. Elisseeff says it’s tempting. In fact, she’s going to take a temporary break from Johns Hopkins for a short sabbatical in Switzerland. 

Housing is on the economic stat agenda this week.

We get new-home starts and building permits on Wednesday. That’s a good indicator of where homebuilding and new-home sales are heading. Then on Thursday, existing-home sales are reported. That’s a barometer of how much consumers are starting to jump back into the market to buy a first-home or trade up, or move to a place where the sun shines a little brighter and there are more jobs.

To see how things are going on the ground, this reporter dropped in to see a model home in the Harris Ranch subdivision of Boise, Idaho, about five miles from downtown.

Salesman Travis Hunter of Boise Hunter Homes was showing a $299,000 two-story home in a fresh-platted section of the development that was just weeds and lonely streetlights for years after the housing bust of 2006-07.

“Downstairs in this house is the formal dining room,” Hunter crowed. “Appliances in the kitchen are all stainless steel, they come with hickory cabinets. . . .”

Other selling points included a two-head walk-in shower, master-bedroom suite with a huge closet for the woman of the house, and hardwood floors.

Hunter says he’s selling one of these homes every week or so now, and more are being built on adjacent streets by his firm and several other local homebuilders. The construction site is swarming with subcontractors: Roofers, floor-installers, and debris-haulers -- few of whom were able to land steady construction work as little as one year ago.

Economist Yelena Shulyatyeva at BNP Paribas in New York says the moderate upturn in housing is adding as much as 0.5 percent to annual GDP at this stage in the economic recovery.

“The housing sector was a bright spot last year,” she says, “and we will see housing starts grow this year,” says Shulyatyeva.

Shulyatyeva and other economists predict housing starts dipped in January. But that’s largely payback for a surge in home-starts in December, which was unseasonably warm, causing homebuilders to jump the gun and break ground early. She predicts new-home starts and building permits will rebound to a steadier pace of growth by mid-spring.

And, she says, multi-family apartment construction will continue to be stronger than single-family homebuilding this year. That’s because, with credit standards still tight, potential first-time homebuyers are excluded from the market or find it too difficult to navigate. Shulyatyeva says some continue to hesitate to invest in real estate -- even as prices begin to rise and interest rates remain low -- because they want to have the flexibility to move cities for new jobs.

But there are still a lot of cheap foreclosed homes for sale -- and more dribbling on to the market every day. This constitutes a considerable ‘shadow-inventory’ of existing homes for sale. So why build so many new ones?

“While there are many buyers -- often investors -- at the low-end of the market looking at foreclosures,” explains Nicolas Retsinas at the Harvard Business School, “for people in the middle of that market, and those in the upper middle of the market, buying a foreclosed property is still a stigma.”

It can also be considerably more confusing than buying a new home, or an existing home with a clean paper trail. Dealing with banks, courts, and ‘as-is’ sale conditions can be daunting, especially for first-time home-buyers.

So far this month there have been several big buyouts -- US Airways merged with American Airlines, Warren Buffet paid $23 billion to purchase Heinz and Dell went private for $24 billion. Banks are lending again, the stock market is rising and companies have a lot of cash lying around. That means the return of the mega deal. But do these mergers and buyouts make companies stronger and more profitable?

John Steele Gordon is a business historian with deep ties to the financial world. Both his grandfathers held seats on the New York Stock Exchange. Business history, he says, "is littered with the corpses of really bad mergers."

It took him a minute to come up with an example of a successful merger.

"I think maybe the successful ones are the ones you don't hear about subsequently," Gordon says.

George Anders wrote Merchants of Debt -- a book about the private equity firm KKR, which was responsible for the RJR Nabisco merger. Anders figures that for every deal that's a success, "you've probably got two that aren't."

If adjusted for inflation, the Nabisco deal is the biggest buyout in history, which did not go so well. Anders says it should be a cautionary tale:

"Spend more money than anyone else, get more problems than anyone else."

Despite the one in three odds, most companies think they can pull off the big deal.

"It's totally a case of yes it's a problem for everyone else but my deal is special," Anders says.

There's always an optimist who is convinced they will beat the odds.

So far this month there have been several big buyouts -- US Airways merged with American Airlines, Warren Buffet paid $23 billion to purchase Heinz and Dell went private for $24 billion. Banks are lending again, the stock market is rising and companies have a lot of cash lying around. That means the return of the mega deal. But do these mergers and buyouts make companies stronger and more profitable?

John Steele Gordon is a business historian with deep ties to the financial world. Both his grandfathers held seats on the New York Stock Exchange. Business history, he says, "is littered with the corpses of really bad mergers."

It took him a minute to come up with an example of a successful merger.

"I think maybe the successful ones are the ones you don't hear about subsequently," Gordon says.

George Anders wrote Merchants of Debt -- a book about the private equity firm KKR, which was responsible for the RJR Nabisco merger. Anders figures that for every deal that's a success, "you've probably got two that aren't."

If adjusted for inflation, the Nabisco deal is the biggest buyout in history, which did not go so well. Anders says it should be a cautionary tale:

"Spend more money than anyone else, get more problems than anyone else."

Despite the one in three odds, most companies think they can pull off the big deal.

"It's totally a case of yes it's a problem for everyone else but my deal is special," Anders says.

There's always an optimist who is convinced they will beat the odds.

You're wondering...perhaps...how it is that we've got so many great videos of that meteorite over Russia?

Turns out there's so much corruption over there in the courts and in law enforcement in particular that the only protect yourself against false charges or claims of liability is to have proof. Hence everybody has a dash-cam in their cars.

And some of the videos they wind up with -- Russians not being the world's best drivers -- are not to be believed.

You're wondering...perhaps...how it is that we've got so many great videos of that meteorite over Russia?

Turns out there's so much corruption over there in the courts and in law enforcement in particular that the only protect yourself against false charges or claims of liability is to have proof. Hence everybody has a dash-cam in their cars.

And some of the videos they wind up with -- Russians not being the world's best drivers -- are not to be believed.

How do you sign your business emails? Some keep it simple: name and contact info. That's short and sweet enough. And then there are the more expressive types who include favorite URLs, famous quotes, and emoticons. How you conclude your email can affect how you're perceived. Hover over the image above to see what your sign-off says about you.

Not surprisingly, women are more likely to employ quotes or affectionate words in their sign-off. More and more women are signing their emails, even at the office, with hugs and kisses, or "XO." Writers Rachel Simmons and Jessica Bennett say this speaks volumes about how much women's roles in the workplace have changed, and they've written an article about it in this month's issue of The Atlantic.

Simmons and Bennett write: "In Diane Sawyer’s newsroom, staffers say, the anchor uses XO so frequently that its omission can spark panic."

Simmons sums up the kind of emotional status update underlying those X's and O's.

"I think it's very much a sign of things are OK between us. I think when you get habituated to XO -- and particularly if you're attentive to relationships, which I think a lot of women are -- when you notice suddenly there is no X, no O, wait a minute, is there a secret message embedded in that omission?"

Not a secret message of ardent love turned cold, exactly.

"Getting it doesn't actually mean that I want to kiss or hug somebody, it's just made its way into email communication more and more and more as we're unable to kind of signify tone in a lot of ways in our writing," says Bennett. "Now I work as an editor and it is amazing the number of strangers who will pitch me story ideas and sign with an XO in a professional setting."

Bennett says many people agonize over their signatures because they want to look casual and fun, but not appear too stiff or serious.

"We have so little time these days to type much of anything and so XO also just becomes this very quick abbreviation that says everything is OK or I still care about you, or whatever it is, that we don't have time to actually write down in words in our crazy kind of lives," says Simmons.

Simmons says that in the workplace, some women feel like they have to apologize for being direct or too authoritative. The XO cuts the edge off the abruptness that many women in the workplace have learned to curtail.

"As much as I in my life might be working with young women to educate them to be assertive, there's no question that assertiveness gets you punished often, and so women have had to adapt to that. XO is a very ingenious adaptation to that pressure not to be too bossy, too assertive. I've also noticed exclamation points being a cheerful top-off to asking someone to do something," says Simmons.

The XO phenomenon is also a nod to the importance of networking, she adds.

When thinking about your email sign-off, Simmons says the goal is to find something that indicates your feelings about the person, that speaks to the person without appearing disingenuous or overdoing it.

"Signatures are a kind of language we need to learn," she says.

What's your preferred sign-off? Tell us in the comments.

XOXO,
Marketplace Money

There was a lot of attention on the sky Friday.. 

While most of us were sleeping, an exploding meteor -- the size of an 18-wheeler -- pummeled parts of Russia with massive shock waves that injured thousands.

 It also blew out parts of a zinc plant there, causing zinc prices to spike almost one percent. There were worries thay the damaged plant would crimp supplies of the metal. 

 Not so, says Alex King, who directs the Ames National Laboratory.

 “This [facility] is a very small component of the world’s total supply,” he says.

 Zinc prices fell back to terra firma by day’s end, actually closing slightly down. 

A bit later in the day, a totally unrelated asteroid known as DA14 -- 150 feet in length -- skirted past the earth at a record-close 17,200 miles.

 DA14’s passage didn’t trigger any fluctuations in metal prices. But in the near future, similar flybys might.

 Take, for example, if DA14 had been 150 feet of platinum.

 “That’d be pretty valuable,” says Stephen Fleming, vice president of the Enterprise Innovation Institute at Georgia Tech. “Actually, it’d crash the world markets.”

 As DA14 passed, scientists hit the asteroid with radar to find out exactly what it’s made of. Most believe it’s probably just rock. 

Even so, Fleming says two companies -- Planetary Resources and Deep Space, Inc. -- are working on ways to mine precious metals from asteroids near and far.  

 “Now that you’ve got two people in it, now you’ve got a horse race.  Suddenly, it’s an industry,” he says.  

 Fleming believes early missions are on the horizon, although they’ll likely net only small amounts of precious metals at first. But there exists the potential for billions of dollars to be made.

 Proof that what’s now considered space debris could one day be space treasure.