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Investors are digesting a couple of big deals this morning. First, American Airlines and US Airways announced they are merging to form the world's largest airline. And second, Warren Buffett's company Berkshire Hathaway is going in on a deal to buy ketchup maker Heinz for $23 billion.

According to Susan Schmidt, head of U.S. equities at Mesirow Financial, markets should get ready to see a flurry of mergers and acquisitions.

"We had a slow down in 2012, but really this is a trend that we saw begin in 2010-2011," says Schmidt. "Companies have a lot of cash right now, they are in great capital positions by and large, they are looking for ways to strategically improve their businesses... A lot of times that means mergers."

To hear what a new crop of mergers might mean for the job market and small businesses, click on the audio player above.

Janell Burley Hofmann, one of our resident tech etiquette gurus, is a Cape Cod Mother of five with strong opinions about how to behave with technology. Today's topic: Group text messages.

In order to get a little tech separation, Hofmann has imposed a house rule that her son must turn his phone off at night. Sounds like a great idea, but what happens when the phone goes back on in the morning after hours of inactivity?  672 text notifications, that's what.

"A group of friends [had started] a group text, that carried on so you can see everyone's response, you are notified every single time somebody comments -- somebody makes an emoticon smiley face or says, 'what's up?'" says Hofmann. 

Luckily, Hofmann's family has an unlimited text plan, but Hofmann has a new rule: "Only say what you need to say and respect when someone says please leave me out of the conversation."

To hear Hofmann's advice for parents and kids when it comes to texting, click on the audio player above.

American Airlines and US Airways have officially announced their long-suspected merger. Together the companies will become the largest airline in the world, but the consolidation process won’t be without its challenges.

It’s similar to moving in with a new boyfriend or girlfriend -- suddenly there are two couches, two beds, two lives that need to be combined.

Challenge number one will be merging the front-end of these two companies, including airport hubs and flight routes. It includes everything from repainting the outside of planes and standardizing their cabins, to pilots and flight attendants learning new equipment.

“They’ll have to familiarize the American Airlines pilots with US Airways Airbus airplanes, and they will have to familiarize US Airways pilots with the various planes American flies," says Henry Harteveldt, a travel industry analyst with Hudson Crossing.

He says challenge number two will combining the back-end. In the past, airline mergers have had trouble combining reservation systems. And then there’s the issue of company culture.

"US Airways tends to have a thinner management structure and decisions tend to be made a little bit more quickly. American Airlines is more hierarchiacal and they will do analysis after analysis after analysis," says Harteveldt, who adds it could be three or four years until these two airlines are truly one.

The Marketplace Tech crew asked listeners leading up to this day of wine and roses to share least romantic or most romantic tweets sent or received. Here are a just a few, you get to judge the romance level.

Someone named NKK, who must have very seductive accounting skills got this one: "I love you so much... can you check line 17 on my state tax form. Call me."

DoloresM got this Valen-tweet: "Love you. Can you cut my toenails tonight?"

GovtCheez tweeted this sure-fire one: "Hey girl.  I donated to NPR in your name." 

Add your own in a comment below or send us a tweet @marketplacetech.

A slew of GDP numbers out of Europe and Asia today paint a gory picture of the global economy.

Most shocking has been the sharp downturn in the German economy. Europe’s powerhouse shrank by 0.6 percent in the last quarter of last year. Falling exports did most of the damage. The French economy contracted too, and Portugal fell by an alarming 1.8 percent, dragging down the rest of the eurozone in their wake.

The currency bloc as a whole is now mired in a deepening recession. But the pain is not confined to Europe. Japan also saw its output shrivel in the last quarter. Andrew Hilton of the CSFI think tank says this is a global trend:

“Recessions that take place after financial crises are much, much harder to reverse. There’s a lot of historical evidence for that, and we’re finding it out the hard way," says Hilton.

Meanwhile the U.S. is performing relatively well. Better than expected figures on auto sales, retail sales and on exports may well push America’s GDP for the last quarter into positive territory.

The White House wants to harden critical computer networks against cyber attacks. In his State of the Union address this week, President Obama warned that attackers could try to sabotage our power grid, our financial institutions, and our air traffic control systems.

"We cannot look back years from now and wonder why we did nothing in the face of real threats to our security and our economy," said Obama.

The president's executive order is focused on sharing information about cyber threats and will be a voluntary system.  

In particular, Obama would like to make it easier for the goverment to share information about general and specific security threats with the public, according to Harvard Law professor Jonathan Zittrain.

"It's a pretty modest proposal," says Zittrain, but "it does involve some tricky questions of when the government should be alerting the public to things because often if you are to make it known that you know about a certain vulnerability, it can tip off the bad guys."

To hear more about Obama's plans to enhance the country's cybersecurity, click on the audio player above.

President Obama is visiting Atlanta today to talk about his plans to pump more federal dollars into education. But many school districts around the country aren't waiting for the cash. Instead, they're borrowing money, often using long-term bonds that can put them into debt for far more than they initially borrowed.

The loans, known as capital appreciation bonds, are a creative form of financing that can delay repayments for up to 20 years. Many localities -- notably in California -- rely on these bonds to fund short term improvement projects, such as building renovations, instead of raising taxes.

Though an attractive strategy in the short-term, these loans saddle future generations with enormous debts, which in some instances can reach up to $1 billion for a $105 million loan.

To hear more about the long-term impact of capital appreciation bonds, click on the audio player above.

It's a wedding announcement on Valentine's Day, brought to you by American Airlines and US Airways. The boards of both carriers have approved a merger. The new airline will be the world's largest, it will be called American Airlines and based in Fort Worth, Texas.

Bob Crandall, former CEO of American Airlines, joins Marketplace Morning Report host Jeremy Hobson to discuss the path to the merger and what's next for the new airline.

On the benefits of the merger:

"The new company, the new American, is going to have a great many more destinations. It will have more hubs across which to interchange traffic. In all respects, it will be a fundamentally enhanced competitor."

On why a merger was necessary for American:

"American didn’t declare bankruptcy when all the other major carriers did, and as a consequence American had much higher costs than those carriers that had gone into bankruptcy, and as a consequence, American, in an effort to keep its costs competitive, stopped flying a lot of flights and stopped serving a lot of destinations."

On why American Airlines and US Airways fit well together:

"What you’ve got today is American, which is a much smaller carrier than it was at one time, and US Airways, which has not had the scale to compete adequately with the others. And so you are putting together two carriers that complement one another, and you’re creating a third major competitor which from the standpoint of consumers is a good idea."

To hear more about what the merger will mean for customers, click on the audio player above.

It's a wedding announcement on Valentine's Day, brought to you by American Airlines and US Airways. The boards of both carriers have approved a merger. The new airline will be the world's largest, it will be called American Airlines and based in Fort Worth, Texas.

Bob Crandall, former CEO of American Airlines, joins Marketplace Morning Report host Jeremy Hobson to discuss the path to the merger and what's next for the new airline.

On the benefits of the merger:

"The new company, the new American, is going to have a great many more destinations. It will have more hubs across which to interchange traffic. In all respects, it will be a fundamentally enhanced competitor."

On why a merger was necessary for American:

"American didn’t declare bankruptcy when all the other major carriers did, and as a consequence American had much higher costs than those carriers that had gone into bankruptcy, and as a consequence, American, in an effort to keep its costs competitive, stopped flying a lot of flights and stopped serving a lot of destinations."

On why American Airlines and US Airways fit well together:

"What you’ve got today is American, which is a much smaller carrier than it was at one time, and US Airways, which has not had the scale to compete adequately with the others. And so you are putting together two carriers that complement one another, and you’re creating a third major competitor which from the standpoint of consumers is a good idea."

To hear more about what the merger will mean for customers, click on the audio player above.

President Obama continues a campaign-style tour today following his State of the Union address that focused largely on plans to grow the economy. The president was in North Carolina yesterday, and today's he's in Atlanta -- one of the centers of the housing boom that suffered mightly from the crash.

Many who once prospered in the city are finding it tough to rebound.

"The middle class [are] my people, ya know?” says Rich Sullivan, a popular Atlanta radio DJ who was laid off when his station changed format last November.  

He says the last three months are the longest he's been out of work in his life.  

Sullivan is among Atlanta's 8.4 percent who also find themselves searching for work. The area's unemployment rate flirted with 11 percent a few years ago. It's slowly going down, although it remains higher than the national average.

Georgia State University economist Rajeev Dhawan says Atlanta’s crash was deep because the area's housing stock grew too fast during the boom:

“We were adding 80,000 housing units," says Dhawan. "It should’ve been only 20,000 housing units.”

When the housing bubble burst, it lead to massive foreclosures and deeply-depressed values. That picture’s starting to brighten, says Atlanta Board of Realtors president Nancy See.

“We have seen prices coming back, and sales increasing," she says, noting that foreclosures are at a six-year low. 

Companies are expanding, development is starting to pick back up, and Atlantans hope the worst is finally behind them.

It’s Valentine’s Day -- the day we all think about romance. And, at Marketplace, we think about romance and work. Or, romance at work. 

Conventional wisdom about workplace romance is that you should not date where you eat, but a lot of people are ignoring that, says Jennifer Grasz of Careerbuilder.

"Cupid has been busy in the workplace," she says. "Nearly 40 percent of workers say they’ve dated a co-worker and 30 percent (of those) said they actually went on to marry that person."

There’s good reason why more people are combing the cubicle farm for love, workplace consultant Susan Heathfield says.

"It’s almost like a little dating factory in the sense that a lot of the employees are close in age, they live close enough to date, they have something in common."

And social media has made that even easier, says John Challenger, CEO of global outplacement firm, Challenger, Gray & Christmas. He says friending a co-worker can give them an entrée into your social world.

"The line between work and personal life is blurring with technology," he notes, "and that’s creating more opportunity."

Not to mention more HR headaches. Challenger says more companies are putting policies in place to nip young love in the bud.  So before you cruise by that cutie’s cubicle, you should probably make sure it won’t get you fired.

The United States and Europe have agreed to talk about a transatlantic free trade deal. It will be the biggest pact of its kind ever negotiated, attempting to liberalize more than $600 billion worth of imports and exports a year. Talks will begin before June, but it could take at least two years before any deal is done. Success is not guaranteed. There are certain cultural hurdles to overcome.

“This is going to be like two elephants trying to mate,” said one European analyst today. “More of a collision than a delicate intertwining.”

Simon Tilford, chief economist with the Centre for European Reform, identifies agriculture as the problem area. He claims the two sides will struggle to open their markets fully to each other’s farm produce.

“When they get down to the nitty-gritty, it’s possible that the negotiations will founder on some of the cultural differences between the EU and the U.S. over things such as genetically modified food,” says Tilford.

GM-food is banned in most of Europe. And there’s stiff resistance to American poultry that's been washed in chlorine and to hormone-treated beef.

On the other hand, U.S. farmers may not be entirely sympathetic to the social aims behind Europe’s vast system of farm subsidies.

“The Common Agricultural Policy was designed by the French, for the French and primarily for the French peasant farmer to keep an idyll of a way of life going -- and it’s suitably subsidized,” argues Justin Urquart Stewart of Seven Investment.

Urquart Stewart describes the long-running culture clash between U.S. and European farming as “bourbon meets Burgundy: they’ll never mix!"

Some find it heartening that an attempt is underway to sink some of these cultural differences. But Gillian Tett of the Financial Times is not reassured.

“It indicates just how desperate the American and European governments are to find something, anything that can reignite growth at a time when many of the other policy options are, frankly, running out of steam,” says Tett.

But even she admits that this is the world’s biggest trading relationship, and therefore worth nurturing.

This final note today, in which we bring back our hit series from last fall, the Fiscal Cliff Time Machine.

Except now it's the State of The Union Time Machine. You remember the rules. See if you can tell which piece of tape was this year, and which one was last year.

Topic number one: climate change. Here you go. Was choice 1 from this year, or was it choice 2?

I know! Hard, right? Wait 'til you hear this next one on housing.

Can't tell, can you? I wonder if you can plagiarize your own speech?

Give us your best guess by answering in the comments below or tweeting us at @MarketplaceAPM.

"The Americans" is a new show on the FX Network. It's set in 1981 and revolves around two Russian sleeper agents sent to America years before. They have an arranged marriage, a couple of kids and live near the nation's capital. The characters are sinister, but not as sinister or as evil as how we usually remember Russian spies to be.

When show creator Joe Weisberg approached FX with the idea for the show, his pitch for this show was that the Russians were actually the good guys. He says, "they didn't even flinch." And that's why the show is here today.

Executive producer Joel Fields says one reason the show works is because you care about the characters. "You do care about them, and you care about their marriage," he says. "The show is really about the people and the human relationships in this intense moment in history."

In addition to the life of the characters, the show touches on the competing economic visions at the height of their competition.
"These two people came here, they moved in to a subdivision in the suburbs of Falls Church, Va., that to people that grew up the way that they did in the Soviet Union -- which was essentially a very poor country -- it would be heaven," says Weisberg. "It's something almost unthinkable to live like this, which to an average American would be a fairly ordinary way to live."

He adds, "how the economics of it affect people on a personal level, I think is a big part of the story we're telling."

"The Americans" airs on Wednesdays on FX.

In last night's State of the Union speech, President Barack Obama laid out his plans to keep the state of the union strong. He also said, that "our work must begin by making some basic decisions about our budget, decisions that will have a huge impact on the strength of our recovery."

New York Times Washington Bureau Chief David Leonhardt has a new e-book out about that very thing, it’s called "Here’s the Deal" -- and it’s about the decisions and choices, some of them tough, that we have to make with respect to our debt and national deficit.

He says in part that our actions make it so that "we are pro deficit. We say we're not, we say the deficit is a terrible thing but then you come back to us and you ask us, are we willing to pay higher taxes? No. Are we willing to accept fewer Medicare and Social Security benefits? No. Do we want to make big cuts to the military? Mostly no. And that's really the deficit."

He says the answer to reducing the deficit and getting what we want is economic growth. And the federal government has to jump in and do things that the private sector won't do. It should be responsible for what amounts to basic research and innovation: "The Internet, radar, penicillin, the jet engine, radio all these things started as a government program. And they started because this really early stage stuff isn't profitable and you need someone other than the private sector to do it."

Leonhardt believes that despite the political divide in this country, we have the capability to get things right. He believes that America comes into the 21st century economy with more advantages than any other country.

Quick, when I say Intel, what comes to mind? The stuff inside your PC, right? The chips that make it run. Well, Intel has decided to get into something a little more visible: Internet TV. And you won’t be the only one watching it, the TV will be watching you.

Intel says it’s making a TV set top box that’ll deliver Internet TV and will have a built-in camera that’ll recognize you. It’s part of a growing trend on the part of tech companies, which are trying to make gadgets that can get to know you, said Michele Reitz, an analyst at Gartner.

“It really is just about personalization, having the ability to recognize you and then give you options that’ll recognize you,” Reitz said. “So for instance, if it's your 6-year-old kid,” the TV might say, ‘Hey Junior, here’s some cartoons you can watch.'"

But if Reitz walked into the room, it’ll show her something more age-appropriate.

Privacy, of course, is going to be an issue. But the Internet TV space is getting crowded. And tech giants -- from Google to Apple and Samsung -- need to find a way to differentiate themselves.

Computer chips have been Intel’s bread and butter, says Vijay Rakesh, an analyst at Sterne Agee. But that market is slowing down and Intel needs to pivot toward smartphones, tablets and other mobile devices.

“In your TV, there is mobile connectivity. In your cars, there’s mobile connectivity,” said Rakesh. “It’s always an opportunity for somebody like Intel to step in.”

Brian Steinberg, an analyst with Tech Savvy, says the living room is the one frontier that no tech company’s captured. And if Intel can capture the TV, it’ll get closer to capturing all the devices -- your phone, your tablet -- that’ll talk to it, he said.  

“There’s really one single innovation that’s really revolutionalized the way that the iPhone did the smartphone,” said Steinberg.

President Obama was barely into his post-State of the Union road trip today when House Speaker John Boehner poured cold water all over one of the key economic items in the speech. The president proposed raising the minimum wage to $9 an hour. Boehner said it would hurt small business and kill jobs.

Economists disagree about whether raising the minimum wage helps by putting more money in the hands of low-wage workers or hurts by encouraging employers to eliminate jobs. A raise from to $9 an hour, from $7.25 an hour, would add about $3,600 to a minimum wage earner's annual income -- and a business's payroll.

Many minimum-wage workers are employed in the restaurant business, although their wages are often supplemented by tips. At the Marmalade Café in El Segundo, Calif., employees like 32-year-old food runner Alejandro Serbin earn California's $8 minimum wage, plus about $35 a day in shared tips.

Serbin, an immigrant from Mexico City, says a dollar raise would help. "It's so much different for me. Because I have a family I have to support. The rent is high. I have to pay bills, insurance."

Serbin and his wife, who works as a cook, have a 3-year-old and pay about $1,000 a month in rent, not unusual for Los Angeles. He's hunting for a second job and says most of the minimum-wage workers he knows have two or even three jobs.

Selwyn Yosslowitz is one of the Marmalade Café's founders. The restaurant employs about 600 people in nine locations in southern California. Yosslowitz says a dollar increase in the federal minimum wage would likely force him to raise prices or cut labor costs.

"It wouldn't be layoffs," Yosslowitz says. "But maybe you make the hours more efficient. There's lots of people who come in at 9 o'clock right now. I would make sure they come in at 9:30 and cut off half an hour across the board to be able to afford the increase."

Serbin and a co-worker from Peru say their hours are sometimes cut when business is really slow and management sends them home early.

If Congress raises the minimum wage, that ultimately may help boost all the wages at a place like the Marmalade Café, including the better-paid cooks in the kitchen.

The Chronicle of Philanthropy's annual list of the 50 most generous donors from 2012 is younger than ever.  The list, released this week, shows there are more donors -- individuals or couples -- under 40 among its ranks. Of the five biggest donors on the list, three are under 40. It's the first time that has happened. And taken together, these under-40 donors account for more than 15 percent of the total amount the Philanthropy's 50 donors contributed in 2012. 

Some bad news? The median amount given away by the Philantropy's 50 donors for 2012 was $49.6 million, compared to a median of $61 million in 2011, and a pre-recession high of $74.7 million. (The chronicle first began tracking this data in 2000.)

Which donors on the list are people keeping an eye on? Along with youth, a lot of the donors are coming from Silicon Valley and high-tech. Marketplace compiled a list of five of the younger, more surprising philanthropists:

1. Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan (No. 2 overall)

The Facebook co-founder and his wife, a pediatrician, gave 18 million shares of their Facebook stock to the Silicon Valley Community Foundation to fund education programs and health awareness. This isn’t the first time the social network guru and his wife have supported education. In 2010, they gave $100 million to support public schools in New Jersey.

2. John and Laura Arnold (No. 3 overall)

The hedge fund founder and his wife (a former lawyer and businesswoman) established the Laura and John Arnold Foundation in 2008 to help nonprofits working to improve pension systems and public education. So far the couple has put over $900 million into this fund. The couple has also supported charter schools in New Orleans and obesity research. In 2012, the Laura and John Arnold Foundation founded the Giving Library, an online tool to educate philanthropists on different charities.

3. Sergey Brin and Anne Wojcicki (No. 5 overall)

The Google co-founder and his wife spent 2012 donating money to the Micheal J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research. They also supported the Brian Wojcicki Foundation, which donated to Ashoka, the Human Rights Foundation and the Tipping Point Community, an organization geared toward eliminating poverty in Northern California.

4. Joshua Rechnitz (No. 20 overall)

Amount donated in 2012: $57 million. The heir to the Heilbrunn fortune (he's the grandson of Robert H. Heilbrunn, who invested in undervalued companies beginning during the Depression) spent 2012 donating his time and money to a nonprofit he created to fund an indoor sports complex. He also put close to $7 million into the Powerhouse Environmental Arts Foundation, a nonprofit he created to turn an old fire station into a studio for artists.

5. Jon Stryker (No. 39 overall)

The heir to the Stryker Corporation (a firm that develops and produces medical supplies) fortune donated over $30 million in 2012. All of the money went towards to the Arcus Foundation, a nonprofit he founded in 2000 to fight discrimination against the LGBT community. Last year the foundation awarded 116 grants of more than $17 million.

The Chronicle of Philanthropy's annual list of the 50 most generous donors from 2012 is younger than ever.  The list, released this week, shows there are more donors -- individuals or couples -- under 40 among its ranks. Of the five biggest donors on the list, three are under 40. It's the first time that has happened. And taken together, these under-40 donors account for more than 15 percent of the total amount the Philanthropy's 50 donors contributed in 2012. 

Some bad news? The median amount given away by the Philantropy's 50 donors for 2012 was $49.6 million, compared to a median of $61 million in 2011, and a pre-recession high of $74.7 million. (The chronicle first began tracking this data in 2000.)

Which donors on the list are people keeping an eye on? Along with youth, a lot of the donors are coming from Silicon Valley and high-tech. Marketplace compiled a list of five of the younger, more surprising philanthropists:

1. Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan (No. 2 overall)

The Facebook co-founder and his wife, a pediatrician, gave 18 million shares of their Facebook stock to the Silicon Valley Community Foundation to fund education programs and health awareness. This isn’t the first time the social network guru and his wife have supported education. In 2010, they gave $100 million to support public schools in New Jersey.

2. John and Laura Arnold (No. 3 overall)

The hedge fund founder and his wife (a former lawyer and businesswoman) established the Laura and John Arnold Foundation in 2008 to help nonprofits working to improve pension systems and public education. So far the couple has put over $900 million into this fund. The couple has also supported charter schools in New Orleans and obesity research. In 2012, the Laura and John Arnold Foundation founded the Giving Library, an online tool to educate philanthropists on different charities.

3. Sergey Brin and Anne Wojcicki (No. 5 overall)

The Google co-founder and his wife spent 2012 donating money to the Micheal J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research. They also supported the Brian Wojcicki Foundation, which donated to Ashoka, the Human Rights Foundation and the Tipping Point Community, an organization geared toward eliminating poverty in Northern California.

4. Joshua Rechnitz (No. 20 overall)

Amount donated in 2012: $57 million. The heir to the Heilbrunn fortune (he's the grandson of Robert H. Heilbrunn, who invested in undervalued companies beginning during the Depression) spent 2012 donating his time and money to a nonprofit he created to fund an indoor sports complex. He also put close to $7 million into the Powerhouse Environmental Arts Foundation, a nonprofit he created to turn an old fire station into a studio for artists.

5. Jon Stryker (No. 39 overall)

The heir to the Stryker Corporation (a firm that develops and produces medical supplies) fortune donated over $30 million in 2012. All of the money went towards to the Arcus Foundation, a nonprofit he founded in 2000 to fight discrimination against the LGBT community. Last year the foundation awarded 116 grants of more than $17 million.

In his State of the Union address last night, President Obama talked about the economic importance of education and infrastructure. That's all well and good. But how do we fund these investments when discretionary spending is likely to be cut to the bone in order to reduce the budget deficit?

The answer: We need to treat public investments differently from discretionary spending.

No rational family would borrow to pay for a vacation but not borrow to send a kid to college. And no rational business would borrow to pay current salaries but not take out a loan to buy crucial new machinery.

Yet that's, in effect, what our government does because it doesn't distinguish between current spending and public investment needed to ensure future economic growth.

A rational federal budget would allow additional borrowing for public investments whenever the expected return on those investments is higher than the cost of the borrowing. And it wouldn't borrow a penny if the return on the investment is less than the borrowing costs.

Granted, such public returns can be hard to measure. But well-developed tools exist for doing so.

Studies show for every dollar we invest in infrastructure, for example, we can expect a return of nearly $2 in economic gains.  Of course we need to make sure these investments are smart. No bridges to nowhere. Still, no one can argue that much of our infrastructure is badly outdated.

Investing in early childhood education gives us an even bigger bang -- a return on investment of between 10 and 16 percent. A better-education workforce means greater productivity. Putting more money into basic R&D yields a similar big return.

Capital markets are now global. Money sloshes across borders in search of the highest return anywhere.

The only way to ensure private investors will continue to invest in America, and support the high living standards we want, is for Americans to be highly productive. This requires public investments.

Which is why we need a public investment budget -- separate from a current spending budget -- that can't fall victim to partisan bickering and will allow us to keep borrowing when the return on public investment -- and the public good -- justifies it.