Marketplace - American Public Media

The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee is taking a stab at the government inefficiency beast. The committee is set to hold a hearing on 380 ways to make Washington more efficient.

The number 380 comes from congressional reports outlining 380 areas of government waste and duplication. Yet despite the catchy title, governtment watchers aren't getting too excited.

“Oh, here we go again," says Paul Light, who teaches public service at New York University. “This is like watching Casa Blanca for the hundredth time.”

Light says there have been many efficiency efforts, but they usually die away because they require painful change. That hasn’t stopped just about every president from trying. Light says a Clinton administration initiative to reinvent government did have some success. It was spear headed by Vice President Al Gore, who smashed an expensive government-approved ash tray on the David Letterman show to promote it.

Gore’s initiative sprang from a reinventing government book co-authored by Ted Gaebler. It’s now printed in 22 languages. “Just last year into Mongolian," says Gaebler.  "The year before that in Farsi. So the Iranians are using it.”

Gaebler says he’s always getting international requests for cost-cutting advice. But he hasn’t gotten any calls from the U.S. government. 

Got ideas for the government that worked for you? Tell us in the comments.

Seven years ago, Congress passed the Military Lending Act to try to prevent predatory lending to service members. 

The Department of Defense had identified a serious problem for morale and force-readiness: the financial troubles soldiers were getting themselves into.

Specifically, they were taking out short-term high-interest cash loans at loan stores that cluster at the entrances to military bases: payday lenders, car-title lenders, pawn shops, installment lenders. All of these non-bank lenders were targeting service members and their families for loans that can prove so costly and complicated, they’re often hard to pay back, leading to an ever-deepening and desperate cycle of debt. 

The Military Lending Act set a national interest rate cap of 36 percent APR (annual percentage rate) for loans to military members and their families (excluding mortgages and auto finance loans).

The Act covered three specific types of loans: payday loans (short-term, due in one lump sum after a borrower’s payroll check clears); car-title loans; and tax refund anticipation loans. Further, the loan-terms covered were restricted: 91 days or less for a payday loan, 181 days or less for a car-title loan. 

The military said the narrow definitions of ‘covered credit’ under the MLA were necessary to ensure that access to other forms of consumer credit that soldiers might need wouldn’t be curtailed. 

There is widespread agreement that the MLA has indeed drastically reduced the availability of payday and car-title loans to military members and their families. Interviews conducted outside two military bases in Georgia — Fort Stewart in Hinesville, and Fort Benning in Columbus — confirmed that most title-loan stores do not serve service members or advertise to them with signs or billboards. 

However, there are still plenty of other lenders and high-priced loan products marketed to service members, as a joint investigation by Marketplace and ProPublica found.

The deepening spiral of debt

The MLA did little to regulate open-ended credit, or military installment loans longer than 91 days. Those are still available to service members, and in some cases aggressively sold to them. Some payday and title lenders have found ways to exploit gaps in the MLA, offering longer-term high-interest installment loans, sometimes backed by a car-title, that are not illegal but can send service members into a deepening spiral of debt. 

That’s what happened to Mark and Lisa Gerber, of Hinesville, Ga. Mark is an MP on the Fort Stewart Army base. He’s 36, she’s 30, they have three young children. They’ve owned a house, cars, motorcycles. Now they live in a rundown ranch house off-base. And they’ve been through bankruptcy. 

The problems started when Mark got a base transfer to Georgia several years ago. They tried to rent the house they owned in Missouri, but their renter—also military—also got transferred, and soon they were having trouble keeping up the mortgage. The house was underwater so they couldn’t sell. They took out an installment loan from World Finance, and at least one other cash loan, this one from an internet payday lender that proved fraudulent. 

“And then they called us and said they were foreclosing on the house,” says Lisa, of their troubles.

Mark chimes in: “I deployed shortly after that, so fighting it in court and going through that whole battle wasn’t really an option. And I didn’t want to leave that burden on my wife, so we just filed bankruptcy. And it just kept going down and down, and ultimately we lost our house, I lost my car, pretty much everything.” 

Gerber’s chain of command knows about the bankruptcy, and his officers have been supportive so far. But he worries about his security clearance — up for renewal soon — and his future career in the military.

They still struggle from time to time to pay the bills. In fact, they’ve continued to take out military installment loans on occasion to pay for Christmas gifts or small extras they need. They plan to pay it all back, on time, without rolling the loans over, they say.

Soldiers: A financially vulnerable population

Members of that military chain of command are certainly cognizant that they have a financially vulnerable population under their management. It’s almost part of the job description nowadays. 

“Soldiers are a sure source of income,” explains Army Captain Brandon Archuleta. “When soldiers are back from Iraq or Afghanistan, they are itching to spend money.”

He says after deployments, soldiers and their families, flush with tax-free earnings and bonus-combat pay, would buy new trucks, big-screen TVs, lawn furniture, toys for the kids, trips and entertainment. That’s to welcome the troops home after stressful, repeated deployments, and finally relax back into civilian life. 

Then, the debt-dunning would start: letters from lenders, calls to home, calls to the base looking for commanding officers, says Archuleta. 

“On a good day I would be notified by the soldier that a payday lender was looking for them because they are in default,” says Archuleta. “On a bad day, it would be almost like an ambush. A phone call looking for such-and-such soldier. They were relentless.” 

Holly Petraeus is assistant director of the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in Washington, handling service member affairs. She’s been visiting military bases all over the country, trying to assess through interviews with service members, financial counselors on bases, lawyers and officers, what in the MLA is working, and what needs improvement. 

“I think it’s been a vexing problem for the military,” says Petraeus of the continued peddling of some predatory loans to military members and their families. 

She points out that the Department of Defense has tried hard to offer alternatives, providing low-cost emergency loans to low-income, cash-strapped military families. But there’s some paperwork involved, and permission from someone up the chain of command may be required, and follow-up financial counseling is strongly encouraged. 

“People don’t want to come in and say they’ve messed up their finances,” she says. “And yet, with products where they’re just repeatedly paying large fees to borrow the same small amounts every month—you’re going to end up in a terrible financial mess, and with the real potential of losing your security clearance.”  

And, possibly, she says, having to leave the military altogether. Which can have dire consequences for the individual service member, his or her family, and the readiness of the force. 

Read other stories from the Marketplace and Propublica joint investigation "Beyond payday loans: Installment lending and the cycle of debt." Explore the whole series here.

Seven years ago, Congress passed the Military Lending Act to try to prevent predatory lending to service members. 

The Department of Defense had identified a serious problem for morale and force-readiness: the financial troubles soldiers were getting themselves into.

Specifically, they were taking out short-term high-interest cash loans at loan stores that cluster at the entrances to military bases: payday lenders, car-title lenders, pawn shops, installment lenders. All of these non-bank lenders were targeting service members and their families for loans that can prove so costly and complicated, they’re often hard to pay back, leading to an ever-deepening and desperate cycle of debt. 

The Military Lending Act set a national interest rate cap of 36 percent APR (annual percentage rate) for loans to military members and their families (excluding mortgages and auto finance loans).

The Act covered three specific types of loans: payday loans (short-term, due in one lump sum after a borrower’s payroll check clears); car-title loans; and tax refund anticipation loans. Further, the loan-terms covered were restricted: 91 days or less for a payday loan, 181 days or less for a car-title loan. 

The military said the narrow definitions of ‘covered credit’ under the MLA were necessary to ensure that access to other forms of consumer credit that soldiers might need wouldn’t be curtailed. 

There is widespread agreement that the MLA has indeed drastically reduced the availability of payday and car-title loans to military members and their families. Interviews conducted outside two military bases in Georgia — Fort Stewart in Hinesville, and Fort Benning in Columbus — confirmed that most title-loan stores do not serve service members or advertise to them with signs or billboards. 

However, there are still plenty of other lenders and high-priced loan products marketed to service members, as a joint investigation by Marketplace and ProPublica found.

The deepening spiral of debt

The MLA did little to regulate open-ended credit, or military installment loans longer than 91 days. Those are still available to service members, and in some cases aggressively sold to them. Some payday and title lenders have found ways to exploit gaps in the MLA, offering longer-term high-interest installment loans, sometimes backed by a car-title, that are not illegal but can send service members into a deepening spiral of debt. 

That’s what happened to Mark and Lisa Gerber, of Hinesville, Ga. Mark is an MP on the Fort Stewart Army base. He’s 36, she’s 30, they have three young children. They’ve owned a house, cars, motorcycles. Now they live in a rundown ranch house off-base. And they’ve been through bankruptcy. 

The problems started when Mark got a base transfer to Georgia several years ago. They tried to rent the house they owned in Missouri, but their renter—also military—also got transferred, and soon they were having trouble keeping up the mortgage. The house was underwater so they couldn’t sell. They took out an installment loan from World Finance, and at least one other cash loan, this one from an internet payday lender that proved fraudulent. 

“And then they called us and said they were foreclosing on the house,” says Lisa, of their troubles.

Mark chimes in: “I deployed shortly after that, so fighting it in court and going through that whole battle wasn’t really an option. And I didn’t want to leave that burden on my wife, so we just filed bankruptcy. And it just kept going down and down, and ultimately we lost our house, I lost my car, pretty much everything.” 

Gerber’s chain of command knows about the bankruptcy, and his officers have been supportive so far. But he worries about his security clearance — up for renewal soon — and his future career in the military.

They still struggle from time to time to pay the bills. In fact, they’ve continued to take out military installment loans on occasion to pay for Christmas gifts or small extras they need. They plan to pay it all back, on time, without rolling the loans over, they say.

Soldiers: A financially vulnerable population

Members of that military chain of command are certainly cognizant that they have a financially vulnerable population under their management. It’s almost part of the job description nowadays. 

“Soldiers are a sure source of income,” explains Army Captain Brandon Archuleta. “When soldiers are back from Iraq or Afghanistan, they are itching to spend money.”

He says after deployments, soldiers and their families, flush with tax-free earnings and bonus-combat pay, would buy new trucks, big-screen TVs, lawn furniture, toys for the kids, trips and entertainment. That’s to welcome the troops home after stressful, repeated deployments, and finally relax back into civilian life. 

Then, the debt-dunning would start: letters from lenders, calls to home, calls to the base looking for commanding officers, says Archuleta. 

“On a good day I would be notified by the soldier that a payday lender was looking for them because they are in default,” says Archuleta. “On a bad day, it would be almost like an ambush. A phone call looking for such-and-such soldier. They were relentless.” 

Holly Petraeus is assistant director of the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in Washington, handling service member affairs. She’s been visiting military bases all over the country, trying to assess through interviews with service members, financial counselors on bases, lawyers and officers, what in the MLA is working, and what needs improvement. 

“I think it’s been a vexing problem for the military,” says Petraeus of the continued peddling of some predatory loans to military members and their families. 

She points out that the Department of Defense has tried hard to offer alternatives, providing low-cost emergency loans to low-income, cash-strapped military families. But there’s some paperwork involved, and permission from someone up the chain of command may be required, and follow-up financial counseling is strongly encouraged. 

“People don’t want to come in and say they’ve messed up their finances,” she says. “And yet, with products where they’re just repeatedly paying large fees to borrow the same small amounts every month—you’re going to end up in a terrible financial mess, and with the real potential of losing your security clearance.”  

And, possibly, she says, having to leave the military altogether. Which can have dire consequences for the individual service member, his or her family, and the readiness of the force. 

Read other stories from the Marketplace and Propublica joint investigation "Beyond payday loans: Installment lending and the cycle of debt." Explore the whole series here.

Clothing was a bright spot in the latest government figures on retail sales, so how are department stores doing? A slew of them report earnings this week.

Daniel Butler, vice president of retail operations for the National Retail Federation, says department stores are outperforming the broader retail industry “in the face of the sequester, and despite the fact that we had colder spring weather and an early Easter.”

But there’s one factor department store chains can control: the internet. Maxim Group retail analyst Rick Snyder says the most successful department stores are figuring out how to make online sales help -- not hurt -- their offline business.

Take Macy’s, which has started filling website orders directly from stores rather than warehouses. The arrangement can save time by cutting out one shipment step and save money by allowing Macy’s to manage its inventory more flexibly.

“That gives them the opportunity to sell something at full price that may have been marked down in their store,” Snyder says.

Instead of putting a dress on a sales rack, a Macy’s in, say, Cincinnati can send that dress to a customer in St. Louis, who may have paid full price online.

“Whether it’s shipped from Cincinnati to St. Louis, as long as it’s there the next day the consumer doesn’t care,” says Snyder. “That’s seamless.”

By the end of the year, more than half of Macy’s U.S. stores will also be online distribution centers.

Captain Brandon Archuleta, 29, is West Point graduate. He commanded a company of 100 soldiers in the late 2000s. He was stationed at Fort Stewart, in Hinesville, Ga, home to the Army's Third Infantry Division. He deployed with his troops twice, first to Iraq, and later to Afghanistan.

You'd think that the only challenge he faced was war, and he did find that the first and foremost challenge of command was leading men and women in the theatre of war. But he says he also faced an unexpected challenge in dealing with his soldiers' financial troubles.

Young, inexperienced, perhaps with a new family to support, soldiers sometimes needed quick cash just to cover the bills. Home from deployment, they might splurge on new trucks, big-screen TVs, trips – luxuries they could ill-afford.

When the bills came due, they often went to high-interest cash lenders on the internet, or in brick-and-mortar loan stores that cluster outside military bases, in spite of significant restrictions on predatory lending under the Military Lending Act.

Then, they'd get behind. The debt-collectors' letters and phone calls would start. Eventually, the problem would get kicked up the chain of command—to Archuleta, or a military lawyer.

He'd have to intervene, help set up a payment plan, make sure the soldier got financial counseling, all while trying to protect the soldier's security clearance and future military career.

"I think in the last twelve years we've seen military officers as war fighters, we've seen them as diplomats," Archuleta told me. "But what we don't see is the officer as social worker, financial advisor and personal caregiver."

Read other stories from the Marketplace and Propublica joint investigation "Beyond payday loans: Installment lending and the cycle of debt." Explore the whole series here.

“For two years, I lived in a 1994 Ford Econoline van,” says Ken Ilgunas. “It was big, it was burgundy, it was $1,500 and it was creepy.”

Ilgunas made the van his home while he got his graduate degree at Duke. It was a part of a bigger obsession in his life: paying off his student debt.

“For the previous two-and-a-half years, I had been paying off my enormous $32,000 student debt. I was taking a lot of odd jobs."

Many of the jobs were in Alaska. While there, he figured out a couple of things about himself. First, he never wanted to be in debt again. Second, he wanted to go back to school to pursue a graduate degree in liberal studies.

“But how am I going to go to graduate school and not go into debt? And that’s where the van came in.”

Ilgunas says the van wasn’t that different from living in a dorm.

“It’s tighter, it’s a little more cramped," he explains. "It’s probably a little smellier.”

He survived using strict economy, cooking in a makeshift kitchen, eating meals of beans and cereal and showering at the gym.

The van was parked in a Duke parking lot. From the start of his experiment, Ilugnas wasn't sure how the school would react if they found out about his living arrangements. He had a permit, but nothing in the guidelines specified whether his experiment was actually allowed. He says he “was constantly worried and paranoid."

Keeping the secret from parking lot security meant keeping it from fellow students as well.

“You don’t realize it but where we live comes up in conversation pretty quickly," he says. "I would have to tell a preposterous lie or duck out of the conversation because I just did not want anyone to know what I was doing."

But in the end, Ilgunas got his degree.

"There were a lot of sacrifices, but it was better than going into debt," he says, even if that meant spending lonely nights in his van.

Would he do it again? Yes, he says, to stay out of debt. But would he do it forever? “I recognized a lot of the shortcomings of living in the van."

He’s since sold the van and graduated from Duke -- with money in the bank.

“Like Thoreau, I just had other lives to live.”

In what will come as a delight to Trekkies across the galaxy, Bing has paired up with the Star Trek franchise to offer translation into Klingon.

The translator lets you translate into Klingon and Klingon (Kronos) because dialects are important here. It might be your second time waster today, after that Google Atari thing.

"Star Trek Into Darkness" is slated for release this week and is the second film in the franchise directed by "Lost" darling J.J. Abrams. A quick look at Rotten Tomatoes tells us you may be speaking more Klingon in the near future: reviews are at 87 percent fresh.  

Genius marketing trick? We'll find out this weekend.

Bonus points if you can guess (without using the translator) which post of ours from today is translated below:

'e', umqu' ghot nuq qaS HeghDI' nIH pHone. mejDI' 'ej chu' wa', je' Daghajchugh vaj qI' nab chu' charrIer je Daghaj.

chell pHone nIHbe'choH chu' DIlmeH manutlhachturerS chu' chontrachtS charrIerS 'ej gheneratIngh, qatlh vay' 'oH mev ta' chaH?

kevin mahaffey je pe'vIl mobIle Hung 'uch lootlhout. pa' wa' InchentIve jatlh ghaH: chuStomerS pol.

"ghojwI'pu'lI' manutlhachturerS je 'orwI' Deeply SIQpu'bogh nuv, Dub vIHtaHbogh" QIj mahaffey. "mo' chenmoH nuvpu' QamtaH chaH HappIer protlhItable."

(The answer is here.)

Update: This story has been updated with a comment from Myriad Genetics.

Angelina Jolie wrote an Op-Ed in today's New York Times about her decision to have a double mastectomy. The actress didn't have breast cancer, but tests showed she had almost a 90 percent chance of developing it. The key was finding a mutation in a gene known as BRCA-1, and Jolie appealed for the test to be made more accessible to women around the world.

At the moment, if you want to get tested for a mutation on your BRCA-1 or BRCA-2 genes, you will have to turn to Myriad Genetics. That's the company that discovered the link between those mutations and an elevated risk cancer -- and it patented the BRCA-1 and BRCA-2 genes.

The price tag on a BRCA-1 and BRCA -2 test? More than $4,000.

"Because Myriad has a monopoly on the genetic testing, they determine the cost of that test," says Sandra Park, senior staff attorney at the ACLU's Women's Rights Project. Park argued before the Supreme Court last month that Myriad shouldn’t be able to patent a gene and control research.

One of the main arguments against gene patents is that they hamper scientific progress.

"The charge has been that patents reduce the willingness of researchers to explore in the same genetic area, because they have to pay fees," says Art Caplan, director of medical ethics at NYU Langone Medical Center.

Biotech companies say they need patents to help fund research. Myriad spent $500 million developing its BRCA tests. The company declined to comment to Marketplace before deadline. Myriad subsequently issued a statement saying its diagnostic tests can reduce illness and potentially lower health-care costs by preventing cancer treatments. It added that more than one million women have been tested, and thanks to health insurance, their average cost was about $100.

The BRCA gene tests account for more than 80 percent of Myriad's sales. That revenue would be at risk if the Supreme Court rules against the company next month.

"Let me tell you, it would be problematic for Myriad," says Les Funtleyder, a health-care strategist for investment firm Poliwogg.

Still, Funtleyder says, most biotech companies don’t rely on patenting a certain gene, so the Supreme Court decision is unlikely to have a huge impact on the industry.

"It might put a damper on things," he says, "but I don't think it's going to be a deal-breaker for genetic analysis."

For now, though, Myriad is riding high. Thanks in part to Angelina Jolie’s New York Times Op-Ed, shares of Myriad rose three percent today.

Angelina Jolie wrote an Op-Ed in today's New York Times about her decision to have a double mastectomy. The actress didn't have breast cancer, but tests showed she had almost a 90 percent chance of developing it. The key was finding a mutation in a gene known as BRCA-1, and Jolie appealed for the test to be made more accessible to women around the world.

At the moment, if you want to get tested for a mutation on your BRCA-1 or BRCA-2 genes, you will have to turn to Myriad Genetics. That's the company that discovered the link between those mutations and an elevated risk cancer -- and it patented the BRCA-1 and BRCA-2 genes.

The price tag on a BRCA-1 and BRCA -2 test? More than $4,000.

"Because Myriad has a monopoly on the genetic testing, they determine the cost of that test," says Sandra Park, senior staff attorney at the ACLU's Women's Rights Project. Park argued before the Supreme Court last month that Myriad shouldn’t be able to patent a gene and control research.

One of the main arguments against gene patents is that they hamper scientific progress.

"The charge has been that patents reduce the willingness of researchers to explore in the same genetic area, because they have to pay fees," says Art Caplan, director of medical ethics at NYU Langone Medical Center.

Myriad declined to comment, but biotech companies have said they need the patents to help fund research. Myriad spent $500 million developing its BRCA tests, which now account for more than 80 percent of the company's sales. That revenue would be at risk if the Supreme Court rules against the company next month.

"Let me tell you, it would be problematic for Myriad," says Les Funtleyder, a health-care strategist for investment firm Poliwogg.

Still, Funtleyder says, most biotech companies don’t rely on patenting a certain gene, so the Supreme Court decision is unlikely to have a huge impact on the industry.

"It might put a damper on things," he says, "but I don't think it's going to be a deal-breaker for genetic analysis."

For now, though, Myriad is riding high. Thanks in part to Angelina Jolie’s New York Times Op-Ed, shares of Myriad rose 3 percent today.

"America’s Funniest Home Videos" has been on the air for 23 years. That’s more than 200,000 video clips of family bloopers, pet pratfalls, and babies doing just about everything. The show’s producers think advertisers will be willing to pay for those funny moments, so the producers are going to license them out.

Among the categories: Macarena videos, dogs acting humans, kids jumping from the roof into the pool.

“A lot of the most successful ads are those ads that have animals and have children, ” said Dave Reibstein, a professor of marketing at Wharton.

And who doesn’t love animals or children?

“Advertisers are interested in attention and people having a warm and fuzzy feeling about whatever they’ve just seen,” Reibstein said.
 
Then there’s humor, which Reibstein says is a very popular approach for advertisers. Funny gets our attention. Prashant Malaviya, a marketing professor at Georgetown’s McDonough School of business, says advertisers rely on lots of strategies to sell things, like fear or sex, but family appeals to anyone who’s ever been a parent, a child, or any part of a family.

Subaru got the message. Its new Forester ad features a little girl playing the accordion in the back seat of a car, while her beagle sings along.

Sheriece Matias, corporate communications manager for Subaru of America, says if you think creating an ad like this would be a simple production you’ve thought wrong.

“You’d think it would be easy to recreate but some of them are just these magical moments,” Matias says.
 
Matias says it’s not just about being cute, or funny but also authentic. Consumers, she says,  relate to real people and events even if it means ending face down, with your dog, in a plate of spaghetti.

The International Energy Agency says the oil fields of North Dakota are turning the global oil market on its head. Canada's oil sands, too, to be fair. The agency's latest report on world oil supplies says North America's oil boom is turning out to be even bigger than predicted. Within five years, the U.S. and Canada will be meeting most of the world's new oil demand.

Whoa. Wasn't it just a few years ago we were fretting about "peak oil?'

"It's very much a welcome change in the oil market," says Amrita Sen, chief oil analyst at Energy Aspects in London. "Simply because prices are already very high and without this sort of supply, arguably prices could be even higher."

Analyst David Pursell in Houston says if the IEA's predictions hold true (and they don't always) it's good news for the average American driver.

"Oil prices probably don't go up a whole lot more from here," says Pursell. "They probably don't go down, either, because it takes a high oil price to achieve this kind of growth. But what it says is you don't have to worry about $6, $7, $8 gasoline, and that should be a big relief."

The U.S. and Canada are displacing OPEC as the driver of global oil supply growth. Analysts say that means we're closer to energy independence than we've been in decades.

But that won't protect us from price swings, since oil's a commodity. It's sold on the world market to the highest bidder. Despite the U.S. oil boom, Saudi Arabia is still the world's largest producer. But the IEA expects the U.S. will overtake Russia for the number two spot in a couple years.

Among a number of scandals rocking Washington, D.C., this week, the tax code as political plaything. IRS officials admit to having given extra scrutiny to conservative groups seeking tax exempt status under section 501(c)(4) of the Internal Revenue Code.

Attorney General Eric Holder (who's got problems of his own to deal with, but that's a whole different scandal) announced today that the FBI will begin a criminal probe into the IRS actions. 

Social welfare groups that qualify under the 501(c)(4) exemption don't pay taxes, and don't have to disclose donor names. They are allowed to pursue some political activity.

Loyola Law School professor Ellen Aprill says the goal in reviewing the applications is to figure out how political a group really is. Are they doing some issue ads but mostly education? Or are they focused solely individual candidates and races? 

Attempting to answer those questions left regulators in deeply fraught political territory. President Barack Obama criticized, prominent conservatives condemned and the IRS itself apologized for the specific targeting of Tea Party groups. 

"Congress has put the whole category of political organization into the tax code," Aprill says. "In a way, trying to have the tax code carry the burden of campaign finance reform," Aprill said. 

Regulators have the option of rejecting applications that are too political. While the Treasury Department has not yet issued its report on all of what took place at the IRS, some conservative groups were not rejected, but given were lengthy, personal questionnaires to be completed "upon penality of perjury."

Of 2,500 applications last year, eight were rejected. But Aprill says those figures may not include groups that drop out after a long process.

"Organizations will get enough feedback from the IRS, to say, 'Oh, we're not going to get exemption,' and they withdraw their application," she said. "Knowing the number of denials doesn't give us the whole picture." 

Meanwhile, the political furor could have additional consequences for 501(c)(4) applicants, and the public as a whole.

When asked whether the IRS might shy away from tough calls now, making the special designation more useful for overtly political groups, Aprill acknowledged, "That's a real possibility." 

Richard Crowe, we're happy to tell you, has a job.

Marketplace has been periodically checking in with the long-term unemployed steelworker. After a year out of work he started back up, Monday. A resident of Wintersville, Ohio, he's now commuting to a plant an hour away that produces coke, a fuel used in steel manufacturing.

Because of retirements, the company is hiring. He, too, hopes to retire from there. In the meantime, he's happy to be back at work, earning a paycheck, and saving money for his son's wedding.

'America's Funniest Home Videos' has been on the air for 23 years and has collected over 200,000 of our most appealing home videos.

Now, the show's producers are opening their video archive to advertisers and marketers, offering clips for anywhere from $100 to $100,000.

If 'America's Funniest Home Videos' and YouTube have taught us anything over the years, it's that people will watch adorable babies and cute pets do just about anything over and over again.

It looks like advertisers are beginning to catch on, using those same videos to sell ... just about anything.

1. Google Chrome: For Your Little Man

Google recently re-purposed a well-known YouTube video for an ad they made for Chrome.

2. Hostess: Reach for the Gold - Paul Vault

Before Twinkie creator Hostess went out of business, it launched one final ad campaign during the London Olympics.

Using home videos of spectacular athlete bloopers, they encourage the less athletically-inclined to reach for a golden Twinkie, instead of Olympic gold.

3. Subaru: Backseat - Canine Caruso

A Subaru-sponsored YouTube channel uses a popular home video angle to advertise its new Forester -- the view from the back seat.

4. Ubisoft: Just Dance Kids

This Ubisoft ad for Just Dance Kids combines loud music, bright colors, and cute home videos of kids dancing. What's not to like?

5. Ragu: Charlie Bit Me, Behind the Finger!

What does 'Charlie Bit My Finger!' have to do with pasta sauce? This ad proves it doesn't really matter.

Do you have a favorite home video/advertisement? Share it in the comments.

Marketplace and ProPublica worked together in recent months on an investigative series about what consumer advocates call 'small-dollar, high-cost' loans -- in this case, installment loans offered by a billion-dollar publicly traded company, World Acceptance Corp. of Greenville, S.C.. The company's 1,000-plus loan stores are branded as World Finance across the South and Midwest.

Installment loans can carry high interest and fees, like payday loans. But instead of coming due all at once in a few weeks -- whenever your next paycheck hits your bank account, installment loans get paid down over time -- several months to a few years. Like payday loans, they are often renewed before they're paid off.

Defenders of installment loans say they can help borrowers build a good payment and credit history. Renewing can be a way for the borrower to access additional cash when they need it.

So, we have a few questions we'd like our listeners and followers to weigh in on:

• Are short-term cash loans with high interest and fees really so bad, if people need them to get through an emergency or to get caught up between paychecks?
• Is it better for a low-income borrower with poor credit to get a high-cost installment loan—paid back slowly over time—or a payday- or car-title loan due all at once?
• Is a loan with APR above 36 percent 'predatory'? (Note: the Military Lending Act sets an interest-rate cap of 36 percent for short-term loans to service members, and Sen. Dick Durbin has introduced a bill to impose a 36-percent rate-cap on all civilian credit products.)
• Should government, or banks and credit unions, do more to make low- to moderate-interest loans available to low-income and credit-challenged consumers?
• In the post-recession environment, banks can borrow cheaply from the Fed, and most middle-class consumers can borrow cheaply from banks — for mortgages or credit card purchases. Why can't more disadvantaged consumers access this cheap credit?

Join us here May 16, at 11 a.m. PT

Join us for a live discussion this Thursday, May 16, at 11 a.m. PT, with Marketplace's Mitchell Hartman and ProPublica's Paul Kiel. Just come back to this page, where you'll find the chat window.

We encourage you to leave questions in advance in the comments below. You can also tweet in questions with the hashtag #BeyondPayDay.

Read other stories from the Marketplace and Propublica joint investigation "Beyond payday loans: Installment lending and the cycle of debt." Explore the whole series here.

Once upon a time the fossil fuel capital of the world was the U.S. -- first in Pennsylvania, then in Texas. Then, the center of gravity shifted to the Middle East and beyond. But a new report out today from the International Energy Agency predicts that over the next five years, North America will once again dominate new supplies of oil and natural gas.

Think about what happens when your phone is stolen. You have to go out and buy a new one, then you have to sign up for a new plan with your carrier. With cell phone theft generating new sales for manufacturers, and new contracts for carriers, why would they do anything to stop it?

The housing market is starting to come back in the Southwest, and homebuilders are beginning to build again. But there's a problem.  During the recession, the country lost more than a million construction jobs. And many of those workers have moved on. 

A shift in global fuel production is afoot, according to a new report from the International Energy Agency. It predicts that over the next five years, North America will dominate new supplies of oil and natural gas. The trend is in part due to a surge in new technology like hydraulic fracturing, or fracking.

Juli Niemann, analyst at Smith, Moore & Company in St. Louis, explains what this means for the US economy and the green energy sector.

Once upon a time the fossil fuel capital of the world was the U.S. -- first in Pennsylvania, then in Texas. Then, the center of gravity shifted to the Middle East and beyond. But a new report out today from the International Energy Agency predicts that over the next five years, North America will once again dominate new supplies of oil and natural gas. 

It’s a sweeping shift that few would have expected even just five years ago, when experts saw an era of American “peak oil” looming on the horizon. But, since then, new technologies have evolved faster than anticipated, says Pavel Molchanov, an oil analyst with the investment company Raymond James. 

The big breakthrough, Molchanov says, has to do with new ways of getting oil out of once hard-to-drill spots -- underground layers of shale and other hard rock formations.  You've probably heard of one popular technique known as hydraulic fracturing, nicknamed fracking.  “All of this has unlocked new resources,” says Molchanov.

“The history books are going to go back and talk about this era,” says Phil Flynn, an oil analyst at the Price Futures Group in Chicago.  He says the oil boom we are experiencing now has already begun rippling through the U.S economy.  And that trend should continue, Flynn says, as new U.S. oil supplies lower gas prices, boost consumer spending, and make it cheaper to start up factories here. 

The increasing importance of U.S. oil supplies could also affect global politics, Flynn says. “Instead of the U.S. being beholden to foreign oil producers or OPEC,” he says, referring to the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, made of countries based mostly in the Middle East and Africa, “now OPEC has to work with us.” 

The North American oil boom raises other questions. In many local communities where the oil and gas boom is taking place, some residents are concerned about the potential environmental impact of these new technologies, on things like ground water contamination and earthquakes. 

The European Space Agency has just given the green light to a project called Biomass, a satellite resembling an upside-down trampoline, that will be able to scan forests from outer space. Scientists hope the project can tell us a lot about the world's forests, the carbon they hold, and their impact on Earth's climate.

Jon Amos, science correspondent for the BBC, tells Marketplace Tech host Ben Johnson more about the project.