Pessimistic about the economy? You're not alone.
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On the program today, the vibes are weird, the housing market's emotional, and nostalgia is making a comeback.

From American Public Media, this is Marketplace. In Portland, Oregon, I'm Rima Reyes, in for Kai Risdahl. It is Monday, 26th of May. Good to have you with us on this Memorial Day. This week, we'll be getting a trove of economic data, including a couple of important indicators. On Thursday, we're getting the first revision of GDP for the first quarter of this year. That's a more refined reading of the strength of our economy.

Then on Friday, we'll get the Fed's favorite measure of inflation, also known as the Personal Consumption Expenditures Price Index, or PPI. That data will cover April. So what might these numbers tell us? Stephanie Hughes has that one.

This week's revision of GDP could well confirm what the first estimate showed, that the U.S. economy shrank. The second estimate, they've got more data. It's apt to show slightly slower consumer spending. If that's the only thing that changes, you probably have a bigger contraction in GDP growth. Wells Fargo economist Tim Quinlan says this first quarter, a lot of the apparent slowdown was due to companies importing goods like crazy to get ahead of tariffs.

But what the revised number for January, February and March doesn't tell us is how tariffs themselves hit the economy, because a lot of them hadn't happened yet. We had an earthquake in April. We had a more significant change to trade policy than we've experienced, certainly in the last 80 years, arguably in the last century. Also out this week, the PCE price index for April. Last year, this would have been an event. Anything that was a gauge of inflation was overpriced.

massively important that financial markets absolutely hinged on the slightest development. If PCE sneezed, the financial markets got a cold. But now, Quinlan says, markets might not even say gazillion.

Gesundheit. Because the data, it is so last month. It's still before the impact of tariffs are really kind of having their full pass-through effect on inflation. So I'm not trying to be a bummer and be like, none of this data matters. But I kind of feel like it's a little bit inconsequential. These backwards-looking data points do give us a better sense of where the economy is because they give us a clearer picture of where it's been.

They're useful because they give us a standard sort of reliable, comprehensive snapshot of the economy. Middlebury College economics professor Christina Sargent says both GDP and PCE are like the grades she gives her students after the semester is over.

They don't change the performance of a student over the course of the semester, but they do give a clear summary of how the economy or the student performed. And just like an employer might look at a grade to decide whether to give a student a job, policymakers at the Federal Reserve look at these economic reports to decide if they should raise or lower interest rates.

And Sargent says they look at all of the grades before they make a final decision. The Fed's not going to rely on any one data point anyway. The trend is really important. As most college students could tell you, some grades are part of a pattern and some, good or bad, are just one-time blips. I'm Stephanie Hughes for Marketplace.

U.S. markets were closed for the holiday, but with President Trump delaying his promise of 50% tariffs on the EU, the global markets certainly are moving. Details when we do the numbers. There's another important economic indicator we'll be getting this week. A vibe check, if you will, for this economy.

It's the Conference Board's U.S. Consumer Confidence Survey. The last time it came out, back in April, consumers' short-term outlook was the most pessimistic it's been since 2011. Which is weird, considering the strength of the indicators Stephanie Hughes just talked about. So for now, we're not in a recession. But the vibes?

The vibes are off. Here's Marketplace's Elizabeth Troval. We all learned the word vibe session back in 2022 in the relatively strong Biden era economy. Consumers were cranky because they were still adjusting to all those post-pandemic price increases, says Stanford's Neil Mahoney. It was just taking time for people to sort of digest the impacts of inflation.

In other words, the bad vibes had to do with trouble behind us. Mahoney says this time consumers are pessimistic because they're worried about trouble ahead. I think the fear of the future is corroborated by some other data. Like Walmart, other retailers have announced that they will increase prices. Consumers are also confused about the future economy, says Camelia Kunin with the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

There is this unbelievably high level of uncertainty with respect to what economic policies will actually be put in place in the near future to the medium term. And so it is very hard to be confident in the future of the U.S. economy when you have no idea about how international trade is going to happen. Another reason why consumer sentiment is meh?

The high cost of borrowing, says Harvard lecturer Jed Kramer. Interest rates, how much they have to pay to borrow money on their credit cards, how much they would have to pay to get a mortgage. None of those are included in measures of inflation. And because during the Biden administration, we saw mortgage rates shoot up a lot as we tried to deal with the inflation, that really got consumers on edge.

And mortgage rates are still relatively high today, but consumers may still find reasons to be cheerful. Consumer sentiment has been falling for most of 2025, but Kayla Bruhn, who looks at daily consumer data for Morning Consult, says it's changing course. As we've seen some kind of softening in trade stances and the deals announced with the UK and China, the trade war sort of de-escalating, we have started to see that

cause some improvement in consumer sentiment. So Bruin says she does expect rosier consumer confidence data later this week. I'm Elizabeth Troval for Marketplace. A so-called starter home, the emphasis here being on starter,

now costs more than a million dollars in roughly 230 cities across the U.S. That's according to a recent report out from Zillow. California, unsurprisingly, tops the list. But half of all U.S. states have at least one city where even an entry-level home crosses the million-dollar mark. And remember, mortgage rates are now topping 7%. And you know, I should say, we are not talking about luxury homes. Starter homes are the bottom third of the market in a given area.

I host a marketplace podcast called This is Uncomfortable. And recently I talked with a couple, Chantal and Travis Lipsack, about their first time home buying journey in Seattle. Both work high paying tech jobs and their budget was around $900,000. And they told me that their search tested them not just financially, but emotionally too.

I was just exhausted because I'm not kidding when I said it was over two years of looking at homes. You went to so many open houses. We had three different iterations of agents. I would probably not be off by saying we saw at least like 150 homes. You were on Zillow all the time. At the time, Chantal and Travis were living in a tiny studio apartment.

And they kept returning to the same argument. We can wait another year, live in this apartment, save up some money, and then we can go and look at houses that are slightly more expensive but will be a better fit for us.

I thought that argument was invalid because the housing market continuously grows. I was like, we're just going to get priced out every single year. So Travis was like, well, if we wait five years, we can save X thousands of dollars. And I was like, and then in five years, all these homes have appreciated 4X that amount. So I don't know what you think you're saving. You just really wanted a house and you wanted to get one soon. It was like, this is what I want before we have kids so we can kind of check the box off and make sure we're safe again.

And we have our own space. Eventually, months into their search, Travis told Chantal, if we're going to keep looking, then it makes sense to raise our budget so we get better options. They started touring million-dollar homes. And that's when they came across a beautiful 1900s craftsman with a view of a lake. I just didn't think we would have a morning coffee looking at Lake Washington. To me, it was like, this is such a huge selling point. I think the total house size is like 1,400 square feet. But it felt big.

And there's like a cool little attic space. And when we both saw it, we were like, oh, this would be perfect for kids because it's like carpeted. Chantal wanted to make an offer right away. Travis wasn't so sure. Why were you hesitant? I think we just needed to look at more houses in the price range because we had basically increased our price range and started looking around. But we just hadn't seen a lot. And how did you respond, Chantal?

I was very adamant on the fact that I was like, I make a lot of my life changes around maximizing my savings to buy this house. And now I'm ready to buy this house. And you're pulling me down by telling me I need to wait even longer when I now feel ready and I feel like I have the resources to do it. And I just didn't think that was fair. Some context here. Chantal, on top of her high-paying tech job, also waited tables, bringing in an extra $40,000 a year to go toward a house. She also had stock options from a previous job.

So she was prepared to put down her savings, half a million dollars towards this down payment. One night, feeling frustrated, she issued an ultimatum. He could agree to buy the house with her, or she'd do it on her own. I was probably teary-eyed, saying, like, I looked at my bank account today. Like, I did the numbers. Like, I can put down this down payment without you. Like, you can just be pretty much my roommate in this house and pay me my fair share of the mortgage. How did you feel when she said that?

I was definitely hurt. I definitely told her I felt like she was trying to blackmail me. Yes, no, it was definitely manipulative. Oh, I can look back and be like, that was toxic.

Well, and I imagine it also was bleeding into a lot of your interactions. Like, I feel like sometimes when there's like a thing that is taking up a lot of the oxygen in the relationship, it's hard for it to not bleed into everything. Did you feel like that? Or were you able to compartmentalize? Oh, I cannot compartmentalize. I'm not capable of that. It definitely bled over like...

We would kind of be upset at each other. It was a thing that was always hanging over us because I needed to defend my points more. I needed to be like, the stuff I'm saying isn't crazy. It would definitely make it more polarizing because I bet Chantal at the same time would feel the same way. So then how did you all get to the point where you were putting in an offer? Travis, how did that happen? How did that happen?

How did I convince you? How much crying? Lots of talking from Chantal, lots of convincing. At some point I'm like, Chantal, I don't hate the house. If you're so into this, I'm going to be there to support you.

They put in an offer, and it was accepted. In the end, Travis contributed $50,000 to the down payment, and Chantal put down half a million. I have no savings to my name, but Travis could pay this mortgage on his own if I did quit my job today. How did it feel to sign the paperwork when you bought the house?

Oh, wow. A mix of relief because I could delete Zillow and I got some of my time back in the evenings. So it felt real when we got the keys. And it was pretty exciting. We're going to be in the water this whole summer. Get ready. That was Travis and Chantal Lipsack in Seattle, Washington. You can hear their story on This Is Uncomfortable, the podcast that I host for Marketplace. Find it wherever you get your podcasts.

Coming up. Hotels.com is owned by Expedia and Expedia also owns Travelocity and Orbitz and cheap tickets. And you thought you had choices. But first, let's do the numbers.

Markets here in the U.S. were closed today in observance of Memorial Day. Today's also a holiday in the U.K. It has the unforgettable name Spring Bank Holiday. Down on the actual continent of Europe, though, markets were very much open after waking up to news of President Trump deciding that next week wasn't the best time for the U.S. to impose a 50% tax on European exports to the U.S. He decided to postpone the tariffs until July so trade negotiators get a chance to, you know, negotiate.

The delay made for a great day in Frankfurt, where the DAX was up 1.7%, and in Paris, where the CAC 40 rose 1.2%. The continent-wide StocksEurope 600 pocketed 1%, which brings it right back to where it was before Trump announced the new EU tariff plan on Friday. No bond trading here today either. The yield on the 10-year T-note is 4.51%. You're listening to Marketplace.

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Home to top pharma and medical device production, a deep talent pool, and world-class bioscience infrastructure. Puerto Rico, your cost-effective reshoring solution. Visit investpr.org slash reshore to get started. This is Marketplace. I'm Rima Kareis. Maybe you remember it, the ground round. It had burgers, steak platters, bottomless popcorn, maybe a few peanut shells on the floor.

If you grew up in the Northeast or Midwest, there's a chance it was part of your childhood. You know, the kind of place someone brings up today and you think, man, I haven't thought about that in years. The chain peaked in the 80s, then mostly vanished after going bankrupt in the early 2000s. But now, as WBUR's Solon Kelleher explains, it might be making a comeback.

Before the Olive Garden had all the salad and breadsticks you could want, before Chili's sang of their baby back, baby back, baby back, there was the Ground Round. And who could forget the Ground Round? Baby Back Roots!

And T-Bone Steaks. The old Howard Johnsons opened the restaurant chain starting in Shrewsbury, Massachusetts back in 1969. The idea was to convert their underperforming restaurants for travelers into affordable, family-friendly neighborhood joints. Good news today at the Ground Rounds. You get a whole lot more at the Ground Rounds. You get a whole lot more at the Ground Rounds.

What's the good news? The ground round grew to over 200 locations in the 1980s with zany draws like soft serve that came in mini baseball cap cups and pay what you weigh deals. Right now, kids pay what they weigh, just a penny a pound. Only 38 cents. The ground round changed ownership several times, but by the turn of the millennium, it became kind of old fashioned. The chain filed for bankruptcy in 2004.

Now, 20 years later, a Shrewsbury couple named Joseph and Nachi Shea are taking a shot at reopening the Ground Round. They bought the branding rights in 2024. We're just a husband and wife team. We don't have investors or deep pockets. We're bootstrapping this. When they announced the plans to reopen on social media, some who fondly remember the Ground Round were excited. Nachi Shea says some customers even gifted them Ground Round memorabilia from years past.

People have brought in different menus. They've brought in even employee manuals from the old one. We had a lady bring in her old suspenders from when she used to work at the original ground round here in town. Some of those mementos now hang on the walls at the new restaurant. The couple hopes that nostalgia is enough to bring guests through the door, at least for a first visit. As a kid being there, I think I remember the soda and the burgers.

Steve Clark is president of the Massachusetts Restaurant Association. Going there and having salty popcorn. He says that the reopening comes at a time when consumers want to spend their money not just on food, but on a good time. The cost of everything is up, inflation, household budgets, etc. The consumer wants the experience they're getting from a full-service dining restaurant, but they don't want the price that you have to get from a fine dining place.

That's one reason the ground round may be better poised for success in the 2020s than, say, in the 90s. Fast casual restaurants have been on the rise, more so than fast food chains these days. It's 20 minutes after doors open on a Thursday, and the dining room is filling up. Food runners carry trays of burgers and fish and chips out of the kitchen. Phone rings.

Thank you for calling the Ground Round. How can I help you? Nachi Shea fields a call where someone wants to rent out the restaurant for a party of 30 to 40 people. Soon, there's a 30-minute wait for tables, and the bar is already full. That's where I meet Kristen Richards and Heather Dudko, who are sipping on cocktails, a lemon drop and a blueberry Bella, and eating popcorn. Awesome. And the smell, that kind of takes you back? The popcorn smell? Yeah.

The Shays aren't sure yet if they'll expand beyond this location. But if selling nostalgia works here, they say it's a possibility. In Shrewsbury, I'm Solon Kelleher for Marketplace. We are nearing the end of Memorial Day weekend. Of course, one of the biggest travel times of the year. AAA predicted that roughly 45 million people are going to hit the road this long weekend, which would be a new record.

And it's safe to say a good chunk of folks use websites like Expedia or Booking.com to arrange their travel, which leads me to a listener question in our every now and again series, I've always wondered. Melissa Hoffman in Westbrook, Maine wrote, how do sites like Expedia and Booking.com work? Do they purchase or reserve the rooms ahead of time? And are they profitable? Marketplace's Sean McHenry takes it from there.

Conceptually, online travel agents, or OTAs for short, are to analog travel agents what Amazon is to department stores. You can get the same stuff, but the former uses technology to really scale up. So typically, I mean, a great place to start is at Google and just type in, you know, Las Vegas hotels. That's Chris Anderson, professor at the Nolan School of Hotel Administration at Cornell.

So I just typed in Las Vegas hotels. And tell me about what we're seeing on this search page right now. So we see all these sponsored listings.

Right. So you see here Expedia, Hotels.com, Booking.com. Those are online travel agents. And since Expedia was at the top of the list, that's what I clicked on. Once the page loaded, one of the first things I saw was a big ad for a hotel, the Fountain Blue Vegas, splashed over the side of the screen. So those are typical like display ads. Right. So they, you know, paid for that exposure to generate this traffic.

When Expedia reported earnings for 2024, ad revenue was the fastest-growing segment for the year. So to partially answer Melissa's question, that's one way they earn money. I decided to click on another hotel, which brought me to something more in my price range.

I haven't seen a link to the hotel website. And tell me about that. If I'm looking around. You're never going to find that here. If that link was here, then Expedia would run the risk of losing you to transact somewhere else. I used to work for OTA. Yeah.

15 years ago, okay? Now, before I start teaching. The OTA is acting like intermediaries.

and earning a commission for each booking that is made by the customer through the platform. So back to Melissa's question on how OTAs work. They have contracts with hotels to list rooms in real time. Then, when customers book one of those rooms, the OTAs earn a commission. Usually, they make something between 10% and 25%. Depends on the contract between the OTA and the hotel.

service provider. Remember how Expedia and Hotels.com came up at the top of my Google search? There's something else to know about this whole industry. A consumer may not know that Hotels.com is owned by Expedia, and Expedia also owns Travelocity and Orbitz and Sheet Tickets. Booking owns Priceline. So they're not like such a variety out there as you may think. Lorraine Cilio is the founder of Focusrite Research. Yeah, they have a big presence online. And yes, they probably represent...

About half of the online market against the other half is people going direct to AA.com, Hilton.com, Eric.com, right? So they don't own the market. The outlooks for OTAs could be a little turbulent. Expedia reported in their earnings for the first quarter that bookings had slowed due to how people were feeling about the economy right now. You know, the word uncertainty we're always talking about. But despite that, Cilio thinks OTAs have staying power.

Traditionally, when we thought that OTAs would be in the cellar maybe because of something like 9-11 or the whole financial crisis of 2009-2011,

Those were actually good years following those crises. They were good years for OTAs. She noted that some OTAs make it especially easy to cancel trips, a perk when uncertainty is high. Though, word of warning, canceling doesn't mean you get to avoid fees, so be sure to read the fine print. In Los Angeles, I'm Sean McHenry for Marketplace.

This series does not work without you. So let us know what you've always wondered. There's a place you can do it at our website, marketplace.org slash wondered. This final note on the way out today filed under, but are movie theaters really dying?

People packed the theaters this weekend to watch Lilo & Stitch and Tom Cruise's Mission Impossible movie. The Lilo & Stitch remake is on track to make $183 million domestically, making this Memorial Day a box office record. Compare that to last year, when the total holiday haul was just $132 million, one of the worst showings in decades. All to say, the industry is crossing its fingers that this weekend is a sign of a packed summer at the movies.

Our daily production team includes Andy Corbin, Nicholas Guillaume, Maria Hollenhorst, Eru Ikebunobi, Sarah Leeson, Sean McHenry, and Sophia Terenzio. And I'm Rima Grace. We'll be back tomorrow. This is APM.

This Old House has been America's most trusted source for all things DIY and home improvement for decades. And now we're on the radio and on demand. I think you're breaking into this wall regardless. I was hoping you wouldn't say that. I need to go and get some whiskey, I think. I would get the whiskey for sure. Subscribe to This Old House Radio Hour from LAist Studios, wherever you get your podcasts.