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CEO Describes What It's Like When Investors Bet Against You. (I)

our planet money team has been looking into the world of short selling. shorting a stock is the opposite of buying a stock. it’s a bet that the stock will drop in value. in previous stories, we heard from some well-known short-sellers who were betting against companies. today, we hear what it’s like on the other side. someone talked with the ceo of one of the most shorted companies in america. 

last month, we did a story listing  the most top ten shorted companies. we reached out to a few on the list to see if their ceo wanna talk. we either did not hear back or got a polite no thank you. but after the story aired, we heard from a listener who worked at one of the companies. would your ceo be willing to talk, asked? the answer was yes. 

to say name and the title. 

i’m sean, the ceo and cofounder of wefare.

wefare sells something online that a lot of people are used to buying in stores. furnitures - you may have seen the ads. 

what is the heaviest thing you sell?

we have some beds, for example, that can weigh 1,500 pounds, like big, ornate, carved woods, you know, huge pillars. and so the delivery on some of these items is tricky to say the least.

the company went public just last year. lots of people bought the stock, presumably thinking great idea - a huge online furniture store. but there were also skeptics. people apparently so convinced this dream would fail that they bet against the company. they shorted the stocks. if wefare fails, the short-sellers make money.

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With So Much Oil Flowing, U.S. May Be Reaching Storage Limits (II)

we are running of the storage capacity in the us. we are seeing the indication of the us reaching tank tops. it’s hard to know where the price goes down, but it does go down.

the price of oil's already fallen from around US$100 a barrel last summer down to US$45-50 lately. ed moore says the lack of storage space could drive oil down to US$20 a barrel. but there are plenty of disagreement about that. someone is the director of oil markets at genscape. he thinks the price of oil might fall but not by that much.

if we saw crude oil that was trading in 30 someplace 38-35, that would not surprises me.

but someone says that you just never know. the recent fight in yemen pushed prices higher. if china's economy started suddenly growing faster, that could raise prices. an iran nuclear deal, on the other hand, that would probably drive oil prices down. but even putting all those other factors aside, some experts just don’t think we are actually going to get that close to running out of storage space. someone tracks oil supplies for the energy information administration. he says some of the recent oil glut is actually seasonal.

the analogy i would make is if you were in boston and you’d look at the last three months and say, oh, my gosh, we’re going to have two feet of snow every month. if you took that same straight-line projection, you would say by the end of august we are going to be under 15 feet of snow.

just like snow melts as the temperature rises, with oil demand rises in the summer. people drive their cars more and more refineries are up and running and someone expects that those big storage tanks will get less full. as far as what all this means for the gasoline prices, the eia estimates the prices will probably stay about flat through the summer, and compared to last year, it’s more than one dollar cheaper.

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With So Much Oil Flowing, U.S. May Be Reaching Storage Limits (I)

there has never been so much oil coming out of the ground, filling up the storage tanks, in the united states. there’s so much oil now the us rivals saudi arabia as the world’s top producer. some analysts now worry that the country is running out of the space to store all the oil, which means it would have to be sold fast, which could spark another dramatic crash in the oil prices. someone takes a look at just how likely that is. 

if you are in the oil trading business, you need the information, and one thing you want to know these days is how full are the storage tanks in places such as cushing, okla. to find out, you might need a professional. someone with an eye on the ground, and actually in the sky. 

gensescape does the james-bond approach, and files over the storage filed twice a week. 

that’s ___. she is the manager at gensescape. it’s kind of the oil intelligence service that uses planes, helicopters, and satellites to track where and how much the oil there is all over the world. some tanks in the us you can tell by just flying over, looking down, and seeing how full they are; others require a little more sleuthing. 

by using IR, or infrared technology, and cameras and flying over the tanks.

ok so in ___, there are these fields, just filled with giant storage tanks. some of them are the size of the school football stadiums. and the genescape estimates we are at about 70% utilisation right now. 

as the storage tanks get closer to full, some people thinks that that’s going to drive oil prices lower. now, no body knows that for certain. there are lots of scenarios, but as the storage space gets tight, it gets increasingly more expensive to store oil. that, the thinking goes, will discourage speculators from buying more oils and storing it, hoping to sell it later for a profit. if fewer speculators are buying, that means that there is less demand, and prices fall. and more, it’s the global head of commodity research with citigroup, he spoke about this lately at an event in new york. 

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More Americans Opt For Risky Long-Term Car Loans (II)

well if we all had the luxury to take, you know, a 36- or 48-month term loan, we would. but you know the bottom line is that the average consumers just cannot afford that. 

that reasoning are driving consumer advocates ___ nuts. he is with interest.com, and says that people on the budgets are precisely the ones that should not be taking out long loans. 

they're ways to get people into cars that are more expensive than they should really be buying. it's these kinds of decisions that you make that truly determines how much money you will have later in life. 

someone argues that people should pay off their car within 4 years, which can mean buying a less expensive or used one. while it's easy to get a super long loans at certain automakers, like kia, honda is trying to buck the trend. after all, the equity that the owners still have in their vehicles comes trade-in time is a selling point for honda. and long loan will destroy that equity. the vice president of honda says 6,7, or 8 year loan is just way too long to pay off a car. 

i don't know what the average marriage lasts in the us today, might be less than a car loan.

someone hope its competitors start using more disciplines, but that might be wishful thinking. when interest rate goes up, a new car might become even more expensive, which will likely push more consumers into longer loans. 

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More Americans Opt For Risky Long-Term Car Loans (I)

here’s the downside of a good-news business story. the good news is that new car sales are booming. the bad news is that many buyers are paying those cars with different kinds of car loans. they are taking longer to pay back the money. nearly 1/3 of new loans now last for 87 months or longer. do a little math. that’s more than 6 years. that might hurt the consumer now, or hurt the industry later. 

there comes a day in every car owner’s life when she knows it’s time. for someone that happened last july when driving her old suv with misfiring cylinders.

so i mean i drove to the deanship with my car literally chugging along. i mean, in the traffic on the interstate, i was sweating thinking i’ve just got to get to drive to the dealership so i can get rid of this before i put any more money into it. 

someone wanted late-honda model accord she’d seen on her local dealership’s website. but by the time she got there, it was gone. but there were plenty of new accords. 

i said if you can get my payment under $250 a month, i will consider taking this car. 

no problem. someone got the loans from wells fargo at a great rate. 2.5% for 74 months. that’s 6 years. 6-year loans used to be in the minority. but they are the norm and loans of 7- or 8-year are becoming popular. someone said the one thing driving the trend is the cars themselves. 

consumers are demanding a lot more technology in their vehicles - infotainment technology. there’s also a lot more safety features that are in vehicles now, emission and efficiency technologies that are in vehicles now that are making vehicles cost a lot more.

someone said the main reason is that consumers haven’t recovered from the recession so that the payment has to be stretched out over more years. she is not worried for the consumers. she is with the experienced automotive, a subsidiary of credit rating agency. she said the longer car loans make sense, especially for people on the tight budget. 

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Prices For Chanel Handbags To Rise In Europe, Lower In Asia

there’s nothing cheap about buying a chanel handbag. and the prices are about to go even higher in europe. someone reports. it’s part of the effort to stop the sales on lucrative secondary market. 

if you are a person who loves the look and feel of the chanel handbag. you might think twice about where you buy it. if a classic chanel handbag in, say paris, costs you $3,500, that same purse might set you back more than $6,000 in china. now chanel is narrowing the price gap, bringing the two regions more in line. the paris-based fashion house said the decision is driven in part by the depreciating euro which has slid to twelve-year low. someone, a retail and consumer goods specialist, says the prices are expected to eliminate the so-called grey market. 

people would actually take the trip to europe and buy quantities that they can go back to china and charge more than they paid but less than the local market, and make money on that. by alining the prices, you are eliminating this behaviour because this behaviour is really undermining the brand. 

someone says chanel is also lowering costs in china to re-energize the import market. other luxurious companies are expected to follow the suit. 

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Retailers entice shoppers to get ready for new school year. (I)

depending on where you live. kids are already back in school or they are getting ready to go. so parents are doing their fair share of the back-to-school shopping. this is something ___ thinks about quite a bit. he is the author of brandwashed: tricks companies use to manipulate our minds and persuade us to buy. he told us that this is a time of year where retailers are using plenty of tricks to lure shoppers in. one is the visual side. so they will never show a kid standing alone in some of the ads on the window displays. it will always show a kid standing in the group. indirectly saying, hey you are not left out. you are safe if you buy this bag or whatever. so i'm seeing a picture of bunch of kids, sort of well, dressed altogether. and the message to me as a parent is i could see my kid there, standing there in that group and wearing something isn't as cool as the other kids. yes you can, and you have to remember when you combine that with all the other signals which are sent in the retail stare, like, for example, playing the retro music, which you as a parent so much remember when you were a kid. and then you are walking around with a kid and you see, for example, like, mannequins, which no longer are just standing there wearing the cloths. they are also there wearing an ipad or an ipod. well, parents are thinking hey, i'm kind of out of date with this, i kinda can relate to this. i had those emotions because i listened to the music. but i need to speed up my mindset around this, and that's where they start to buy stuffs they don't need. has there been a study that shows that that's what retailers are doing and whether it works or not, or is it just something you are sort of sensing. well, a mixture. first of all, we've done quite a lot of neuroscience-based studies on effect of music on your brain. and there's no doubt about it that if i do play music back from when i was 16 to 20 years of age, i get this warm, fuzzy feeling. and typically, i was taken back in time. and when you mix that music with the modern music, so you sort of have an upbeat version, you kind of feel you are not lost. you feel you are still in touch with the reality. so that the music is used more and more in the retail now. some of it i'm sure is by coincidence, but some of it is pretty well planned because you have to remember that sound is an enormous factor in the retail environment in order to create the ambience. so it's becoming more and more a calculated move, rather than an coincidental move.

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Uber, Airbnb under attack in Spain as old and new economies clash. (IL)

my airbnb host is ___. she works long hour at a marketing company for about US$1000 a month. she never afford her rent without her airbnb income. i need it completely. it's the only we have to live life decently. we have no other ways. but spain's powerful hotel lobby is angry. local authorities have just slapped airbnb with a $40,000 fine for failing to list the rentals with the tourism board. ___ is nervous. ___ says yes he has the concerns about the airbnb. but he is not in the pocket of the hotel lobby. out positions in this case is not thinking about hotels. it's thinking about consumer right. it's thinking about quality. it's thinking about the security of our destinations. barcelona is one of airbnb's top detonations and the company is appealing the fines says ___, airbnb's policy director. i think it's a real shame where you have a government that's so aggressive. i mean, there are ways of protecting neighborhood and protecting citizens, and putting restrictions on these activities that make sense. but people are still gonna travel. so the point is to figure out how to make sense of these amazing activities instead of just trying to enforce old rules that were designed for really a different time. airbnb and other companies are in talk with spanish governments. among the compromises, a new rule in madrid that requires five day minimum for airbnb and other hotels get the shorter one for one to two days' visit. David Cordova's a government relations expert at Madrid's IE Business School, who's been following this clash of new and old economies.

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Uber, Airbnb under attack in Spain as old and new economies clash. (I)

online travel has been changing. more and more people are now booking a charm accommodation through airbnb. a site where residents rent out their rooms to travelers. or they are using the car-pooling apps to get around while on vacation. it's been dubbed the sharing or share economy. and it could be the money saver in areas hard hit by the economic crisis like southern europe. but in sunny spain this summer the authorities are cracking down. i've arrived in barcelona at the height of summertime tourist season. and i'm armed with trendy tools of this share economy. i've rented a room in someone's house through website airbnb and i've booked a ride there through smartphone app uber. and here comes my driver. ___ is 25, born in parkinstan. his father moved his family to barbelona during the construction boom but then he lost his job. so ___ is now supporting his family making up to US$125 a day as a private taxi driver linking up with passengers through uber. every morning at 6am, i pick up the tourists at the airport. it's great, they pay by credit card through their smart phones and uber pays me at the end of the month, he says. but the other taxi drivers, they get really mad. taxi drivers across the europe have gone on strike this summer to protest uber, they said it undercut their business and wanted it outlawed. a popular car-sharing company in spain, bluemoon, has had tires slashed in an apparent attack on the sharing economy. ___ says, police recently harassed and fined him, he's bringing the ticket to the uber's office. taxi union said ride-sharing is unsafe. but ___, the spain director of another ride-sharing website in europe called blabalcar says it's just the opposite. now if you jump into a cab, you don't know the driver. but in our case, people that jump into a car know in advance who is gonna be in the car, like their age, their preference when they travel, they can check the biography. spain is the biggest destination for european tourists. the most visible place for this clash of old and new economies. a test case for how the other countries might regulate these new tools. my uber driver ___drops me at my airbnb place and heads off to get another fare.

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How high debt from the housing collapse still stifles our economy. (Ill)

so now if you are a local grocery store, a little mom and pop operation, your debts obviously took money from your sales of the year. and you see that in different parts of the communities. and what happened in places such as pasasion has happened many times before all over the world. and aiman says that periods of very high household borrowing, such as us in 1920 and japan in 1980 have been followed by steep downturn. we have seen this over and over again where a rapid rise in private borrowings or household borrowings are often followed by deep and longer recessions. mian says when it happens, demands falls. and it's really hard to revive it, even when the fed lowers the interest rates to the floor. death of debt argues that obama administration should have worked harder to help struggling homeowners pair down their debts. even if it meant forcing the bank to forgive part of their loans. former administration official ___ argues in a recent op-ed that such measure would simply have never got through congress. and mayer of columbia university business school agrees. but mayer like summer himself has plenty praises for the book. you know, one of the things that __ have done really well is push us back to thinking about the role of consumers in the economy. and you know, i think that is a very important contribution. until now, he says much of our understanding of the downturn has centered on the role played by banks and the collapses of the big financial houses such as heman brothers. the death of debt says the seeds of downturns were planted much earlier when consumers are encouraged to borrow much more. tthe impact of that borrowing is still being felt today.

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How high debt from the housing collapse still stifles our economy. (Il)

so you had a situation where even though people are getting poorer in terms of their real wages, they are taking more and more debt. mirin says a big part of the problem is that so much of the debt went into mortgages and home equity loans. and mortgages are inherently risky for borrowers. when house prices fall, borrowers are quickly losing whatever equities they have built up, and they still need to pay the banks what they owe. he says, by late 2007, the prices were falling, and a lot of people were in over their heads. when that realization sets in, what is going to happen with these borrowers, well, they are going to try to cut their spending and save. mien says that's what a lot of people have done. in their book "house of debt", mien and his co-author, __ of the university of chicago, looked at economic data in different zip codes across the country. and they have documented something that a lot of people have long suspected - that the debt has a corrosive effect on the economy. __ and mein found in places where housing prices are flat, such as texas and middle west, consumers spending has been stable. but in places where housing prices fell the most, the consumer spending plummeted. there are places, such as new jersey, a faded industrial city, west of new york. foreclosure. foreclosure. foreclosure. real estate broker ___ takes me down to the street where every third house seemed to be abandoned or boarded up. during the boom year, money flooded into the ___. banking system allowed everyone to be a home owner. they gave money to people who were breathing. so how much did the prices go up during the boom year? in some cases, as much as 50%. the problem is that those homes were not worth that 50%. we have seen a massive reduction in property value. many ___ homeowner wiped out. they cut back on spending. and a lot of local business failed.

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How high debt from the housing collapse still stifles our economy. (I)

six years after the sub-prime mortgage crisis sparked great recession, the us economy has yet to fully recover. policymakers have long debated why whether the government's responses to the crisis was adequate or excessive. and now in their new book house of death, two economists asserts the real problem is that the consumers are constrained by the debts they took on when the times were good. and they said the washington has largely failed to address the problem. in the volatile month after the sub-prime crisis, bush and obama administrations put a lot of energy into stabilizing the financials system, the idea was to keep the bank healthy, so they'd lend more. in a sense, the policies worked, the banks recovered gradually. but the economy remained sluggish for a long time. to understand why, says the princeton economist, you have to look at the debt. the household debts doubled between 2000 and 2007. and much of it was taken on by the working and middle class people, whose incomes were flat or even falling.

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Some food companies are quietly dumbing GMO ingredients. (Il)

we know of a lot of exciting cool things are happening that for whatever strategic regions get kept pretty quite. megan westgate runs non-GMO projects. it has certified more than 20,000 GMO-free products. she says this sector represents 6bn dollars in annual sales. target, for example, has about 80 of its own brand items verified by non-GMO projects. agriculture economist at the kansas state university says big food producers are trying to gauge what direction consumers are headed in. ultimately, these companies aren't just friends with monsanto or something . they wanna make a profit. and they want to do what's go to be able to make money. but even as they create GMO-free products, many of these big corporations are still fighting with the state initiative that would require them to give customers more information about their ingredients. they often fight the battle through powerful grocery manufacturer association. they just filed the suit over the vermont GMO labeling law. even ben and jerry has the conflicts of sorts. they might be eliminating GMO products, but it's still owed by uniliever, which are putting a lot of money toward fighting labeling in california. that might make things sticky for ben and jerry ceo. you know, as i said, you know in big corporations a lot of things happen behind the closed door. i think i will leave the conversation behind the closed door. as these large corporation worked to make GMO-free food, finding ingredients can be a major challenge. take just two ingredients. more than 90% of all the soybeans and corns grown in united states are genetically engineered. that's why ___ at non-GMO projects said natural food brand like ___ owned by kellog are transitioning more slowly than many fans would like. it does take a couple of years often times. it's a matter of changing contract with growers and finding areas where non-GMOs can be successfully grown and things like that. ultimately, consumer is the king. and the question of whether or not the consumer will want the non-GMO food is still up in the air. back at the ben and jerry flavor graveyard, ___ said she is not too concerned about knowing what's in her snack food. it's junk fodd. i'm going to eat it, probably, either way, to tell you the truth. i mean, i try to eat healthy, but if i'm going to eat the candy bar, i'm going to eat it regardless of what's really in it. still, many manufacture are clearing wondering what migh happen when and if the state enact the labeling law, so they are hedging their bets. fighting state-by-state labeling initiatives, but are quietly introducing their own GMO-free products in the meantime.

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Some food companies are quietly dumbing GMO ingredients. (I)

a law was recently passed in vermont that requires food made with genetically modified ingredients be labeled starting next year. some companies are taking it a step further and getting GMOs out of their products completely. but as the vermont public radio ___ reports, only a few of those companies are publicizing that. on busy summer weekends at the ben and jerry factory in waterberry vermont, crowded tours leave every 10 minutes. afterward, fans of iconic chunky ice cream head up to the flavor graveyard where the combination that didn't make the cut are put to rest with the lighthearted eulogy. visitor ___ thought that some of the bygone flavors sounded pretty good. wild maine blueberry from the land of puffin. now when we crave you, we turn to the muffin. another flavor could now be immortalized in that graveyard. gone is coffee heath bar crunch, one of the company's bestsellers. in its place, you will now find something called coffee toffee bar crunch. we have had a lot of praise and we have had people who sort of feel a little challenged by that choice. and that's totally understandable. ceo said that the company reworked the flavor after they cut ties with the hershey, the maker of heath bar. the heath bar had to go for ben and jerry to keep its pledge to get genetically modifying ingredients out of its ice cream. most people won't be surprised that ben and jerry is taking a vocal stand on a controversial issue. it's kind of the company's calling card. but some other mainstream companies are carefully and much quietly calibrating its non-GMO strategies. original plain cheerio are now GMO free. they are made by general mill. but the only announcement was made in a company's blog post from january. grape nut, another cereal aisle staple made by post are also non GMO.

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Contractors Have A Tough Time Finding Experienced Workers. (Il)

as a long term solution, companies are investing in vocational training programs at secondary school or community colleges. they are also collaborating with the unions, who are looking to build up their ranks. dan booth is a welder pipefitter at the third generation member of houston pipefitter local union 211. he is also the instructor at the local apprentice school. there is a lot of people, and especially these young people that want to things with their hands. they love to work outdoors and they are not cut out for sitting in classroom going through college. so this trade is really good for them. they can come out, learn the trade, make good benefit, and good money. and it's a good career. builders are also pressing congress on immigration reforms. immigrants from mexico or elsewhere in latin america were major sources of construction labors before the housing crash. many went home when the work dried up and have been unwilling to unable to return. republican congressman ted poe's district stretches across much of harris county, texas. poe says business has legitimate problems and that allowing in more immigrants workers on a temporary basis should be part of the solution. but he says that tougher enforcement to immigration laws should come first. you have to have border security before we can really accomplish anything in immigration issues. right now the borders is not as secured as it could be. that has to be done before we move down the road on specific problems in the area of immigration. a survey of texas manufacturer just released by the federal reverse bank of dallas reveals new construction is putting strong upward pressure on wages and benefits. companies are finding they have little choice but to offer higher pay and retention bonuses in order to attract and keep the workers. if they don't, their workers are likely to ditch them for their competitors. in some cases, it is as easy as walking across the street.

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Contractors Have A Tough Time Finding Experienced Workers. (I)

npr business news starts with an oil boom and a labor shortage. as we reported on this program, the new method of drilling have created a huge boost to the domestic oil and gas production. in energy-producing state like texas, that has led to a big rise in commercial construction. so big that the builder are finding it hard to get skilled labor they need to keep up the demand. from houston public media and ___ report. chevron phillips chemical is building a plant in baytown, texas, just outside of houston, as well as another 80 miles southwest in old ocean. The company estimated its contractors would need to hire 10,000 construction workers to complete the plant on schedule in 2017. peter cella is chevron phillip's president and ceo. the single biggest constraint is the shortage of the skilled labors. we need welders, pipefiliters, rigger, electricians to help construct all these assets that have been announced by my company and others. the shortage of skilled workers is slowing construction of everything from factories to office buildings and driving up costs in the process. the housing crash and the great recession that followed costs 1.3 million such workers their job. and fewer than half a million have returned. ken simonson is an chief economist from associated general contractors of america. it's getting really hard for contractors to find experienced workers because so many of the ones who had been laid off have now moved on to other industries or have retired. one of the main industries that those workers flocked into in taxes is oil and gas sectors. building contractors are really having a hard time luring them back.

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Why women don't ask for more money. (I)

now in the workplace, women often undervalue themselves - that's the view of the someone who was on the program yesterday. she was once one of the most powerful women on wall street. she believes that women don't ask for enough money when they negotiate with their bosses. that's if they even ask at all. we were digging deeper into this issue this morning. looking at ways for women to get the edge of negotiation. someone from our plant money has more. someone is the management professor at the university of texas and she became fascinated with the dynamics between men and women pretty early. she grew up with three brothers. she was the only girl in the gang of the neighborhood kids. when she went to graduate school, she found a lot of classic management advices was aimed more at her brother than herself. once you started to learn especially competitive negotiation tactics, you realized they were pretty at odds with how the women generally comport themselves and how they are expected to comport themselves. someone started to look closer at women's strength and weakness, and they certainly seem similar. To very much a high degree, i am the woman that i studied - i don't like to self promote, i feel uncomfortable in situations where i have to negotiate on my own behalf. someone wanted to find out the sources of that squeamishness. she began talking to other women about their experiences at work. again and again, she heard women say how difficult it was to advocate for themselves at the office. but something else kept coming up - they have no trouble speaking up for colleagues. so someone decided to set up a research experiment. first men and women had to negotiate the starting salary for themselves. the men did better than the women. and then each of the subjects was asked to negotiate for a friend. then what we saw was that on average, women who are negotiating salary for themselves threw out a counteroffer that was 7,000 less than the women who are negotiating for someone else. again, when women were told to negotiate for a friend, they are bargained as hard as a guy is. women are not bad negotiators. rather they are really quite savvy at negotiating. they just don't use those skills for themselves.