Marketplace All-in-One

Just to get you up to speed on oil prices: Brent Crude is at $92 a barrel this morning. Yesterday morning, it was at $117. While prices have dipped, they're still higher than they were before the Middle East war began. That means more money for oil producers. So will domestic producers use that extra cash to drill more? Also: the latest in Anthropic’s dispute with the Pentagon and what to make of last year’s big jump in product recalls.

Girl Scout cookie sales started back in 1917. In addition to raising money, cookie selling is also meant to make the girls more business savvy. The Girl Scouts say it's the largest girl led entrepreneurial program in the world. And now, some of that entrepreneurship is happening online. Marketplace’s Stephanie Hughes spoke with Wendy Lou, who oversees the cookie program as the chief revenue officer at Girl Scouts of the United States of America. She says last season, digital transactions accounted for more than 40 percent of cookie sale revenue.

Consumer sentiment was already trending negative before the war in Iran started, a war that so far has precipitated climbing oil prices and geopolitical uncertainty. The question is, how much more pessimistic can U.S. consumers get? Also in this episode: Commodities prices surge, we give a brief history lesson on the oil crises of the 1970s, and supermarkets compete for a slice of the Lone Star State’s growing population.

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Oil prices came close to hitting $120 a barrel yesterday. This morning, they're hovering around $100 a barrel. Gas prices are also up 27 cents in a week, a price increase that'll pinch consumers and could dent consumer spending. In response to the spike in oil prices, some nations are discussing releasing oil reserves from their stockpiles. Then, we'll head to the Texas-Mexico border, where a parasitic fly poses a threat to the cattle industry.

Economists are still digesting last Friday's jobs report, which showed a loss of 92,000 jobs in February. The labor force participation rate — the percentage of working-age people who are either working or looking for work — fell to 62%. That's the lowest since December 2021 and means some people are giving up even looking for a job. We'll dig into the importance of that figure. Also on the show: oil prices and existential threats.