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American Airlines has revised lower its summer forecast; ConocoPhillips to purchase Marathon Oil; China’s economic forecast gets a boost; another former FTX executive is headed to prison.

When you buy a stock, your brokerage has to go out and buy it for you. It sometimes doesn’t happen immediately and can take up to two days. As part of a push to reduce risk in the stock market, a new Securities and Exchange Commission rule says it needs to happen faster. Plus, why consumers are feeling better than expected and how pricey child care is holding back women in the workforce.

Despite cooling inflation, many Americans still say higher prices make it difficult to make ends meet. That’s especially the case for parents. The cost of child care has far outpaced overall inflation for the past few decades, to the point that it’s affecting the labor force. We discuss. But first: Tensions between Exxon-Mobil and some of its shareholders may well boil over this morning when the company holds its annual shareholder meeting.

From the BBC World Service: Australian mining giant BHP wants to buy rival Anglo American, but it’s had two bids turned down and was recently denied an extension for takeover talks. Then, the union representing Samsung Electronics in South Korea has threatened to go on strike over demands for higher wages. And South Africa heads to the polls and the leading ANC party may lose its parliamentary majority.

Sharon Lerner has been reporting on “forever chemicals” for the better part of a decade. These manmade compounds — known as PFAS for short — resist oil, water and heat, take an incredibly long time to break down in nature, and have been used widely in products like Scotchgard, Teflon and firefighting foam. Lerner has focused part of her work on understanding the flow of information inside manufacturers like 3M. By the 1970s, Lerner says, Minnesota-based 3M had established that they were toxic in animals and were accumulating in humans’ bodies. But who inside 3M knew? And what did they know? Reporting for ProPublica, a nonprofit investigative news site, Lerner got a complicated answer after coming across a former 3M scientist named Kris Hansen. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke with Lerner about her recent investigation.

Today we’re talking about food. Specifically, Big Food. In his book, “Barons: Money, Power, and the Corruption of America’s Food Industry,” Austin Frerick, agricultural and antitrust policy fellow at Yale, argues the food system is the most consolidated sector in the United States. On the show today, Frerick explains how the American food system became so concentrated, how that’s inflated prices and eroded quality, and what we should do about it. Plus, Walmart’s role as king of grocery kings.



Then, we’ll get into why Boeing can’t keep up with SpaceX. And, an expert on youth mental health (and former guest on “Make Me Smart”) was wrong about how teens curate their social media feeds.



Here’s everything else we talked about today:







“Lax Antitrust Enforcement Imperils The Nation’s Supply Chains” from Forbes


“What Is “Big Ag,” and Why Should You Be Worried About Them?” from Union of Concerned Scientists


“The problem with growing corporate concentration and power in the global food system” from Nature Food


“Major retailers are offering summer deals to entice inflation-weary shoppers” from AP News


“US Consumer Confidence Rises for First Time in Four Months” from Bloomberg


“Inflation now means high prices, not just rising costs” from Axios


“What do Americans think about inflation?” from The Brookings Institution


“Boeing Prepared to Fly Crewed Space Taxi With Helium Leak” from Bloomberg



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