Keith Romer

This housing program helped kids escape poverty — by changing who they befriended : Planet Money In the 1990s, Congress created HOPE VI, a program that demolished old public housing projects and replaced them with more up-to-date ones. But the program went further than just improving public housi...

My latest from @planetmoney.bsky.social is about brand new research that looks at whether changing low-income neighborhoods into mixed-income neighborhoods improves outcomes for kids who grew up there. Potentially big lessons for all kinds of poverty alleviation policies. www.npr.org/2026/01/28/n...

My latest from Planet Money is about the plumbing behind Scott Bessent’s offer to (functionally) loan Argentina $20 billion.

The US has offered $20 billion to Argentina. Congress didn’t authorize it–the money comes from an obscure Treasury slush fund called the Exchange Stabilization Fund. Where did this fund come from? And how likely is this bet on Argentina to pay off?

buff.ly/kcsPx8e

The year NYC went broke : Planet Money In 1975, New York City ran out of money. For a decade it had managed to pay for its hundreds of thousands of city employees and robust social services by taking on billions of dollars in debt. But eve...

Happy 50th anniversary to the 1975 NYC fiscal meltdown! My latest from @planetmoney.bsky.social features Donna Shalala and some truly satisfying archival of how people talked in 1975. Also, people burning their trash in the streets! www.npr.org/2025/10/15/n...

This fun, creative contest seriously highlights how hard the entire Planet Money team works to communicate economics in a way that both educates and entertains.

Econ Battle Zone: Budget Showdown : Planet Money Econ Battle Zone is back! On today's episode Mary Childs and Kenny Malone enter Econ Battle Stadium to throw down against reigning champion Erika Beras.Can Mary explain what effect extending the 2017 ...

For all the people wondering -- why aren't more economics podcasts set up like reality TV cooking competitions? We got you: www.npr.org/2025/06/25/1...

Great reporting & great episode. I will warn listeners though, even I, as an avid @planetmoney.bsky.social fan and listener, was not prepared for @keithromer.bsky.social's villainy. @amandaaronczyk.bsky.social, I'll pitch in on any GoFundMe.

The U.S.-China trade war, according to game theory : Planet Money Over the last few months U.S.-China trade relations have been pretty hard to make sense of – unless you look at what's happening through the lens of game theory. Game theory is all about how decisions...

What does the US-China trade war look like through the lens of game theory? Well...it's complicated. It's not clear the two sides even agree on the game being played. I talked to @emilyjblanchard.bsky.social and the Stimson Center's Yun Sun to make sense of it all: www.npr.org/2025/05/30/1...

The next PM+ cam just be 18 minutes of your out takes

Wailin….we specifically cut this from the episode.

Do you work in compliance at the IRS (or did you until recently)? I'd like to talk with you for an upcoming story for NPR's Planet Money. Hit me up here or on signal: keithromer.79

What should I know about what's going on at the IRS? Hit me up on signal: keithromer.79

OIRA: The tiny office that's about to remake the federal government : Planet Money OIRA — the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs — is an obscure, but powerful federal office around the corner from the White House. President Trump has decided that it should get even more po...

A senior White House official told me “There are no independent federal agencies.” My latest from Planet Money looks at an executive order consolidating presidential control over federal regulation by independent federal regulators like the SEC, FTC, and FCC: buff.ly/evMKTyl

It’s all about what you mic…and they have decided that THAT is the sound that matters.

This is maybe the most profound and important take ever for us to all internalize.

We spoke to a researcher from Hugging Face who is working on that problem: bsky.app/profile/plan...

How DeepSeek changed the market's mind : Planet Money On Monday, the stock market went into a tizzy over a new AI model from Chinese company DeepSeek. It seemed to be just as powerful as many of its American competitors, but its makers claimed to have…

Earlier this week, a very friendly-looking whale made a financially devastating splash in the stock market, taking hundreds of billions of dollars of value out of AI companies. What is DeepSeek, and what does its very powerful software tell us about the future of AI?

I have some wicked smart colleagues and you should follow them go.bsky.app/GNFwoSV

Here's what we import from Colombia that will get socked with 25%/50% tariffs if imposed . . .

@fountain.bsky.social

Proud of the reporting Sarah Gonzalez and Nick Fountain did from inside the Altadena burn zone. Some really moving moments of audio journalism in this episode.

Column: Inside the Bakersfield raids that showed how Trump's immigration policies will sow chaos The U.S. Border Patrol ran rampant through Bakersfield in what immigration advocates say was nothing but racial profiling aimed at intimidation. More such raids are coming.

Really interesting write-up of the immigration raids in Bakersfield. It's harvest season, and they put out a dragnet to grab immigrants on the way to work.

www.latimes.com/business/sto...

being tall is like having a truck you just gotta do it

I have some follow-ups about the impulses you like….80% embrace…

I got back in front of the mic for this one: How George Soros Broke the British Pound.

As people try to learn more about Donald Trump's pick for Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent, one story comes up over and over: a legendary trade that he played a small part in while he worked at George Soros' hedge fund in the 1990s. How Soros broke the Bank of England:

https://buff.ly/4ikph4d

@alexgoldmark.bsky.social and I made an evergreen @planetmoney.bsky.social story about George Soros' hedge fund breaking the Bank of England...and then Scott Bessent was tapped to run Treasury, and it turns out the story also works as a Scott Bessent finance origin story: www.npr.org/2024/12/04/1...

in my "economics and policy" class (ie, econ 101 for non-majors), I have students earn "participation points" in various ways throughout the semester, and they can earn points by generating econ memes based on course content.

here's a thread of some of my favs from this semester... #econsky

Love to be on lists!