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January 5, 2019

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Sports January 5, 2019

Saturday Sports: The Bears And The Lady Bears

We have a roundup of the week in sports, including the latest on the Chicago Bears, quarterback Patrick Mahomes and the Baylor Lady Bears women’s basketball team.



SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

Now, time for sports.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

SIMON: Da (ph) Bears, da Eagles, da playoffs. And where the stars at night are big and bright – Baylor’s Lady Bears hand the UConn Huskies their first regular season loss since – I don’t know – 1874. Tom Goldman joins us. How are you, Tom?

TOM GOLDMAN, BYLINE: I’m good. How are you?

SIMON: I’m fine. Thanks. How am I? The Bears are in the playoffs. The wildcard team…

GOLDMAN: (Laughter).

SIMON: They played last year’s Super Bowl champions, the Eagles, on Sunday. The Eagles are the reigning champions. They’re great. The Bears have a smothering defense with Khalil Mack at linebacker – probably the reigning defensive player in the league. I loved what he said yesterday – you live for these games. Now, isn’t defense considered even more important in the postseason?

GOLDMAN: You do live for these games, Scott.

SIMON: (Laughter).

GOLDMAN: Defense wins championships, right?

SIMON: Yes.

GOLDMAN: I mean, Bear Bryant said so.

SIMON: Yeah.

GOLDMAN: But, Scott, are you ready for some football science?

SIMON: Sure. Sure.

GOLDMAN: OK. Researchers at Cal State Northridge…

SIMON: Yeah.

GOLDMAN: …Set out to uncover whether the old adage…

SIMON: Whenever you say researchers, I know you’re going to spoil my good time. But go ahead. Yeah.

GOLDMAN: I thought you’d fall asleep. Yeah. The old adage, defense wins championships, they wanted to find out, is that true? And their statistical analysis found it is true. The fewer regular season yards a team gives up, that leads to more playoff wins. But they also discovered the more yards gained by an offense, the more playoff wins. So apparently, great defense and great offense wins championships, which, of course, means the Bears will need contributions from young Mitchell Trubisky in his first NFL playoff appearance and the rest of the offense.

SIMON: I just have to mention Tarik Cohen – 5-foot-6. If he were, in fact, going to be bar mitzvahed, he couldn’t reach the podium at 5-foot-6.

GOLDMAN: (Laughter).

SIMON: Just about the most fun runner to watch in the league – New York Times did a nice profile of him this week.

GOLDMAN: It’s always mind-boggling to think about looking down on NFL players. He is fantastic. Let’s not forget the Eagles also have a 5-foot-6 water bug, Scott. Darren Sproles has been dazzling and darting for 14 NFL seasons. His return from injury late in the season really helped the Eagles, along with backup quarterback Nick Foles. And they’ve got the Eagles fans thinking this team can beat those scary Bears in Chicago and make another run at the Super Bowl.

SIMON: I don’t even know why even they call Nick Foles a backup quarterback anymore.

GOLDMAN: I know.

SIMON: He’s always there when it counts.

GOLDMAN: I know.

SIMON: A 23-year-old starting quarterback for the Kansas City Chiefs is kind of the obvious MVP pick this year, isn’t it?

GOLDMAN: He kind of is. Patrick Mahomes – he has taken full advantage of a league that does everything it can to make life easy for quarterbacks. This season – only his second in the NFL – he threw 50 touchdown passes. And he passed for over 5,000 yards. The only other QBs to throw at least 50 touchdown passes – guys named Tom Brady and Peyton Manning. And his style is just so much fun to watch. You know, he plays sandlot football, really. He’s thrown a pass left-handed. He’s thrown a no-look pass. The big question, of course, with his carefree style – can that succeed in the pressure cooker of the playoffs? I’ll bet it does.

SIMON: So is Tom Brady just kind of taking a nap, waiting for the playoffs to begin and show us what he’s made of all over again?

GOLDMAN: You know, outside the Boston area, it feels a little bit like he’s under the radar, out of the spotlight. You know, the Patriots had a workman-like season for them this year. And then when they lost a couple of games in a row in early December, that prompted the latest round of talks that the dynasty is over. But they have rallied. They won a key game last week. And Tom Brady looked like super Tom Brady. He threw four TD passes. They look like a team and a quarterback ready to go. I’ll bet teams still don’t want to play them in the postseason.

SIMON: And, as we mentioned, Baylor defeated UConn. Actually, I said 1812 or something like that – wasn’t it 2014 – first regular season loss UConn’s had. How did Baylor do it?

GOLDMAN: With size and great defense. UConn’s shooting percentage in that game was 29.4 percent. That’s reportedly the lowest in 20 seasons. The Huskies did the bulk of their scoring from long distance because going inside was an exercise in futility against Kalani Brown, 6’7″, Lauren Cox, 6’4″. Those two simply owned the territory around the basket. And now UConn has to start another streak that will last for a decade.

SIMON: NPR sports correspondent Tom Goldman, thanks so much for being with us, my friend.

GOLDMAN: You’re welcome.

(SOUNDBITE OF STEVE WINWOOD’S “PHOENIX RISING”)

Copyright © 2019 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

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Business January 5, 2019

Is The Economy Booming Or About To Bust?

NPR’s Scott Simon talks with economist Megan Greene about the health of the economy and what indicators she’s keeping an eye on.



SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

Are we booming or about to bust? This week, Apple cautioned investors not to expect strong sales because the Trump administration’s trade war with China. And the Institute for Supply Management said that its measure of U.S. manufacturing took the steepest dive it’s had in a decade. But then, yesterday’s upbeat employment report said that U.S. employers added 319,000 jobs in December; analysts were expecting 180,000. So what’s the panic? We’re joined now by Megan Greene. She’s the chief global economist at Manulife Asset Management. Thanks so much for being with us.

MEGAN GREENE: Thanks for having me.

SIMON: Do you think the U.S. economy is basically healthy?

GREENE: So the U.S. economy is in pretty good shape. The economic fundamentals look decent, even though we’ve had a couple of bad news headlines recently. So the ISM survey data came in much weaker than expected but still reflected an expansion in terms of manufacturing and manufacturers’ expectations for output, employment and new orders – so still in growth territory. We grew well above potential growth last year, and potential growth is around 2 percent. So I do think we can expect a slowdown this year. But, again, it’s a slowdown from really high levels, so I think we’ll still have growth of somewhere between 2 and 2 1/2 percent for 2019. That’s hardly bad news for a developed economy.

The confidence in the U.S. continues to hit postcrisis highs every month. So when you ask consumers and businesses how they’re feeling about things, they say they’re feeling great about the economy. When you look at how they’re actually spending their money, though, the data is not quite as ebullient. So it’s not quite as boomy. So if you look at retail sales to measure the health of the consumer, for example, consumers are saying they feel great, but they’re not actually spending that much. It’s still in growth territory, but it’s not what you would expect based on how they’re reporting they’re feeling. You might have seen a lot of pessimism in the markets recently. And I don’t think that that’s an economic story for the U.S. at all. I don’t think that it’s justified based on the U.S.’ macroeconomic fundamentals.

SIMON: Well, why the pessimism then?

GREENE: One thing that I do think is really driving the markets is what’s happening in China as well. So Chinese data has come out and has been unequivocally awful, I would say. So retail sales growth has been really weak in China. Their survey data suggests that demand in China and abroad has been much weaker. You know, it’s justifiable for the markets to worry a bit about that. If China were to slow down, that doesn’t mean that the U.S. is going to go into recession, though, unless China had a really surprise hard landing now. And until very recently, the markets have been worried about the Fed killing off this recovery. And I think that’s a fair concern generally. They say that, you know, recoveries don’t die of old age, they’re murdered, and usually the Fed is the key suspect. But recently, the Fed has revised its path for normalizing rates downward so that it’s more dovish, more gradual. I don’t think that we’ll end up seeing the Fed kill off this recovery, but the markets have been really worried about it recently.

SIMON: What features of the economy do you look at?

GREENE: So if you’re looking for forward-looking data – because most economic data is actually backwards-looking, particularly labor market data – if you look at the survey data, it will give you an indication of new orders, both domestic and foreign. And that’s a great indicator of the strength of manufacturing and services. And the two ways to fundamentally boost your potential growth or productivity growth and your labor supply – and in terms of productivity growth, the way to boost it is with more investment, more capital expenditure. And this has really been an investment less recovery. But if we saw a boom in investment, that would certainly change most people’s views on things. So I would keep an eye on that. And the labor supply is effected a lot by immigration policies, so I would keep an eye on that as well.

SIMON: Megan Greene with Manulife Asset Management, thanks so much for being with us.

GREENE: Thanks for having me.

Copyright © 2019 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

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