Keeping an eye on oil prices

0:00What's a job so perfect for you that the Sunday scaries ahead of the dreaded work week would be a thing of the past? I'm David Brancaccio in Los Angeles. First, the price of crude just went from down 1% to now up 1%, 11250 a barrel now with no clarity on the status of U.S. Iran talks. And this after the oil producers' cartel, OPEC Plus, agreed over the weekend to slightly increase production to try to take the edge off prices, but what is the reality economist Julia Coronado, founder of macro policy perspectives? The reality is that the straight-up hormones is closed and most of that production simply is impossible at this moment. And the price of crude is high today in the $110 barrel range. Now on Thursday, we get from the U.S. government a revision of GDP economic growth. A bit of a history lesson covers October to December of last year, which seems like a long time ago. It does indeed.

1:00And in fact, the very next day, we will get the inflation data for March. And that's going to tell us the more forward-looking story, which is the first look where we're going to see the inflation that Americans are having to absorb tied to the war in Iran. All right. Well, we'll be here for that. So David, if I may ask you a question, I hear you're leaving this. Let's show. Yep. After 13 years, what have we been through here, you and I? We did Brexit together, meme stocks, I mean, a lot of water under this news bridge, right? Supply, chain, inflation, and pandemic, tariffs, reverse globalization that we're going through now. Yes. And often the resiliency of the U.S. economy, surprising us to the upside. I'm not leaving, leaving, though, Julia, I'm staying at Marketplace with a new beat to cover future effects, decisions made now that shape our futures, personal finance, innovation

2:02and government policy. So you can probably still help me with that. Well, I look forward to seeing what you do next, David. It will be an exciting chapter, but we will miss you on the morning beat. Thank you very much. But I'm still on the morning beat through Friday. Julia Cornado is also a professor at the University of Texas Austin. Thank you. My pleasure. Back to short-term framing for a moment, the Dow, in early trading down 17 points. The S&P is up 310%, the NASDAQ up 610%. The average 30-year fixed-rate mortgage is at 6.45%, it was 5.99. The day before the U.S. military action in Iran began, according to Mortgage News Daily's calculation.

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4:03I'm sure you love what you do and you're the perfect fit for your present role, but have you ever come across a business model where you say to yourself, that is for me. I've been out collecting these for our business envy series last week, it was Moment Motor Company in Austin, where you bring them the classic car of your choice, and they make it an electric vehicle. I do that. Well, today, a very fine roaster of coffee beans, Graféo of San Francisco. It does beans like dark decaf and nothing else. Walter Haas, the third, is from the family that's behind Levi's genes. He's a tech startup entrepreneur, who then decided his bliss is this coffee, Mr. Haas. Welcome. Hi there. Thanks for having me. I thought a startup guy like you, a professional businessman, would be working on the high floor of an office tower. I went into Graféo's a couple of months to go to get some beans, and there you were. What's your day look like? I mean, like, what are you doing over there? So I bought Graféo, which is San Francisco's oldest coffee roaster. It's been around since 1935, about a year and a half ago.

5:04And basically, you'll find me doing almost every job besides roasting because we leave that to professionals. Now, I've been using Graféo's coffee since I was a young reporter at KQED in San Francisco. Now, there's a place in Rome, Italy that might be its peer, but in the US, I've never had a better bean to my taste. What do you think the secret is over there? There's some kind of magic going on. Yeah. Well, there definitely is a secret, and that is all coming from my predecessor, the former owner, a man named Luciano Repeto, who inherited the business from his father. But in the late 70s, decided to, from scratch, rebuild our roasting machine. And he invented a new roasting process called fluid bed roasting, which he had been perfecting and had perfected over the last 41 years. And so what you're tasting is thousands of hours of tinkering with a roasting process to make the world's greatest coffee. I have always said about Graféo's, right? You're going in there, and you sell three things and three things alone.

6:08There's no copies of Yani CDs for sale. There's no piles of New York times, no stale scones. You just got your light, your dark, and your decaf. I mean, you're going to start selling chachkas and t-shirts. What's the idea? We have swag, but you cannot buy it. We give it away. But you bring up a great point. We do not sell anything besides beans. In fact, we don't even sell coffee. Graféo only sells the beans for which we encourage you to take home and make yourself. That's a remnant of my predecessor's belief that you can only do so many things well, and that's why he picked dark, light, decaf. That's it. Now, you can, in our system of capitalism, husband, a brand without wanting to scale it intergalactically large. I mean, is that your sense? Look, I think my job is part business building and part custodianship. And so we're taking a real old school company and giving it fresh life without losing its soul. We are never going to compromise the integrity of our roasting. And so that in itself limits us to some extent, is to how much coffee that we can create.

7:14How do you, Walter, make your coffee? What's your technique? Well, I try a lot of different ways, but my secret is anything with a metal filter that includes a French press or a mocha pot. I believe creates a more richer flavor because you get more of the oil coming into it. And so that's my preference for coffee. Walter Haas, the third, Graféo Coffee, based in San Francisco. Thank you very much. Thank you so much. Appreciate it. If I can't get Graféo, I like green tree coffee of Lincolnville, Maine, my home state, and in my ancestral Italy, Cafe Santo Stacio near the Pantheon in Rome is the move you have asked me. Have you ever heard of a job so good you'd live for Monday mornings, email us the business UNV using morning report at Marketplace.org. In Los Angeles, I'm David Brancaccio, Marketplace Morning Report from APM, American Public Media. The economy moves fast, and when headlines turn on a dime, it is essential that you feel informed rather than overwhelmed.

8:14Hey, I'm David Brancaccio, a special correspondent for Marketplace, and an avid reader of the Marketplace newsletter, not that I'm partial. Every Friday Marketplace curates must read stories from the week and delivers explainers right to your inbox. So, if you want the latest from me and our team of award-winning journalists, head over to Marketplace.org slash newsletters and sign up today.