Business & Tech

Bill Maurer, by phone with Gina Kaufmann.

Kansas City, MO – In an effort to find out how money is supposed to work, KCUR's Gina Kaufmann put in a call to anthropologist Bill Maurer at University of California-Irvine . Maurer specializes in the anthropology of money. While American money used to be backed by gold, Maurer explained, it is now backed by faith in the system. Which begs just one question.

Kansas City, MO – This week, international trade leaders from the United States, Mexico and Canada met in Kansas City for the annual North America Works conference. Since NAFTA took effect in 1994, some local leaders have been trying to promote Kansas City as a hub for international trade.

NAFTA has its critics from both the left and the right, and the election of Barack Obama may change the direction of the US trade policy.

Kansas City, MO – The troubled economy is driving thousands of people into food pantries for the first time ever this year. At the same time donations to those pantries are drying up and some have run out of food entirely, even here, in the nation's breadbasket. But while the economic hard times are pummeling food pantries, they're doing great things for another service catering to the poor thrift stores. KCUR's Frank Morris reports.

Kansas City, Mo. – A dark economic forecast for 2009 has been delivered to the Greater Kansas City Area Chamber of Commerce.

Kansas City, MO – City and other local governments have been put in their own credit crunch by the crisis on Wall Street. They can't find anyone to buy their municipal bonds. That's how cities normally pay for everything from sewer upgrades to a new city hall. But the market has dried up, and Kansas City, for one, has put tens of millions of dollars of water projects on hold as it waits for the municipal bond market to shake out. KCUR's Maria Carter reports.

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