John Ydstie
John Ydstie has covered the economy, Wall Street, and the Federal Reserve at NPR for nearly three decades. Over the years, NPR has also employed Ydstie's reporting skills to cover major stories like the aftermath of Sept. 11, Hurricane Katrina, the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal, and the implementation of the Affordable Care Act. He was a lead reporter in NPR's coverage of the global financial crisis and the Great Recession, as well as the network's coverage of President Trump's economic policies. Ydstie has also been a guest host on the NPR news programs Morning Edition, All Things Considered, and Weekend Edition. Ydstie stepped back from full-time reporting in late 2018, but plans to continue to contribute to NPR through part-time assignments and work on special projects.
During 1991 and 1992, Ydstie was NPR's bureau chief in London. He traveled throughout Europe covering, among other things, the breakup of the Soviet Union and attempts to move Europe toward closer political and economic union. He accompanied U.S. businessmen exploring investment opportunities in Russia as the Soviet Union was crumbling. He was on the scene in The Netherlands when European leaders approved the Maastricht Treaty, which created the European Union.
In August 1990, Ydstie was one of the first reporters on the scene after Saddam Hussein's Iraqi army invaded Kuwait. He accompanied U.S. troops to Saudi Arabia as a member of the Pentagon press pool sent to cover the Iraqi invasion for U.S. media outlets.
Ydstie has been with NPR since 1979. For two years, he was an associate producer responsible for Midwest coverage. In 1982, he became senior editor on NPR's Washington Desk, overseeing coverage of the federal government, American politics, and economics. In 1984, Ydstie joined Morning Edition as the show's senior editor, and later was promoted to the position of executive producer. In 1988, he became NPR's economics correspondent.
During his tenure with NPR, Ydstie has won numerous awards. He was a member of the NPR team that received the George Foster Peabody Award for its coverage of Sept. 11. Ydstie's reporting from Saudi Arabia helped NPR win the Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award in 1991 for coverage of the Gulf War. In 2016, Ydstie received a Gerald Loeb Award for financial reporting for his contributions to an NPR series on financial planning.
Prior to joining NPR, Ydstie was a reporter and producer at Minnesota Public Radio. Ydstie is a graduate of Concordia College in Moorhead, Minnesota, where he is now on the Board of Regents. He earned a Bachelor of Arts degree, summa cum laude, with a major in English literature and a minor in speech communications. Ydstie was born in Minneapolis and grew up in rural North Dakota.
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The Trump administration has forged a tentative pact with Mexico on the North American Free Trade Agreement. The next step is to get Canada re-engaged in the talks. -
Wall Street's roller coaster continued Thursday, with all the major stock indexes posting drops of about 4 percent amid inflation concerns. The market has now tumbled 10 percent from its recent peak.
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Policymakers increased a key rate for the third time this year. The quarter-point move indicates the Fed is confident in the economy as it continues to recover from the financial crisis. -
Friday's GDP report is expected to show a rebound from a weak first quarter. But the U.S. economy still isn't likely to sustain the 3 percent growth rate the Trump administration is promising. -
The plan laid out by the president-elect is detailed — but different from what he promised during the campaign. His economic team says it will boost the middle class; several experts beg to differ. -
Productivity, a key measure of the economy's health, has been growing more slowly in recent years. Can Facebook and other social media distractions on the job be partly to blame? -
A boom in natural gas in the U.S. has driven prices to 10-year lows, threatening the viability of some producers. People needed less gas to heat their homes this winter, but at the same time a huge increase in gas production was made possible by new methods of coaxing gas out of shale rock formations. -
Oil prices have jumped sharply in the past two weeks, and the price of gasoline has followed suit. Experts are pointing to everything from the tensions with Iran to a decrease in supply as a possible cause. One expert even thinks the rise in fuel prices could be goodfor the economy.
