Shutdown Economics, U.S.- Colombia Tensions, Louvre Heist Fallout

With paychecks and contracts frozen, the government shutdown will hit the broader economy.

The risk is that you start to put some of these small businesses into financial stress.

What are the costs of not running the government?

I'm Leila Faldel.

That's Michelle Martin, and this is Up First from NPR News.

Colombia is recalling its ambassador to the U.S.

after President Trump called the country's president, quote, an illegal drug leader.

That was in response to to Colombia's president accusing Trump of murder over U.S.

boat attacks in the Caribbean.

And in France, outrage is growing after the Louvre Museum was robbed in broad daylight.

No security, no policeman, no camera.

It's a joke.

An international search for the thieves is underway.

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A lot of federal employees won't be getting paid this Friday.

That is the first full paycheck they will miss as a result of the government shutdown.

So far, the economic fallout from the shutdown, which began three weeks ago, has been limited, but analysts say the longer it drags on, the bigger the dent it may leave.

NPR's Scott Horsley joins us now to talk about this.

Good morning, Scott.

Good morning, Lily.

Okay, so we know it costs money to run the federal government, but what does it cost not to run it?

Yeah, there is a price to be paid for all this.

There's work that is not getting done.

Some of that work will have to be made up later.

You've got hundreds of thousands of federal employees who are either furloughed or in some cases working without pay.

Economist Brett Ryan of Deutsche Bank says most people can go a little while without a paycheck, but, you know, not indefinitely.

You know, they have mortgage payments to make.

They have credit card payments.

They got kids' tuition.

Like, everybody's got bills to pay.

By law, federal workers are supposed to get back pay once the shutdown ends.

But, you know, the White House has tried to cast doubt on whether that's going to happen.

So it wouldn't be surprising if some federal workers dial back their spending.

And, of course, that affects all the businesses those workers typically patronize.

Yeah.

Who else is paying a price for the shutdown so far?

Well, a lot of government contracting has been halted.

And unlike federal employees, contractors are not guaranteed to be made whole once the shutdown ends.

Bernard Yaros is with the global advisory firm Oxford Economics.

He estimates that every workday the shutdown goes on, some $800 million worth of contracts are not being awarded.

Now, again, a lot of that work is merely postponed, not scrapped, but Yaros says about half those contracts would typically go to small businesses and they may be getting impatient.

What we know about small businesses is that they tend to have relatively thin cash buffers.

So the risk is that you start to put some of these small businesses into financial stress.

And as a result, they have to furlough workers themselves, cut pay, or even lay off workers outright.

And of course, the shutdown is also affecting government functions that typically help the economy run smoothly, like air traffic controllers.

You know, we've seen flights delayed and even canceled because controllers who were already shorthanded are now even more so.

Are there any big speed bumps to watch for?

Yeah, a big one could come at the beginning of next month.

You know, if Congress doesn't resolve this by then, the food stamp program, which helps to feed more than 40 million people, may not be able to pay SNAP benefits in November.

And Yarrow says that would have an immediate effect, not only on those families, but on the whole U.S.

food chain.

That would be a shock, you know, a hit.

And if that goes away, that's where you would be very concerned about the effects of people really pulling back on their consumption if those SNAP benefits go away.

And Yarrow says that would be felt most acutely in the South and in the West, where families are most heavily relying on food stamps.

Do we have a good idea of what the total price tag of the shutdown is so far?

You know, we really don't.

Experience shows that past shutdowns have been costly, both for the government and for the broader economy.

But part of the challenge here is that government economists who ordinarily tally that price tag have themselves been idled by the shutdown.

You know, we didn't get the usual jobs report earlier this month.

A lot of other economic snapshots have been delayed.

The one exception is the September inflation report.

That is going to come out on Friday, albeit nine days late.

Some government number crunchers were actually called back from furlough just to finish that report because Social Security needs it to calculate next year's cost of living increase.

NPR Scott Horsley, thank you, Scott.

You're welcome.

Colombia used to be the top U.S.

ally in Latin America and a key partner in the war on drugs.

But since President Trump was sworn in for his second term, relations with Colombia have deteriorated.

Things are so bad that Trump is now openly calling Colombia's president a, quote, illegal drug leader.

He's also threatening to directly intervene in Colombia to stop the flow of cocaine.

In response, Colombia announced Monday that it will withdraw its ambassador to Washington.

For more on the dispute, we go to reporter John Otis in Bogota.

Good morning, John.

Good morning, Michelle.

What do we know about why Trump is doing this?

Well, a lot of this has to do with Trump's policy of ordering lethal military strikes on alleged drug boats coming out of Venezuela.

It's unclear whether these strikes are legal, and they've killed more than two dozen people.

Colombian President Gustavo Petro says that one of these attacks last month destroyed the boat of a stranded Colombian fisherman who had no ties to drug smuggling.

He then accused the Trump administration of murder.

That angered Trump, who on Sunday said on social media that Petro was, quote, an illegal drug leader strongly encouraging the massive production of drugs.

Trump also threatened to cut off USAID and to raise tariffs on Colombia.

Has Trump provided any evidence that Petro is tied to drug trafficking?

No, he hasn't.

And Petro has actually has strongly denied these accusations.

In fact, Petro's political rise was partly due to his time in the Colombian Senate, where he was a vocal critic of drug trafficking groups.

Now, the fact remains that Colombia is the world's number one supplier of cocaine, but we should also remember that U.S.

drug users are helping to fuel the cocaine trade here.

And besides, it's actually synthetic opioids like fentanyl that are causing most of the overdose deaths in the U.S.

And Colombia is not a major exporter of fentanyl.

But you have been reporting that Petro and Trump have been feuding for months, so I take it this goes beyond the drug issue.

Yes, it does.

Petro is a leftist.

He's Colombia's first ever left-wing president.

He disagrees with Trump on almost everything.

And unlike other world leaders, Petro is not afraid to say so.

For example, Petro initially rejected U.S.

military flights of deported Colombian migrants.

At a street rally last month in New York, Petro urged U.S.

soldiers to disobey President Trump.

That prompted the State Department to cancel Petro's U.S.

visa.

But Petro doesn't seem to care about the consequences.

Over the weekend, he expressed support for the No Kings rallies in the U.S., and he also had more harsh words for Trump Monday in this interview with Univision TV.

No, no, Petro is saying here that Trump is not the king of Colombia.

Here, we do not accept kings, period.

So, if Trump does make good on his threats to cut off aid, how would that affect Colombia?

Well, Well, aid to Colombia has drastically fallen in recent years, but it still receives about $230 million per year in U.S.

aid.

But a lot of that money actually goes towards helping Colombians fight the drug cartels.

So, you know, shutting down U.S.

aid could end up backfiring it, could really end up hurting the effort to fight against the drug cartels here in Colombia.

That is John Otis.

He's reporting from Bogota, the capital of Colombia.

John, thank you.

Thank you very much.

French police are still looking for the culprits two days after thieves stole millions of dollars worth of jewels in a brazen daytime heist at the world's most visited art museum.

Meanwhile, shock is turning to anger as the French discover the huge gaps in security at their beloved Louvre Museum.

We're going out of NPR's Eleanor Beardsley to hear more.

Eleanor, good morning.

Good morning, Michelle.

Would you just remind us of what happened?

I mean, this, geez, it sounds like a movie.

Yeah, it does.

Sunday morning at 9:30 a.m.

in broad daylight, a moving truck with a ladder on the back pulled up to a sidewalk next to a wing of the museum.

Two men climbed up to the second-floor balcony and pried open the window to enter the gallery.

Now, they were not wearing masks and cat suits.

They had on yellow reflective vests.

They were disguised to look like ordinary maintenance workers.

And once inside, a Louvre worker actually filmed the back of one of the men, and he was cutting open one of the glass cases with a round electric saw.

The men stole the royal jewels, crowns, tiaras, necklaces, mostly from the 19th century era of Emperor Napoleon III.

They came out the same window and sped away on scooters driven by their accomplices who were waiting for them.

Do the police, do the authorities, have any idea who this might be?

No,

no idea who did it.

Last night, the prosecutor put out a statement and said, nothing is being ruled out.

They do think it was a well-organized gang.

There could be foreign interference.

Possibly someone very rich could have ordered the heist.

Likely not, because these jewels cannot be displayed or resold in their original form.

They're too recognizable.

But time is of the essence here because the thieves will likely dismantle them, melt down the gold, and sell everything separately, and a part of French history and culture will be lost forever.

So, what do we know about how this happened?

I mean, about the security at the museum.

Well, we're finding out just how lacking the security is at the world's most visited art museum.

According to a French government internal report out last year, the museum was way behind on things like video surveillance.

For example, more than half the rooms in some of the most visited wings have no video surveillance at all.

Also, there was a question about the alarm of the wing broken into.

It went off, but not when they broke in.

It was as they were leaving.

By the way, the job took less than eight minutes.

And there's growing anger in France because people feel violated.

These jewels belong to all the French people.

And here is Pierre-Jean Chalenson.

He's a top Napoleonic era collector himself himself who knew these jewels well.

No security, no policeman, no camera.

It's a joke.

It's really a joke.

And I think the director and the people in charge of the Louvre Museum should get out of the job.

So I take it the museum is closed.

Any idea when it will reopen?

It is closed.

I was out there yesterday and there were still hundreds of people trying to like look around and see looking at that window and everything which is boarded up.

It's likely to open tomorrow and that's also when the head of the Louvre will be grilled by a Senate Commission on Culture, presided by Centris Center Laurent Lafon.

And here he is speaking on the radio this morning.

He said we need explanations on what happened.

Did the alarm go off?

Were there video cameras?

How long did it take Louvre personnel to react?

You know, there's a lot of scrutiny about Louvre security guards and personnel, though their first job is to protect the public and get them out of harm's way, which they did.

The employees actually went on strike last year over poor working conditions.

And this year, in January, Macron announced a huge upgrade of the Louvre to make it modern in line with security and international tourism and to give the Mona Lisa its own room.

But that won't begin that work until 2031.

How do we protect these precious artworks until then?

That is NPR's Eleanor Bearsley.

Eleanor, thank you.

Thank you, Michelle.

And that's Up First for Tuesday, October 21st.

I'm Michelle Martin.

And I'm Layla Falden.

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