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(SOUNDBITE OF DROP ELECTRIC SONG, "WAKING UP TO THE FIRE")

A piece of news came out earlier this week that, remarkably, was not about politics or war or economic turmoil. It was about something that hopefully we could all appreciate, which is the beauty of the cosmos, right? NASA released images from their James Webb telescope, which offered us a glimpse into the great expanse of space. And for a moment it felt like we, as a human species, looked up and shared a moment of wonder.

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Space - the final frontier.

WOODS: And then we all came crashing back to Earth with reports of higher-than-expected inflation, international currencies going up and down and up and down, commodity prices falling, political shake-ups causing shockwaves around the world.

WOODS: Reality bites. This is THE INDICATOR FROM PLANET MONEY. I'm Darian Woods.

HIRSCH: And I, for better or for worse, am Paddy Hirsch.

WOODS: Bringing us back to Earth.

HIRSCH: Bringing you back to Earth with three indicators, global and intergalactic economics - serving that up right after the break.

WOODS: So for Indicators of the Week, we're going to start with an Earthly indicator, the Japanese yen.

HIRSCH: Yes, the yen is the lowest that it's been against the dollar in 24 years. The origins of this decline actually began just over a decade ago, thanks in the main to one man, Shinzo Abe, Japan's longest serving prime minister, who was, of course, assassinated last week. And Abe came into office in 2012 pledging to reverse more than 10 years of decline in the Japanese economy.

WOODS: Right. This is what's known as the lost decade, where Japan just wasn't growing a lot and seemed to just have this kind of malaise.

HIRSCH: Yeah, that's right. And Abe came up with this strategy, which people called the three arrows of Abenomics (ph). And the first arrow of these three was quantitative easing - that's buying lots of bonds to bring interest rates down and make it easier for businesses to borrow and spend. The second arrow, fiscal policy - that's stimulating the economy by pumping lots of government money into infrastructure and other projects. And Abe's third arrow was structural reform, which included expanding the workforce by including more women and more immigrants.

WOODS: And as far as I'm aware, he was moderately successful at achieving these goals.

HIRSCH: Yeah, he was. I mean, the economy did turn around and begin to grow. And Abe also managed to stabilize the ratio of government debt relative to national income for the first time in decades, which was a pretty big deal. And at first, Abenomics did address one of the biggest issues that Japan was facing at the time, the problem with its currency. When Abe came into office, the yen was so strong that it was making Japanese exports really expensive, and that was holding the economy down. And Abenomics reversed that through a combination of these arrows, and that sent the yen down 25% against the dollar in a single year. It was since then the decline has continued, and that has really helped Japanese companies that sell their goods overseas.

WOODS: But of course, with currencies, it's this double-edged sword all the time. There are, like, downsides to having a weaker currency, too.

HIRSCH: Yes. And a weak yen is now really biting hard on the Japanese economy at home. It's making imports of food, oil and other resources that Japan depends on very expensive. It's particularly hard for farmers who import fuel, feed and fertilizer - the three F's - all of which are becoming increasingly expensive due to global issues like the war in Ukraine. In other words, Shinzo Abe's policies regarding the currency did Japan a lot of good initially, but now the country may be getting too much of a good thing.

MA: All right. Paddy, thank you for that primer on Abenomics. Now we're going to go from Japan to the copper mines of Chile.

WOODS: That's right. So my indicator comes from Dr. Copper.

HIRSCH: Can I page Dr. Copper?

WOODS: I don't know if there's an M.D. involved here, but I mean, there's certainly a Ph.D. in forecasting. Copper is seen as a leading indicator of global economic growth. And when it goes up in price, the economy typically does pretty well. And when the price of copper goes down, well, watch out.

HIRSCH: I can't resist this, but it's the canary in the copper mine.

WOODS: But this copper canary is looking a little sick at the moment. There has been this 34% plummet in the price of copper since its peak in March of this year. And the reason why this metal is such a key indicator is it's used in so many things that we normally associate with a booming economy, and the big one is electrical wires. That's what most of it is used for. Copper is a great conductor. It's strong. It's resistant to corrosion. It's used in all kinds of electrics.

WOODS: Exactly. So think about a new factory going up. There's new electrical lines, more copper needed. And what goes into those factories? Well, machines, probably with a lot of copper wiring. And if the factory is making, say, electric cars, that is even more copper. So copper is this particularly volatile indicator, and it captures how optimistic the world is about growth. And given that central banks are raising interest rates around the world at the moment - not to mention the lingering harms of the pandemic and the war in Ukraine - traders in the copper market are getting out because they don't see that in the future there will be a whole lot of new factories being built in a hurry.

MA: So this could be, like, a new recession predictor.

MA: Like, instead of the yield curve, we got the copper curve.

WOODS: I mean, just like the yield curve, it is the result of brains around the world putting their money where their mouth is. The really interesting thing about this whole copper crash is that it's not like right now we have this copper glut unable to find a buyer. People are buying copper to build stuff. It's just that the traders, the people at laptops working for funds in New York and London and Shanghai, these people are not feeling great about the future. And so these futures contracts, which really drive the market, those are plummeting. And the copper price is really the outcome of these people betting that the globe might tip into recession.

HIRSCH: Well, I'm heartened to know that that's just a roll of the dice rather than an absolutely solid prediction.

WOODS: Well, that is the silver lining to your Moscow mule in your copper cup.

HIRSCH: Well, hopefully we'll have a little bit more good news from Adrian now.

MA: So I'm going to deviate from the formula a little bit here, right? My indicator is not going to be a straight economic number this week.

WOODS: You've got a habit of doing this, Adrian.

HIRSCH: Do you not like economics, Adrian?

MA: OK. Just stay with me. I think I have found a segue here, right? You just talked about copper, Darian, right? And where does copper come from? Where do all elements in the world come from? They come from the insides of stars. And this week, the human species got a groundbreaking new view of the stars.

HIRSCH: Whoa, that was deep.

MA: So NASA released the first batch of images that were taken from the James Webb telescope, this $10 billion machine they launched into space last December. And for a sense of scale, that would be equivalent to about 40% of NASA's most recent annual budget. And $10 billion is actually way, way more than what they thought it was going to cost when they started building the thing. Back then, they thought it was going to cost about 1 to 3 1/2 billion.

MA: Anyway, what this money has bought is the ability to capture images of the oldest galaxies in the universe with unprecedented clarity. So just for an example, check this out. I'm bringing up a picture here - one of the first pictures they took from this telescope. It is a cluster of galaxies catchily (ph) named S-M-A-C-S 0723.

WOODS: SMACS 723, I - it's got a ring to it.

HIRSCH: It looks like the inside of a boba drink.

MA: What this picture shows is a snapshot of the universe as it looked like 4.6 billion years ago. That is my indicator, 4.6 billion years.

HIRSCH: Oh, so this is, like, the primordial soup we're looking at.

HIRSCH: The primordial boba - I'm going to say that's not an economic indicator, but I'm into it.

MA: You say it's not an economic indicator. I say, what is an indicator?

MA: It's a number that tells us where we are as a society - right? - or where we're going or where we have been. And that is what the images coming from this camera do.

HIRSCH: Adrian, it's a Friday afternoon. This is kind of bending my mind a little bit. Can we have that Moscow mule, now?

MA: I will take one, too, please.

HIRSCH: This episode was produced by Nicky Ouellet with engineering by Debbie Daughtry. Kathryn Yang checked the facts. Viet Le is our senior producer. Kate Concannon edits the show. And THE INDICATOR is a production of NPR.

HIRSCH: Darian, "Star Wars" or "Star Trek"?

HIRSCH: Adrian, "Star Wars" or "Star Trek"?

HIRSCH: Well, I'm calling "Star Trek." So I guess it's a draw because Darian can't make up his mind.

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