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"It would be fair to characterize Charles Schwab as a financial services supermarket," Michael Wong, director of North American equity research and financial services at Morningstar, told CNBC. "Anything that you want, you can find in Charles Schwab's platform." Charles Schwab was among the firms that benefited from the growth of retail investing during the coronavirus pandemic, and it’s now facing the consequences of Federal Reserve’s aggressive interest rate hikes. Charles Schwab told CNBC it was unable to participate in this documentary. Watch the video above to learn more about how Charles Schwab battled the ever-evolving financial services market – from fees to fintech – and how the reward doesn’t come without the risk.

Persons: Charles Schwab, Michael Wong, Charles Schwab's, ” Alex Fitch, Edward Jones, Morgan Stanley, Charles Schwab’s, fintech – Organizations: Charles Schwab Corp, North, Morningstar, CNBC, Oakmark Equity, Income, Fidelity, Interactive, Stifel, JPMorgan, UBS, Robinhood Locations: United States

The Federal Reserve enacts monetary policies to stabilize prices and maximize employment in the U.S. economy. These dueling goals are known as the dual mandate. For example, if prices are too hot, the Fed may vote to raise interest rates to influence a decrease in borrowing. Other experts argue that the dual mandate remains key to keeping the U.S. economy safe and stable. Watch this video to see how the Fed tries to strike a near-impossible balance to promote both parts of the dual mandate.

Persons: Danielle DiMartino Booth, Thomas Hoenig, David Wessel Organizations: QI Research, CNBC, International Monetary Fund, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, Hutchins, Brookings Institution Locations: U.S

"It really seems like companies have become addicted to junk fees." Junk fees are making companies billions of dollars richer and the practice spans industries, including banking, telecom, entertainment and hospitality. CNBC sorted some of the biggest junk fee offenders into three separate buckets. "Junk hotel fees and these ancillary fees are bringing in about $3 billion a year for the hotel industry," Wolfe told CNBC, citing a Consumer Reports estimate. Watch the video above to learn more about where junk fees hide, how agencies are proposing changes, where policy falls short and whether increased regulatory oversight may be enough to squash junk fees once and for all.

Since 1977, the Federal Reserve has focused on creating maximum employment and maintaining stable prices, commonly known as the dual mandate. "[Maximum employment is] this more sort of amorphous thing," Rucha Vankudre, a senior economist at labor market analytics firm Lightcast, told CNBC. However, at the Federal Open Market Committee news conference in January 2022, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell announced that "labor market conditions are consistent with maximum employment." Maximum employment is also difficult to quantify because existing measures of employment, such as the unemployment rate or the labor force participation rate, often do not account for certain groups of people. Watch the video above to learn more about what maximum employment really means and how inflation impacts employment.

This valuation comes after a rich global history showcasing wars fought over salt, trade routes built for commodities, taxes levied against the mineral and even cities named in sodium's legacy. "You could not have an international economy if you didn't have salt," Mark Kurlansky, author of "Salt: A World History," told CNBC. "We're seeing that the majority is deicing salt," Seth Goldstein, equities analyst with Morningstar, told CNBC. However, if too much salt permeates our environment, the effects can be dangerous, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Runoff from deicing salts that keep our roads safe in wintry weather is the most obvious way that salt enters the environment.

The 2% inflation target is key to the Federal Reserve's vision for stable prices in the U.S. economy, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. But, "the 2% inflation target, it's relatively arbitrary," Josh Bivens, director of research at the Economic Policy Institute, told CNBC. "We led the way in inflation targeting," Arthur Grimes, professor of wellbeing and public policy at Victoria University, told CNBC. Canada announced its inflation target in 1991, and the United Kingdom followed suit in 1992. Then, Sweden and Finland declared inflation targets in 1993, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

It's that simple," Larry Olmsted, author of "Real Food/Fake Food," told CNBC. Some estimates say food fraud affects at least 1% of the global food industry at a cost as high as $40 billion a year, according to the Food and Drug Administration. "We might not know the overall impact of food fraud because so much of what fraudsters do is hidden from us and has been for centuries." Between 2012 and 2021, the most common type food fraud was lying about an animal's origin and dilution or substitution, both ranking at 16% of recorded incidents by food-safety monitor Food Chain ID. The Food Fraud Prevention Think Tank suggests five questions a consumer can ask themselves to reduce their vulnerability to product fraud.

The United States has just about 90 million planted acres of corn, and there's a reason people refer to the crop as yellow gold. In 2021, U.S. corn was worth over $86 billion, according to calculations from FarmDoc and the United States Department of Agriculture. "We're really good at [corn production]," Seth Meyer, chief economist at the USDA, told CNBC. Corn is in what we buy, including medications and textiles, and corn is turned into ethanol, which helps to fuel cars across the nation. "Do we get the corn acres because we've got the support, or do we have the support because we have the corn acres?"

"I think our biggest problem, at least for the foreseeable future, is high inflation," Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Analytics, told CNBC. The Fed can raise interest rates to slow inflation, which ultimately makes the cost of borrowing higher for everyday Americans, and that can be just as painful as inflation. Fiscal policy enacted by Congress and power wielded by big business can help fight rising costs. "Congress has much more targeted tools," Claudia Sahm, former Fed economist, told CNBC. Watch the video above to learn more about how corporations and Congress influence inflation, why the Fed doesn't have to take on rising costs alone and what it will take to normalize the U.S. economy.

Moody's Analytics' chief economist Mark Zandi cautions that a recession may be on the horizon. In an interview with CNBC's Andrea Miller, Zandi said a recession did not occur in the first half of this year. Zandi called employment levels the "most important indicator[s]" of a recession. Zandi attributed the confusion about whether the U.S. experienced a recession in the first half of this year to the coronavirus pandemic and the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The Moody's chief economist said that if rising prices don't ebb “the only way to get rid of that persistent stubborn inflation would be to push the economy into a recession.” If there is a recession, Zandi said it "probably won’t happen until the second half of 2023."

From rising inflation to a red-hot job market and the negative gross domestic product in between, economists are divided on the health of the U.S. economy. This comes at a time when the labor market could hardly appear stronger. In July 2022, there were 11.2 million job openings, revealing a shortage of workers for available positions. "The question is how steeply they will fall, how sharply they will fall, if they go back to 7 million [job openings], the level before the pandemic." Not to mention, the labor market is facing off against the "Great Resignation."

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