(Global Edition) From the BBC World Service … After avoiding a debt downgrade to junk from Moody’s investor service, Italy is expected to get a request for changes to its submitted budget from the European Union – a first from the bloc. Then, it’s October, which means its  Christmas bonus time in Venezuela. Despite inflation that could hit 1 million percent this year, the government is doling out bonuses over the next few month, and they’ll be pegged to the country’s oil-backed cryptocurrency, the Petro.  Afterwards, we pay a lot of attention to hard facts and figures to measure successes of global economies. But what if happiness and wellbeing were factored in to the final statistics? We hear from the leader of one charity working with governments and businesses to make that a reality. GAIN Capital Group (gaincapital.com ), Michigan Economic Development Corporation (planetm.com ) and PayPal (paypal.com ). (10/22/2018)

Aired October 22, 2018

All Marketplace Morning Report content is available at marketplace.org