With less than a week until Election Day, do political donations still matter?

Political candidates are always asking for money. A listener called in to ask if donating actually makes a difference so close to Election Day and what happens to donations that go unspent after Tuesday. We’ll get into it and answer more of your questions about the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and why fines might not keep Meta from breaking campaign finance laws. Plus, Kai and Kimberly fill us in on what they look for when they’re car (or motorcycle) shopping.

Here’s everything we talked about today:

• • “Did Money Win?” from OpenSecrets

• • “The 2018 Small Donor Boom Was Drowned Out by Big Donors, Thanks to Citizens United” from the Brennan Center for Justice

• • “Republicans Confront Unexpected Online Money Slowdown” from The New York Times

• • “Supreme Court overturns law that barred Ted Cruz from fully recouping a personal loan he made to his campaign” from The Texas Tribune

• • “Money isn’t leaving politics any time soon” from Marketplace

• • “When a political campaign ends, where does all the extra money go?” from CBS News

• • Strategic Petroleum Reserve from the Department of Energy

• • “What is the Strategic Petroleum Reserve?” from PBS NewsHour

• • “Selling the government’s oil stockpile while prices are low seems ridiculous … is it?” from Vox

• • “Strategic oil release comes with guaranteed buybacks, but will anyone do the drilling?” from Marketplace

• • “Meta fined $24.7M for campaign finance disclosure violations” from AP News

If you’ve got a question about the economy, business or technology, let us know. We’re at makemesmart@marketplace.org or leave us a message at 508-U-B-SMART.