US consumer prices shows slight increase in August C onsumer prices slowed in August, rising by a slight 0.1%, reflecting a big drop in the cost of gasoline and other energy products. The Labor Department says the tiny increase in its consumer price index followed a much bigger 0.3% rise in July which had been driven by a jump in energy prices. With energy costs falling in August for a third month out of the past four, the overall price increase slowed leaving consumer prices rising a modest 1.7% over the past year. Core inflation, which excludes volatile food and energy costs, rose 0.3% last month and 2.4% over the past year. The Federal Reserve has worried that inflation has been rising too slowly, citing this issue as one of the reasons it cut interest rates in July.
Wind and Solar expected to dominate energy market by 2035 N atural gas-fired power plants, which have crushed the economics of coal, are on the path to being undercut themselves by renewable power and big batteries. By 2035, it will be more expensive to run 90% of gas plants being proposed in the U.S. than it will be to build new wind and solar farms equipped with storage systems, according to a study by the Rocky Mountain Institute. It will happen so quickly that gas plants now on the drawing boards will become uneconomical before their owners finish paying for them, the study said. The development would be a dramatic reversal of fortune for gas plants, which 20 years ago supplied less than 20% of electricity in the U.S. Today that share has jumped to 35% as hydraulic fracturing has made natural gas cheap and plentiful, which is ironic as the gas plant is what forced scores of coal plants to close nationwide because of cost and environmental concerns.
NFL TV ratings rebound A s the NFL kicks off into the national spotlight with the start of a new season, it remains to be seen if TV’s biggest draw can continue the ratings renaissance it experienced in 2018. Television networks rely heavily on the NFL and having people in front of their TV’s watching games. Games and NFL-related programming accounted for 63% of Fox’s gross ratings points last season, according to MoffettNathanson. ESPN, CBS and NBC all got about a quarter of their aggregate gross ratings points from NFL content, so you can see that this trend is important to the networks. Like the rest of television programming, the NFL has seen its ratings decline in recent years due in part to viewers increasingly ditching cable for streaming services, with all four major NFL rights holders seeing ratings decline in 2016 and 2017, so this is awelcome change to the league and networks as it seems at least for now, that fans are going back to traditional ways of watching the game.
American joins United in extending grounding of Boeing 737 Max A merican Airlines is pulling all Boeing 737 Max from its schedules until early December which is expected to cause flight cancellations over Thanksgiving. All Boeing 737 Max aircrafts have been grounded since mid-March when regulators ordered airlines to stop flying passengers with them after two fatal crashes within five months of one another. American’s decision to extend cancellations because of the Max, follows a similar action by United Airlines, which said it would take the planes out of its schedule until Dec. 19. The latest changes mean the two airlines don’t expect to have the planes flying for the busy Thanksgiving holiday but that both companies expect the 737 Max would return in time for the busy Christmas travel period. Southwest Airlines, the largest 737 Max customer in the U.S., has removed its planes from its schedules until early January.
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SPOTLIGHT ON BUSINESS MAGAZINE • OCTOBER 2019
13 OCTOBER 2019 • SPOTLIGHT ON BUSINESS MAGAZINE
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