The average price of a gallon of gas in the Puget Sound area fell to $4.24 on Monday, according to AAA. That’s 15 cents lower than the record high that was set in the region in late June, although it’s still $1.30 higher than the average price a year ago. The auto club’s survey found that average price of diesel locally is just below $4.90 a gallon.
Best Buy to start selling musical gear
Hoping to cater to everyone from the garage guitarist to a recording musician, Best Buy Co. Inc. will set aside space for musical instruments and gear in dozens of stores nationwide. The nation’s largest consumer electronics retailer plans to open as many as 85 of the music centers by the end of the year. Each will include roughly 1,000 different products with well-known brand names such as Fender, Gibson and Roland.
Plan aims to help mortgage sector
The Bush administration and federal banking regulators joined with the nation’s four largest banks Monday to endorse a new way to pump money into the battered U.S. mortgage market. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson unveiled a set of best practices designed to encourage banks to issue a debt instrument known as a covered bond. The administration hopes these bonds will replace some of the mortgage financing that has disappeared as investors have incurred huge losses.
Verizon earnings up, revenue short
Verizon Communications Inc.’s second-quarter earnings rose 12 percent, while revenue was shy of expectations and customers disconnected their landlines faster than before. The nation’s second-largest telecommunications company earned nearly $1.9 billion, or 66 cents per share, in the quarter, up from $1.7 billion a year ago. Revenue rose 3.7 percent to $24 billion. The company lost 11 percent of its residential landlines in the past year.
GM cuts production lines in two states
General Motors Corp. will cut shifts at plants in Ohio and Louisiana, eliminating 1,760 jobs, as part of the automaker’s plan to reduce vehicle production due to weak demand for trucks and sport utility vehicles. The cuts bring GM’s truck and SUV production cuts to just under the 300,000 units company officials had hoped for this year. GM already has been idling various truck and SUV production.
PSE buys power plant in Sumas
Puget Sound Energy has completed the purchase of a 125 megawatt natural gas-fired power plant in Sumas. The $30 million transaction with a subsidiary of National Energy Systems Co. of Kirkland includes a four-mile pipeline that brings natural gas to the plant from a main Canadian gas transmission line. The Sumas plant was built in 1993 near the U.S.-Canada border.
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