Week in review
TUESDAY
Beginning in April, Avista Corp.’s residential customers could see a bit of relief on monthly electric bills.
The Bonneville Power Administration proposes a $336 million payout to Northwest utilities through the “residential exchange program.”
•Dale DesJarlais’ sleds make the cheap plastic kind look like tricycles racing in the Tour de France. The Post Falls man’s Gold Rush Sleds, made of bulletproof glass and steel, take sledders down hills at highway speeds and turn on a dime.
WEDNESDAY
It’s worrisome math: Slowing economic growth plus soaring prices could eventually equal “stagflation.” The latest worrisome news came Tuesday: a government report showing wholesale prices climbed 7.4 percent in the past year. That was the biggest annual leap in 27 years.
•The addition of 5,800 nonagricultural jobs helped drop Washington’s unemployment rate to 4.5 percent last month, a near record low, state economists said.
THURSDAY
The Federal Reserve is ready to lower interest rates again to brace the wobbly economy even as zooming oil prices spread inflation, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke signaled to Congress.
•House Democrats are primed to raise oil industry taxes. It didn’t hurt their cause when a barrel of crude reached the once unthinkable level of $102 and there was talk of possible $4-a-gallon gasoline this summer.
• Companies are racing to provide radioactive fuel for America’s nuclear renaissance. General Electric Co. and USEC Inc., along with European rivals Urenco Ltd. and Areva Inc., are pushing billions of dollars worth of new U.S. enrichment plants and technology so they don’t miss the new uranium boom.
FRIDAY
More than 130 million households will get letters from the Internal Revenue Service beginning next week, and the news is good. The letters are part of an effort to ensure people do not miss out if they are eligible for a economic stimulus check under the recently passed $168 billion aid plan.
•The new owner of the U.S. Bank Building in downtown Spokane has hired a Portland-based interior design firm to give parts of the historic building a makeover.