SAN FRANCISCO (KRON) – On today’s Winners & Losers, KRON4’s Rob Black discusses stocks slipping after a summer rally, the White House considering $10,000 in student loan forgiveness, and viewers traveling back to watch HBO’s “House of the Dragon.”
Loser: Stocks slip after ending summer rally
The recent sell-off has been driven by fears that the Federal Reserve will not ease up on its aggressive tightening and raising interest rates. Chairman Jerome Powell will have to weigh fighting inflation with the possibility of recession when he speaks at the Jackson Hole economic conference on Friday. September is usually a bad month for stocks anyway.
The Standard & Poor’s 500 and the Dow Jones Industrial Average have averaged a 1% loss in September — dating back to 1928 on the S&P 500 and 1896 for the Dow.
New home sales fell to their lowest level in six years.
Potentially good news for Elon Musk: A Twitter whistleblower alleged that executives misled the board and public on spam and security issues.
Amazon Prime has signed a deal with DirecTV to air “Thursday Night Football” games in bars and restaurants.
Forbes just released the NFL team valuation for 2022. The No. 1 Dallas Cowboys are the most valuable franchise in the league at a whopping $8 billion. The San Francisco 49ers are No. 8, at $5.2 billion and the Las Vegas Raiders are No. 9, at $5.1 billion.
Winner: White House considering $10K in student loan forgiveness
The White House is considering a plan to forgive $10,000 in student debt for borrowers who make less than $125,000.
The Biden administration will make a decision on student loan forgiveness by the end of August.
Monthly loan payments are scheduled to resume after over a two-year pandemic freeze.
It still remains uncertain how the administration will proceed, if at all, with loan cancellation.
Outstanding student loan debt balance exceeds $1.7 trillion, with 40 million Americans in debt for their education.
In 2019 some 10 million borrowers were behind on their payments.
Sweeping student loan forgiveness will likely anger some Americans, including those who never borrowed for their education or went to college.
Republicans question if it is a giveaway to highly-educated college graduates, if it will cause inflation to rise, and how it will be funded.
Sixty-two percent of voters support student loan forgiveness.
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Winner: Viewers travel back to watch HBO’s ‘House of the Dragon’
Almost 10 million Americans were interested in traveling back to Westeros, tuning in to watch “House of the Dragon across both linear HBO and HBO Max.
This is the largest audience of any new original series in the history of HBO.
The stakes are high for the streaming wars with Amazon Prime’s “Lord of the Rings” prequel coming up. The series features dragons, civil war, death, blood, sex and dragons.
The stakes are high for “House of the Dragon,” as streamers are looking to cost-cut.
Each episode costs between $15 million and $20 million to make.
HBO spent over $100 million on marketing, making it its largest campaign ever
The marketing of “House of the Dragon” recruited “Game of Thrones” superfans as unofficial brand ambassadors and build organic excitement ahead.
