Flights Grounded Across the U.S.

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

This episode is supported by Anthropic, the team behind Claude. Every business wants to move faster. Few can afford to be wrong. That's why the brands you trust also trust Claude.

Alex Ossola (0:14)

What's driving the grocery prices that are straining Americans' finances, and why those are going to stick around?

Ian Hodgson (0:20)

While these freight costs react immediately to the price of diesel, the peak of the impact won't really hit grocery shelves until 12 to 18 months down the line.

Alex Ossola (0:29)

Plus, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent turns up the heat on commerce's Howard Lutnick. And the FAA halts flights across the US after communication outages at air traffic control facilities. It's Friday, November 15th. I'm Alex Ossola for The Wall Street Journal. This is the PM Edition of What's News, the top headlines and business stories that move the world today.

This just in, shortly before we published, the FAA has stopped all departing US flights for, quote, reasons of safety. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy wrote on X that there had been a communication issue impacting air route traffic control centers and that FAA technicians are investigating the issue.

An FAA spokeswoman said that planes already in the air can keep flying to their destinations. Meanwhile, on social media, travelers were reporting that taxiing planes were turned around and that passengers were deplaning. Flight crews signaled that the delays could last hours. Halting all departures across the country is a pretty unusual step. The last time this happened was in 2023 when there was an outage of the FAA's Notice to Airmen system, which provides critical information to pilots. For more on this developing story, visit wsj.com.

Separately an update on the Microsoft Outage. The company said this afternoon that it was seeing a quote broad recovery of its systems. Hundreds of thousands of users across the world reported issues with Outlook and Teams starting yesterday afternoon, disrupting governments, schools and businesses. Microsoft says the outage came from a technical issue that wasn't related to cyber attacks or AI agents. With no access to email, users took to social media to express their frustration and occasionally their delight.

SPEAKER_1 (2:16)

Well, it's Friday the 13th and Outlook is still down.

Ian Hodgson (2:19)

And everybody's freaking out.

SPEAKER_4 (2:21)

I wonder if at Microsoft they thought to unplug it, wait 10 seconds, and then plug it back in. It's usually what tech support tells me to do when I'm having issues. I'm flabbergasted.

Ellen Gamerman (2:30)

Outlook, come back!

Alex Ossola (2:31)

Microsoft said some users might still have issues as the company works to fully restore its services.

At the Fed, Kevin Warsh is making his mark by cutting the number of interest rate decisions the central bank makes each year. While this year had eight of those votes scheduled, next year will have seven. Then in 2028, there will be just six interest rate decisions. Warsh has long argued that central bankers talk too much and overemphasize the most recent piece of economic data, and that fewer meetings would help offset that. So what does that mean for investors? Those interest rate decisions are major market movers. Having fewer of them could mean that the Fed will make bigger cuts or hikes each time than they would have, and make each decision an even bigger event.

The NVIDIA drama is still clouding the outlook for the AI trade.

Tech stocks slumped, with chip and data center stocks selling off. NVIDIA dropped another 2% today, closing down almost 13% for the week. It lost more than half a trillion dollars in market cap this week, its largest weekly decline ever. For today, the NASDAQ dropped 0.9%, while the S&P slipped 0.4%.

The Dow closed slightly higher. Meanwhile, bond markets sold off, as investors expected more interest rate hikes from the Federal Reserve. The benchmark 10-year yield rose to more than 5.15%, up nearly 0.3% point in a week.

Cost of living has been top of mind for many Americans. And nowhere are they feeling it more strongly than at the grocery store. Last month, food costs rose at the fastest rate in six months. And things may get worse before they get better. WSJ economics reporter Ian Hodgson is here to discuss. Ian, one major reason food prices are rising is because the Iran War is driving up fuel costs. How do high fuel prices actually affect how much food costs? How was that passed through?

Ian Hodgson (4:28)

Diesel costs affect food prices at just about every point along the supply chain, right? Think of farmers using diesel to power their tractors, taking that food to distribution centers, getting it to your local grocery store.

Every point along that process requires diesel fuel, which has been at historic highs over the last few months. And the biggest issues are coming in among fresh fruit and produce. These need to be picked quickly at a specific time of the year. They need to be refrigerated as they move, and they need to get onto consumer shelves as quickly as possible. They're really the most exposed to these price shocks.