You’re reading Significant Digits, a daily digest of the numbers tucked inside the news.
3.2 percent
This summer was bad for movies; the third-quarter domestic box office haul is projected to fall 21 percent short of last year’s summer season. A strong first quarter, and an expectedly strong fourth quarter, will likely keep the movie business from hitting a disastrous shortfall, but 2017 box office receipts are projected to come in down 3.2 percent compared to 2016. [The Hollywood Reporter]
5 starters
Number of starters returning to Michigan’s college football team this year, the fewest of any lineup in the country. The team ranks 127th out of 130 teams in experience, thanks to that attrition. Still, they enter the season ranked 11th overall, so let’s see what they can pull off. (College football is back this weekend!) [FiveThirtyEight]
3.5 million unauthorized accounts
It turns out that the number of unauthorized customer and small business bank accounts illicitly opened by Wells Fargo is 70 percent higher than originally indicated. An independent investigation of the 165 million retail accounts opened from January 2009 through September 2016, found 3.5 million that were potentially unauthorized, up from the original figure of 2.1 million. [CNBC]
$876 million
Republicans in the House had been looking to cut $876 million from the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s disaster relief account. They seem likely to reconsider given Hurricane Harvey and the abysmal optics associated with gutting disaster aid right after a major natural disaster. But the $876 million cut had been planned to fund a portion of President Trump’s proposed U.S.-Mexico border wall. [AP News]
$1.2 billion
Jared Kushner’s family’s real estate company spent $1.8 billion to buy 666 Fifth Avenue in New York at the height of the housing bubble. Now, Kushner Cos. is scrambling to find a way to secure its financial future. The company holds half of the $1.2 billion mortgage on the building. It hasn’t paid any of that, and the full amount is due in February 2019. [Bloomberg]
61.5 billion kroner
Dong Energy — which stands for Danish Oil and Natural Gas — is getting out of the oil and natural gas business and moving completely to renewables. They’re now in the process of selling off their last oil and gas fields. And since 2011, the company has spent 61.5 billion kroner (exchange rates always move but that’s on the order of $10 billion) on wind farms and 4 billion on converting its power plants to use biomass. [The Wall Street Journal]
Looking to bookmark Significant Digits? Say no more.
If you see a significant digit in the wild, send it to @WaltHickey.