Does anyone know the background on why AA mileage awards have more than doubled in price (no matter how far in advance you search) and whether it will ever be restored??

It used to be easy to find one-way flights to/from Brazil (Rio) from the US for 30k or less miles for economy, but now they are all a minimum of 75k through the beginning of August with the entire month of July being 130k(!).
A similar thing seems to go for Boston and New York.
It sure seems like the AAdvantage Miles are not worth what they used to be (like about half)!

Anyone else having this issue and/or know what's going on and what to expect in the future?