U.S. Economic News
August 22, 2018
U.S. Economic Indicators
Existing home sales edged down 0.7% to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 5.34 million in July, and are 1.5% below year-ago levels. NAR notes existing home sales are now at their weakest level in over two years as buyers are increasingly priced out of the market for existing homes. NAR Report
U.S. News
Christopher Matthews of the Wall Street Journal writes that the hottest new area for investment in the oil industry is companies that handle drilling wastewater. Fracking in the Permian Basin alone produces over 600 million gallons of wastewater per day, and companies now are building new pipelines to transport the water, as opposed to trucking the water away as in the past. WSJ
The Wall Street Journal reports that Dallas Fed President Robert Kaplan says that the Fed should move ahead with gradual rate increases due to a very strong job market and firming inflation. Kaplan also noted that bond market developments may be signaling that the current expansion is getting long in the tooth. WSJ