Friday Reading - Glitz and Grit

Here are two interesting articles.  The first is a Wall Street Journal story on MGM's huge City Center development along the Las Vegas Strip.  This project was started six years ago, so it couldn't have had worse timing.  The article provides insight into the Las Vegas housing market:

Las Vegas has experienced some of the worst of the housing bust, exacerbated by overbuilding. Home prices in January in the Las Vegas area were down more than 60% since spring 2006, according to the S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Index, including a 9% drop during 2011. Luxury high-rise condo towers that were constructed on or around the Las Vegas Strip at the height of the development frenzy were particularly affected.

But some hard-hit markets in the U.S. have begun to show signs of recovery. The high-rise condo market in Miami, for instance, has been buoyed by surprisingly strong demand from foreign buyers, and the Phoenix housing market has recently seen a large jump in demand from investors.

While the Las Vegas economy isn't as diverse as better-performing cities, there are some glimmers of improvement. Housing inventory levels are less than half a year ago, according to Applied Analysis, an economic consulting firm in Las Vegas. And gambling revenue on the Las Vegas Strip is up for the past six months through February, while visitation and room rates also have continued to edge up, according to the Las Vegas Visitors and Convention Authority.

The second article switches from the glitz of Las Vegas to the grit of oil and gas drilling in shale rock formations.  Bloomberg reports on earth quakes caused by fracking the shale for natural gas, in particular the impact of disposal wells used for fracking waste.   This is quite a statistic:

U.S. Geological Survey researchers found that, for three decades prior to 2000, seismic events in the nation’s midsection averaged 21 a year. They jumped to 50 in 2009, 87 in 2010 and 134 in 2011, according to the study, which was presented April 18 at the annual meeting of the Seismological Society of America. 

According to the article, "researchers think an increase in wastewater injected into the ground by drilling operators may be the cause of a sixfold increase in the number of earthquakes that have shaken the central part of the U.S. from 2000 to 2011, according to a U.S. Geological Survey study."