Reported by Star-Bulletin staff & wire
Thursday, April 1, 1999
HawTel hooks up Hilo business park
HILO -- W.H. Shipman Business Park in Keaau, south of Hilo, has been declared a GTE SmartPark because of its up-to-date communications capabilities, according to GTE Hawaiian Tel. The GTE designation means business have access to fiber optic links digital switching, wireless services, and other services, the company said yesterday.Shipman is the first business park in Hawaii to receive the designation, although there are more than 50 other sites with the designation in the rest of the country, said Hawaiian Tel spokesman Keith Kamisugi.
Mortgage rates stay below 7%
WASHINGTON -- The average interest rate on 30-year fixed-rate mortgages held steady at just below 7 percent this week. The average was 6.98 percent, the same as last week, according to Freddie Mac, the mortgage company.That's down from a 10-month high of 7.11 percent three weeks earlier but nearly a quarter percentage point higher than the 6.74 percent average at the end of January.
Fifteen-year mortgages averaged 6.58 percent this week, down from 6.61 percent. One-year, adjustable-rate mortgages averaged an initial rate of 5.65 percent, down from 5.69 percent.
Americans' incomes, spending on the rise
WASHINGTON -- Americans' personal income increased at a robust pace in February and their spending even faster, sending the nation's savings rate into negative territory again.Personal income increased a seasonally adjusted 0.5 percent in February following a 0.6 percent gain in January, the Commerce Department said today. Consumer spending, meanwhile, jumped 0.7 percent after a 0.4 percent rise the month before.
Both figures were expected by analysts and illustrate the strength of the U.S. economy during the first quarter.
Economists had been expecting overseas economic turmoil to appreciably slow U.S. growth but now concede it didn't come, at least to any great extent, in the quarter just ended.
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