My article for Las Vegas Weekly on a bailout for Vegas has come out. Thanks to all of you for your suggestions. Actually, I argue there is a good chance that taxpayer money could be invested here with a lot of results. There is a small problem: Bailouts seem to first require sinking.

UNLV professor William Thompson, whom I interviewed for the Weekly article, points out  why Vegas isn’t getting in line for a bailout:


"Things are actually far better here, even now, than a place like Detroit, which has declined for years, or Wall Street, which imploded with bad debt. Thompson says, 'We all see the downfalls in revenues, but at worst we have fallen to where we were a few years ago. And a few years ago we were doing fine.'

 

Ultimately, unlike other troubled industries where the future is in doubt, Vegas, despite appearing to be a city on the precipice of economic misery, has become a bargain for casino shoppers and builders from outside the United States.

Thompson points to the quick licensing of the United Arab Emirates' state-controlled Dubai World last week as a precedent in which local gaming regulators appear to be offering flexibility to help the resorts. 'With foreign languages and the distance the books have to travel, it could be time consuming to investigate a foreign country. And they set a precedent by doing that approval quickly, probably because of the economy. The truth is if you can get someone to buy, there is a tremendous bargain in Vegas for resorts. But the money from banks isn’t there. And so I think that we are going to need the money from the Middle East and elsewhere. The money will come into Vegas. We can start and stop and start building. And it would be a good investment to encourage companies to come in, because economically it makes sense if you are looking at the bottom line.'

 

In other words, our bottom line is too good for our government, thus offering great appeal to companies such as ones controlled by the government of Dubai. With Wall Street and the big three automakers, the government is giving money to causes that seem so lost that no one else will throw good money after bad. But to many, gambling in Vegas remains no gamble at all if you own the casino."

Photo: Sarah Gerke