A former colleague, a person of upbeat disposition and someone who, along with his wife, achieved the American Dream here, recently sent ’round the following dispatch. Were it coming from somebody who was a congenital naysayer, that’d be one thing. Flowing from the keyboard of a person who’s been around the bidness block a long time and was a believer in Las Vegas‘ growth … well, that’s quite different. Read on.
“I think the town is dying and smart people need to get ahead of that. CityCenter has been jinxed and those hoping it will be some kind of savior are going to be disappointed. I’ve been reading coverage of the Global Gaming Expo and the experts seem to think that there is some God-given level of demand to visit Las Vegas, and as soon as people feel more secure in their jobs they will come flocking back. Ha.
“Well, jobs aren’t coming back. Not here. Not anywhere. There is so much excess to work out (residential, commercial, retail, people) that it will take years before people regain their confidence. And when the town was filled with folks seeing how much they could spend in three days, didn’t you used to wonder,’Don’t they know any better?’ Well, now they do.
“When your neighbor is in foreclosure and your brother is out of work, it’s hard to get excited about coming to Las Vegas and wiping your ass with $100 bills. So as the town reaches for the lowest common denominator to prevent the properties from looking like ghost towns, it’s driving away the high-end corporate business and expense-account-funded debauchery that the new Las Vegas was built around. You can only put so much regular gas into an engine built to run on premium before it sputters and dies.
“I don’t know if President Obama saw the stories about the stripper-mobile, but if he did he could be forgiven for feeling some smug satisfaction. The dude was right that companies on the dole should not come to Las Vegas. There are a lot of good people in this country who don’t buy what we sell and should not be forced to subsidize it.
“I hate being proved right on this, but do you remember Jeremy Aguero‘s Little-Mary-Sunshine speech to the PRSA? I told the dude then we were f’d, but he had the data on his side and when he showed people all the construction cranes they knew Las Vegas was going continue on its unabated trajectory toward heaven on Earth. I guess that wisdom got him booked for the 2010 Preview Las Vegas, put on by our Chamber of Commerce, which I believe is headquartered in a failing retail and entertainment complex.”
Well, I’m a believer in Warren Buffett’s philosophy of selling when people are confident, and buying when people are scared. There is definitely a lot to be scared of in Vegas right now, but I’m still not sure I’d buy any of it if the public sector stays on it’s current course. A combination of county and state level stupidity that I’ve documented numerous times before makes it too likely to fail.
Thanks for sharing your former colleague’s opinion with us Mr. McKee. It’s very interesting.
When he says, “And when the town was filled with folks seeing how much they could spend in three days, didn’t you used to wonder,’Don’t they know any better?’ Well, now they do.” I am going to comment on this below.
TIME Magazine had a cover story in April of 2009 with a picture of a change jar on it and a piece of white masking tape on the change jar that said, “THE NEW FRUGALITY”. The subheading said: The recession has changed more than just how we live. It’s changed what we value and what we expect — even after the economy recovers. It was a very good article about the current financial situation.
Things have definitely changed since September of 2008. Millions of people have lost their jobs, millions of people have lost a fortune in their 401k, etc. Things will turn around eventually but how much better will it get? That’s the $64,000 question or in the case of City Center the $8.5 billion dollar question.