Losing Vegas

I often find myself reading Time Magazine online. If I am flying I actually may buy a copy of the magazine, but most of the time, almost daily really, I check its online version.

During the filming of Deregulating Greed I sat down with Justin Fox, a Time business reporter and blogger. He is in the film, kind of an anchor, kind of a Greek chorus. He shared all kinds of interesting perspectives on the economy, how the collapse happened and what we might expect in the future. Smart guy.

But the linked story at the top of this page is a Joel Stein piece on Las Vegas. It is a great piece and one I think a lot of people who have ever visited the city will enjoy, like and in the end shake their heads. Vegas did what most other American cities did in the past 10 years or so, borrow a boat load of cash and invest it in useless stuff. Individuals used home loans to buy big screen TV's and gas guzzling cars. Vegas developers bartered their way for billions to build lavish casinos without ever thinking that the real estate balloon may some day burst. When it did, it burst especially bad in Vegas.

In some ways, Vegas is everything great about America and everything that is wrong. It is great because it allows people to have fun, to live beyond their means for a weekend, to gamble and drink and partake in all sorts of behaviors probably frowned upon the towns and cities that the people who flock to Vegas usually call home. It is also a perfect example of what is wrong. The above mentioned living beyond your means is not a good long term lifestyle, as many many people are finding out. Also, if you look around any place in America you will see the bodies of people who have spent too much time in the proverbial all you can eat buffets.

While Vegas plays up its naughty image, "what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas," one of the great lines from this summers blockbuster comedy The Hangover was "except herpes". Vegas does that, brilliant at the PR that makes it sound glamorous and sexy, and yet, anyone who has ever spent a night walking from casino to casino gets bombarded with postcards for hookers and sad and pathetic drunks.

So read the Time article and think about your last trip to Vegas, and think about what happens when people exploit a weakness, addiction and greed, and in the end all houses made of cards share the same fate.