Word: casino
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Just as Americans did with their houses, casino owners borrowed way too much money to build hotels that were way too big. Economists like Yale's Robert Shiller have warned that the next big wave of failures in the U.S. recession will be in commercial real estate - and once again, Las Vegas is headlining. Even worse, the bottom fell out as casino owners were building, so a number of them couldn't replace construction loans with the financing that was once readily available to complete and open hotel-condo-casino projects. Deutsche Bank foreclosed on the $3.9 billion Cosmopolitan Hotel...
...recession has hit everything from philanthropy to stripping to the solvency of Nevada. Because Nevada has no income tax and relies almost entirely on taxing casino owners, the state is nearly bust. Governor Jim Gibbons, a Republican, whom only 11% of voters say they would re-elect, tried to turn down federal stimulus money, was accused of cheating on his wife and lost control of the legislature, having his vetoes overridden more times than any other Nevada governor. Budget cuts have closed the only hospital cancer wing for uninsured patients. "We're on the bottom of every bad list," says...
...February of this year, he said he had lost $36.5 billion - more than the GDP of half of the countries in the world. In the years before that slide, banks were begging him to take their money, given his massive success in building the first Vegas-style hotel and casino in Macao, China, in 2004. Adelson didn't hesitate, taking all he could get and building an entire mini-Vegas in Macao called the Cotai Strip, along with huge casinos in Singapore; he also doubled his Vegas space by adding the Palazzo to his Venetian hotel. In a short time...
Adelson is a self-made, risk-loving, Boston-born entrepreneur who, after creating the hugely successful COMDEX computer convention in 1979, helped turn Vegas into the top convention destination. He's a feisty ultraconservative who has managed, seemingly on purpose, to make enemies of all the other casino owners, a pretty friendly group. When his nemesis Wynn invited him to dinner recently to bury the hatchet, Wynn says Adelson refused, recalling that Wynn had once referred to him as Mr. Magoo. Sitting for an interview at a giant conference table, Adelson stops the conversation every time his videographer...
Psihoyos refers to the team he recruits, which includes a moldmaker from Industrial Light & Magic and a pair of champion deep-sea free divers, as being like Ocean's Eleven. He's kidding. Sort of. The goal is a lot worthier than emptying the vault at a Las Vegas casino, but in terms of style, that's what The Cove is emulating. Characters are introduced with a flourish--the daredevil, the soulful surfer, the bumbling cops--and Psihoyos takes the George Clooney role. (He's got the tan and the big white teeth.) There's time-lapse photography, footage shot...