OFF TOPIC: Vegas economy

Jan 15, 2008, 10:31 AM

Visited Vegas at the end of CES, the largest convention of the year. I saw at least anecdotal evidence that the economy there is slowing.

First, the plane trip out. When I switched planes in Phoenix, I found the Vegas flight to be about half full. It has been since 9-11 that I've been a plane to Vegas that has been that empty, and I go about 3-4 times per year.

I spend much of my time at off-strip casinos where lots of locals go. It appeared to me that the lines for the buffets on the weekend were noticibly shorter, and that the casino in general was less crowded. The sportsbooks during the NFL playoff games had plenty of empty seats.

Finally, the paper on Friday morning reported that casino revenue last November was down significantly from November 06, the biggest decline of its type in years.

What this means for the future, I don't know. But if I start getting casino email telling me about reduced room rates in the coming months, and/or see airline ticket prices for Vegas declining, it'll tell me that the economy is definitely slowing in Vegas and elsewhere as well.

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harrydave17 years ago

I live in Phoenix, and the same factors are affecting us here. Two words...bad mortgages. The mortgage debacle has affected the economy at large, especially in these fast growth cities like Las Vegas and Phoenix. Builders are most affected, but it trickles to everyone else. I just read an internal Phoenix CIty government memo that projects a 15 to 20 percent decline in the general fund revenue - due to decreases in sales tax and builder fees. Does anyone remember the Savings and Loan meltdowns and bailouts some years ago? The financial community sure does know how to screw us over every 10 or 20 years.

compoundword17 years ago

harrydave: they're called "corrections"

David999917 years ago

In simple terms - a credit bubble (financed to a large extent by asian savers awash in our dollars we gave to them for consumables like flat screens Tvs and dvd players etc) -basically created an even large real estate bubble. CitiCorp own economists as of today are now predicting a further 8 to 9% housing price decrease in 2008 in certain major regions, followed by another huge adjustment in 2009. Of course these are the same guys who were making huge fees trading these CDO's (secured mortagages) and were saying 1 to 2 years back -everything was solid

Not surprised to see Vegas finally get hit with this

casualguy17 years ago

I'm feeling it now too. I was smart having almost everything in money market and was thinking about moving something into a fund to short the market. One day off and I guess I got impatient. Moved some money back into the market only to see it plummet in the last 10 days. Also speculated on a penny stock and was getting burned badly. However today it was up almost 30 percent. Maybe it'll come back. I did everything too fast again (except for moving my money into money market funds to start with) I left the majority of my money in money market and have been glad about that. Trying to force myself to hold out until I think the bottom has hit in the Dow in May, if one web site was correct. If they were correct about that, I'll check them out some more. They currently have saved me alot of my retirement funds. I thought maybe there would be a market rally before we hit bottom. I guess that's anybody's guess. I haven't really noticed the mortgage mess. I live in what seems to be about the only area of the US with house prices still going up.

jester21417 years ago

Anyone else buy gold? To bad the dollar is weak right now..

Book Guy17 years ago

I have one of those cheat-sheet charts that says now is not the time to buy gold. Stocks volatile, dollar weak, foreign stock markets less volatile, blah blah, you plug it all in and it says don't buy precious metals, buy utilities and blue-chip stocks. Just reporting it. I can't explain why.