Re: More on Obama's attack on Vegas

I read the article that you linked. I've always felt reading comprehension was one of my stronger points, so I'd like to address things.

1)"Last week, both Wells Fargo and Goldman Sachs canceled corporate junkets scheduled to take place here in Las Vegas."

Is a junket the same as a learning convention in the corporate world ? They're not according to the dictionary.

2)"Gaming revenues fell every month last year and they were down nearly 19% in December which is a drop of 9.7% for all of 2008.
That is the worst gaming revenue decline in Nevada's history."

It stands to reason that as the economy has gotten worse people have less money to waste gambling. The article states nothing about
revenues related to the convention industry there. While I'll agree that the two are connected in such that the less people that come
to Las Vegas the less people there are to gamble obviously its not a one to one tradeoff.

For your premise to be correct Obama's comment would have had to affect Las Vegas retroactively which is impossible. With Decembers numbers being down 19% vs down 9.7% for the year we can surmise that revenue went down more each month during 2008. The only true test as to the whether Obama's words have hurt Las Vegas will be if those revenue numbers decline at a steeper rate in the months following that comment than they did before.

Fred Dase

Fred Dase said:

I read the article that you linked. I've always felt reading comprehension was one of my stronger points, so I'd like to address things.

1)"Last week, both Wells Fargo and Goldman Sachs canceled corporate junkets scheduled to take place here in Las Vegas."

Is a junket the same as a learning convention in the corporate world ? They're not according to the dictionary.

2)"Gaming revenues fell every month last year and they were down nearly 19% in December which is a drop of 9.7% for all of 2008.
That is the worst gaming revenue decline in Nevada's history."

It stands to reason that as the economy has gotten worse people have less money to waste gambling. The article states nothing about
revenues related to the convention industry there. While I'll agree that the two are connected in such that the less people that come
to Las Vegas the less people there are to gamble obviously its not a one to one tradeoff.

For your premise to be correct Obama's comment would have had to affect Las Vegas retroactively which is impossible. With Decembers numbers being down 19% vs down 9.7% for the year we can surmise that revenue went down more each month during 2008. The only true test as to the whether Obama's words have hurt Las Vegas will be if those revenue numbers decline at a steeper rate in the months following that comment than they did before.

Fred Dase

Just to be clear Fred. Goldman-Sachs didn't cancel their convention, they moved it to San Francisco. That tells me it's perception based, the same perception message the Mayor of Las Vegas is concerned other "non-recepients of bail-out money" corporations have received. So if one's argument is they shouldn't be having conventions because they took TARP money then Las Vegas should have nothing to do with it. In fact they paid a $600,000 penalty (with taxpayers money I guess) to the Mandalay Bay Hotel for cancelling....and they'll still spend the money on the convention elsewhere.