The State of Nevada is now #1 in two categories: home foreclosures and joblessness. Nevada's unemployment rate reached 14% in May -- that's a record. Michigan moves to #2.
What was the hotbed of the casino and condo construction boom just a few years ago is now the epicenter of mortgage crisis and unemployment.
Against that grim background, City Center -- a mega casino and shopping complex -- recently opened. Also, casino impresario Steve Wynn opened Encore within just the past couple of years. Seems like the captains are betting on the boom to return, even if they are investing big in Macau -- a Chinese destination where more money is gambled compared to even Las Vegas -- while cutting Vegas jobs "to reduce overstaffing." (June 15, The Las Vegas Sun)
But staff cuts only go so far -- Vegas needs visitors, and visitors need money to gamble. When the financial crisis was raging in December 2008, Elliott Wave International's monthly Financial Forecast reported that, "Trump and Harrah's gambling enterprises blamed heavy losses in recent weeks on 'vanishing gamblers'", and explained that "...the gambling boom was an extension of a last ditch societal effort to 'go for broke'."
At EWI's Message Board, a reader recently asked EWI's president Robert Prechter this question:
"It appears that the best shape to describe the economic trend we are in is not a V, not a W, not an L, not a square root sign, but a lightning bolt -- zigzaging down from left to right?"
Bob's answer was a simple, "Yes."
Imagine the number of "vanishing gamblers" if the "lightning bolt" economic trend continues.
Bob Prechter addresses the odds of that in his new, June Elliott Wave Theorist. It also includes an important discussion: "Inflation vs. Deflation: The Inflation Camp Interviews Robert Prechter." Don't miss it.