The Vig

The Tropicana hotel filed for bankruptcy protection last night.  It’s long been speculated that the Trop was the next place on the Strip to go.  It’s a natural, I would think, given its location.  This may bring that day one step closer.

I’ll never forget the night I stayed there.  Must have been late 2003?  Anyway, I stayed an extra night after a trade show.  The Trop was running some sort of special.  Like $39/night or some insane number.  The room was in the way back, overlooking McCarran.  Waking up in there was one of the most traumatic experiences of my life.  See, there were mirrors on the ceiling, and when I opened my eyes all I could see was a very large, semi-nude man falling from the sky.  It took me a moment to figure out it was me.  But for $39, what do you expect?

I’ve been trying to piece together in my head just what in the heck is going on with the economy and commodity prices. Maybe this summer I’ll take a couple of economics courses to figure this stuff out. In the meantime, I just read and listen.

From Marketplace (emphasis mine):

MOON: Well, you already know that the Fed’s been making tens of billions of dollars in loans available to the banking system. Well, today it’s basically admitting that these big institutions are just being stubborn about this — that they’re not lending to each other still. Basically, they still don’t trust each other. They remain worried about the exposure that they could put themselves in to these bad mortgage loans.

RYSSDAL: Powerful as it is, then, what can the Fed do?

MOON: Well, the Fed keeps telling these banks, “OK, look, come to our lending window instead. We’ll give you the money that you need to make loans to businesses and individual borrowers” — they’re really finding it difficult to find the loans they want right now. Well, this time the Fed is going to be boosting the total of emergency reserves that it’s offering to U.S. banks to $150 billion in the month ahead. That compares to about $100 billion it supplied in the past month.

RYSSDAL: Bob, I don’t understand though. With all this money that’s already out there, shouldn’t we just be flooded with liquidity?

MOON: Ah, that’s the big-money question here. There is some thought that the banks might be hoarding some of this cash. Or, to put it in more polite terms, they’re sitting on their reserves — OK? Maybe it’s just taking a little longer than the Fed had been hoping to top off their reserves. There’s one new estimate that when all is said and done here, the banking system is going end up needing about $333 billion of new capital, and that study figures that something over $200 billion has been raised already.

RYSSDAL: So we’re about two-thirds of the way through, right?

MOON: Possibly.

But wait, it gets better…

MOON: There is concern that this flood of money is pouring into investments right now in commodities. Some critics are even suggesting that’s what’s behind the excessive run-up we’ve seen in food and oil prices is this flood of money. Wachovia’s chief economist John Silvia does voice some concerns about that, and what a sudden flood of money could do to inflation in the future:

SILVIA: You know, you flood the pipeline, somehow not much of it seems to be getting through the hose, and all of a sudden the day wakes up and everybody says, “Oh, everything’s OK!” And then all of a sudden you’ve got this huge flood coming through. So, yes, there’s a risk there.

MOON: To explain that further, Kai, the more dollars that flow into the economy, the more those dollars end up being worth less — you’re diluting the purchasing power, if you will. People start demanding more dollars to make up their buying power. So the Fed’s gambling, in a way, that all these different moves go according to plan.

RYSSDAL: Nice to know that Ben Bernanke’s gambling.

It’s nice to know indeed.

So are the very decisions being made to prime the pump, in talking head-speak, being used to kick us in the teeth instead? Interesting.

Countering all this, the dollar has been rallying against the Euro for almost two weeks now.  This has caused oil prices to retreat just a hair.  Combine the stronger dollar with current over-supply of oil in the system and things could turn around quickly on the energy front.  If they do, will banks abandon their investments in commodities and instead turn their attention elsewhere?  I don’t have the foggiest idea.  I just know it’s interesting to watch.

Know hope.

HT: Sullivan

The Washington Post has an interesting angle on the condo market.

Now Moss, 33, wants to find a tenant for her condo while she waits out the economy. But the condominium association allows only 20 percent of the units to be leased at once, so Moss is on a waiting list. If she tries to rent the unit without permission, she could face a $500-a-month fine.

I wonder how many SoWa and Pearl towers have similar restrictions. If I were an owner-occupier, I sure as heck would fight tooth and nail to enforce the restriction.  When I lived in Mountain Park a few years back, in a rented condo, my landlord rented another place out around the corner.  Turns out the folks they rented to were meth dealers.  Eventually our little corner ended up on the police watch list.  Good times.

I’m not saying all renters are meth dealers, but having seen second hand what landlords out there are dealing with, there’s no way I’d want to live around any more renters than I absolutely had to.

By now you’ve no doubt heard the story of the Central Washington players who carried an opponent around the bases after she’d hit a home run. From the other end of the spectrum comes this story out of Corvallis.

Learned another interesting factiod about the collision at home plate on Friday between California outfielder Gina Leomiti and OSU catcher Audrey Rosenfeld in Cal’s 9-1 victory at the OSU Softball Complex.

Leomiti was out by a good five or six feet, but instead of sliding or just stopping so she could be tagged, she decided to pancake Roderfelt, who was knocked flat on her face and suffered a slight shoulder injury that knocked her out of the game.

It turns out the women are cousins.

That’s what I’m talking about!

From the New Yorker:

McCain wants to stay in Iraq until no more Americans are getting killed, no matter how long it takes and how many Americans get killed achieving that goal—that is, the goal of not getting any more Americans killed. And once that goal is achieved, we’ll stay.

Whoever the Democratic Senate nominee is, they’re gonna need to send Gordo through this prism too. If we’re not leaving tomorrow, and clearly Smith doesn’t want to leave tomorrow, and we’re not staying forever, which voters won’t stand for, then when exactly do we leave?  The Republicans need to come up with an answer or they’re going to find themselves out on the street.

The first Saturday in May, I always get up a little early and hit the OTB downtown at Rialto. It’s always a blast. The hats. The hipsters. The regulars looking at all of us with disgust.

I never pick the favorite, and this year will be no exception. I’ll be taking Z Fortune. As of this moment he’s going off at 15:1. Not a bad payoff. If he hits, don’t expect me to stay rich for too long. Chantel informs us Portland will have a special guest in a few weeks. I, for one, plan to be there, Darius-style.

ESPN and Harrah’s have announced they’re going to delay playing the final table of this year’s WSOP Main Event until November. That means players will have to wait three months before a champion is finally crowned. Craziness. Absolute lunacy.

From Mean Gene Bromberg:

Conversely, Harrah’s hasn’t exactly proven that they’ve thought this all the way through. Questions about how they’re going to combat collusion and what happens if someone dies (or gets locked up, or can’t get back into the U.S.) were hardly reassuring. WSOP Commissioner Jeffrey Pollack said that the bright light of publicity and the threat of disqualification would keep people from cheating. Uh, yeah, that’s worked in the past. Like back in 2006 when those $2 million extra chips were introducted to the game, both Harrah’s and ESPN were right on top of that. And in a post at the Hendon Mob forum Roland de Wolfe asked a question that’s been posed about million times now–What happens if someone dies before November–and Howard Lederer said that eventuality was “Highly unlikely (probably <1%), but I’m sure Harrah’s will do the right thin(g) if that happened.” I don’t think many people will be reassured upon hearing that Harrah’s “will do the right thing”. And what WOULD be the right thing to do? Give the family some cash? Spring for the funeral? Ask for a moment of silence before “Shuffle up and deal!!”? We do know one thing–if someone can’t play at the final table their stack will be blinded away, and that would dramatically change the dynamic at the table. Is that a reasonable course of action if the likelihood that someone can’t make it is “probably <1%)? Is everyone comfortable with using the word “probably” here?

I remember reading stories of 2006 champion Jamie Gold’s troubles as they happened.  I can only imagine the pressure and lunacy which would occur if players were forced to wait three months for resolution.  We’re not talking about the most mentally stable group of people here.  Could you imagine if Stu Ungar had to wait three months?  Heck Mike Matusow ended up in jail just months after making a serious run in the main event.

There are way too many ins and outs and what-have-you’s here.  I realize ESPN wants us to believe they’ve Disneyfied the world of poker.  They haven’t.  What they’ve done is brought a while bunch of fresh faces in who have no business gambling and no business being the center of a media storm for three months.  One gets the feeling this will end very badly.

Jason “The Big Sexy” Whitlock has become sort of an unwitting darling of the right wing noise machine. It’s not at all his choice and, I suspect, if asked, he would have sharp words for many who’ve praised him in the last 24 months. I’ve always enjoyed his work both in print and on the radio. He’ll speak his mind freely. So freely, in fact, it cost him his job with ESPN in 2006.

He’s got a great column yesterday discussing his upcoming article in Playboy. It’s interesting because it looks like the magazine was expecting him to regurgitate 18-month-old stuff, when clearly he’s got a ton of other stuff on his mind. And given an outlet with 3 million readers (yes, some of us do read it for the articles), he wasn’t going to blow his opportunity.

I’m positive Playboy contracted me because of the explosive columns I wrote a year ago about Don Imus, NBA All-Star Weekend Las Vegas and Sean Taylor. It’s apparent that Napolitano had a very surface-level understanding of my perspective. He made it up in his mind long before I agreed to write the piece that I would be doing an article castigating the “Black KKK.”

I don’t work that way. I wouldn’t waste my opportunity to speak to 3 million subscribers by repeating things I’ve already said. I look for opportunities to advance the conversation, take things to a higher level of discourse. I don’t choose sides. I try to follow the truth wherever it leads.

So do I get the magazine to support Whitlock? Or do I boycott to protest Playboy’s stupidity?  Decisions…