Way back when Vestin Group made a loan to the Castaways that exceeded the doomed casino's appraised value (as revealed by a Vestin-commissioned appraisal that miraculously emerged when the Castaways filed for bankruptcy*), I did some digging into Vestin's financials. As of late 2003/early 2004, roughly one in four of Vestin's high-interest/high-risk loans was non-performing. There was some other odd stuff going on, too, but Greenspun Media -- my main freelance outlet at the time -- ultimately didn't want to hear about it.

Flash forward four-plus years and Greenspun's crosstown rival is belatedly discovering that it's the same old same-old at Vestin. Which, had a few daily-paper business reporters done their jobs sooner, might have saved a Vestin investor or two from taking it in the shorts. I wonder if they're still on the hook for Vernon Downs, that long-suffering racino in upstate New York into which Vestin threw tens of millions of dollars?

* -- the loan was initially made on the basis of a Castaways-supplied appraisal whose valuation was contingent upon a series of contingencies all falling into place.

Station Casinos isn't staggering under its newly acquired debt burden the way that Harrahs' Entertainment has been (see sidebar). While Station picked a bad time to lever up and one layoff is usually one too many -- at least if you've ever been in those shoes -- it's commendable that Station is concentrating its economies at the corporate level, rather than taking it out on customer service. The same cannot be said of some rival firms.

Speaking of Harrah's, it's actually getting some reporters to buy into its spin that a doubling of its debt-servicing costs (to $468 million) wasn't the reason it lost almost $98 million last quarter.

Let's see ... You go from being $237.5 million in the black, this time last year, to $97.6 million in the red -- a $335 million-plus swing, roughly $235 million of which is gobbled up by increased interest payments on your $29.7 billion debt load -- and that's not your main problem? (coughbaloneycough)

After beating up on the Dogpatch Daily, I'd like to make partial amends by pointing out an excellent piece of enterprise reporting that raises additional questions about Boyd Gaming's due diligence when assembling its Echelon team. The problem? An excessively leveraged General Growth Properties. (Too much debt? Where have I heard that before?)

"A closer look at General Growth then could have shown potential for trouble down the road," writes Benjamin Spillman of Boyd's May 2007 recruitment of GGP. One of his sources, BoomBustBlog.com continues to keep tabs on insider transactions at GGP which, says blogger Reggie Middleton "smack of desperation on the part of the CEO and CFO."

The gracefulness with which Boyd extracted itself from a deteriorating situation at Echelon might not have been necessary had the company been a little choosier on the way in. Maybe Morgans Hotel Group and GGP were the best dance partners Boyd could find; or perhaps it noted Morgans' limited borrowing capacity and GGP's heavily encumbered balance sheet, then hoped for the best.

In the end, it was that choice of partners that would let Echelon down. Morgans squandered money on the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino (the phrase "mid-life crisis" suggests itself) it should have been putting toward less-sexy Echelon, and GGP's business model clearly wasn't built for adversity. KVBC-TV recently described the company's Shoppes at Palazzo as "struggling," so we may see some additional fallout ripple down the Strip. Let's hope not.