My take on Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) and his "casino bailout," as one reader has described it, drew the following response from MGM Mirage spokesman Alan Feldman, which is reprinted below with his kind permission. I note only that my objection has to do with the principle of the Reid-sponsored deferral — which I called "skanky" — and not whatever dollar savings are realized thereby.
By the way, saw your well-written piece slamming Harry Reid for his support of the tax deferral portion of the Stimulus bill. I must respectfully disagree with the opinion you presented. This is a tax deferral, not a give-away. And it is only possible if we purchase our debt at reduced prices because of the collapse in the markets. Besides, the fact is that the amount of these tax deferrals is relatively small taken in context. By way of example, we are in the midst of a $9 billion investment in CityCenter and the entire benefit of the deferred taxes … is only several million dollars. We will use this cash flow benefit this year to further invest in the project and, once open, pay the deferred taxes from the cash flow the project generates.
In any event, we will pay several tens of millions in Federal taxes this year, far more than the amount this benefit defers.
There may well have been some things to complain about in the Stimulus bill. I simply don’t think this was one of them.
P.S.: In case anybody didn't see it, there's a crazy-sounding item that made Debtwire this week, saying that Deutsche Bank was poised to hand the Cosmopolitan over to MGM Mirage, along with a loan of $1.2 billion to finish CityCenter. There seems to be general agreement that this is about as far-fetched a scenario as they get, but I also hear that something like it is the only way Deutsche Bank is going to be shot of that white elephant. If the bank were to, in essence, pay someone to take the $2.8 billion Cosmo off its hands, it would be an act of desperation the scale of which we've never seen.
