Lies, damned lies and Control Board statistics

One swallow doesn’t make a spring — unless you write for USA Today. Columnist Kitty Bean Yancey cherry-picked a lone statistic from the most recent set of Nevada Gaming Control Board numbers are proclaimed happy days are here again on the Strip. Would that it were so. Yancey is technically correct when she says gambling revenue is up 2.6% in 1Q-2Q10. But in that respect she’s like the drunk who uses a lamppost for support rather than illumination.

If you subtract a spectacular — and regrettably aberrant — February and its $568 million take (the best in the last 18 months), 2010 has been a disappointment along the Strip. Only one other month (March, +2%) was positive, the other four being flat-to-negative. Nor have the gains we’ve been seeing been of the across-the-board variety, tending to be bunched in “whale” territory.

On the plus side, Strip hotel rooms are still wallet-friendly, priced 31% less on average than three years ago. Even Bellagio is becoming more aggressive in pushing the “affordability” message. Another metric of mom-and-pop visitation, slot handle, hasn’t improved, though. But at least on the Strip it has “shallowed” to the point of low-single-digit declines from ’09.

As Fortune says, “Don’t blame the consumer” and don’t chide him/her for not spending as much as you think they ought. Consumer spending may actually represent an excessively large percentage of GDP, the article posits, adding that any recovery will have to be driven by private investment (currently 13% of GDP, down from two years ago). It’s not immediately clear what the gaming sector can do, consumer demand having been maxed out, although reinvesting in existing facilities and in customer service is a no-brainer in economies both good and bad.

Opines one economist, “The economy appears locked in a self-defeating cycle, where consumers won’t spend more unless the jobless rate improves and companies won’t hire more until GDP growth steadily recovers — like two gunslingers, both waiting for the other to draw first.” (For a feel-good story, look to Oklahoma, where tribal distributions to the state are up 5,000% since 2004.)

“Always bet on black.” That pithy bit of roulette-playing advice was dispensed by Wesley Snipes in Passenger 57. However, if Sharron Angle darkens the door of a casino, she’ll have to place all her roulette bets on red, having decided that the color black constitutes evil incarnate. (Color as a moral absolute? Discuss.) Of course, she’ll also have to avoid playing blackjack and avoid any casino properties owned by Black Gaming, too. (Tough luck, Mesquite.) You wouldn’t expect “sinful” Nevada to be the state likeliest to elect a medieval religious zealot to national office, but it’s a 50-50 proposition.

According to a poll bought by The Newspaper That Must Not Be Cited, 36% of Nevadans agree with Angle that Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) shouldn’t have been cold-calling on behalf of CityCenter … but 48% think the senator made the right, er, call. I never thought that dog would hunt and indeed it hasn’t.