I've just read that the 2008 cash flow for Slots A Fun, the crown jewel of what used to be Circus Circus Enterprises, was $2.8 million. Which means that current owner MGM Mirage could justify a sale price of $22.5 million-$28 million. (Penn National CEO Peter Carlino, this is your chance!)
Then again, MGM could sell Slots A Fun four times over and probably still not recoup the cost of its Criss Angel vanity project, Believe.
Atlantic City gets a monorail. And other infrastructural-type stuff. That $3.6 billion would probably be better invested into building two or three new casinos, not to mention getting rid of those Colony C(r)apital grind joints.* New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine (D) thinks Atlantic City's recovery is on the way. But as long as the market breaks down — as its revenues do — into Borgata and Everything Else, "recovery" will just be a euphemism for "much slower rate of decline."
* — If banks won't underwrite new development there, why — laws permitting — shouldn't the state? I'm just askin'. The alternative is pretty bleak.
This just in: Yes, TV ads for impotence drugs (think of "Viva Las Vegas" debased to "Viva Viagra"), with their tacky innuendi, are embarrassing (albeit not as much as those for incontenince drugs). But Congress has slightly better things to do that adopt the proposal of Rep. Jim Moron, er, Moran (D-VA) to force them off the air … least not untl it's amended to outlaw any TV programming featuring the bloated visage, voice and ego of failed casino boss Donald Trump. (Sorry; can't link to the Yahoo News video. I tried.)
