Have investment bankers the world wide wrapped $23 trillion in high-yielding contracts around a fraction of notionally physically deliverable commodities? Without question – absolutely not.
Are average-income-earning Americans financing exceptional mansions using fraudulently-underwritten, nefariously-negative-amortization mortgages? Well, not exactly. After all, are we seeing a repeat of the dotcom era wherein profit-bereft firms are given VIP access to an IPO private reception…en masse? Well no. The stakes are rising for investors cum gamblers as markets are increasingly fizzing with tiny ticklish bubbles rising up to their surface and threatening to pop.Įvidence of any bubbles forming in the financial markets are criticized as inflammatory in nature and roundly dismissed. Such is the backdrop of today’s global financial markets, which increasingly resemble casinos. For that matter, a land line and a quick call to your friendly bookie or stockbroker, as the case may be, will work in a pinch. In truth, as football season rages on, any mobile phone will serve as an adequate conduit for those inclined to throw the cyber-dice.
And one wonders if the next stop for slot machine installers will be bathroom stalls. These days, Vegas is conspicuous in its absence of any dress code. Surrounded by men in black tie and bevies of glamorous women, we took in the pomp and circumstance required to hit the blackjack table or spin the roulette wheel. My friend’s mother, bedecked and bejeweled, with her hair piled high, had insisted we adhere to, for the times, the city’s strict evening dress code. There on the Strip, at the Flamingo, I wore a bonafide, albeit borrowed, evening gown for the first time, as opposed to something better suited to prom night. I was not even 21 and had traveled there with my best friend’s family, who I later came to appreciate with having had a long history of operating casinos. A recent trip to Piero’s, an old-school Rat Pack-era Las Vegas institution, a place with high-backed banquette seating, white-glove waiters and even today, a real-life Pia Zadora entertaining in the restaurant lounge, brought back memories of my very first trip to Sin City.
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