Gambling Industry News

The greatest financial gamble

The US government believes, correctly or incorrectly (and this is the key point), that the problem with the US economy is that people have stopped buying things, and this is because they cannot borrow the money to make those purchases. This seems to completely ignore the fact that reckless borrowing and subsequent spending is what got the United States into the economic problem in the first place.

The greatest financial gamble, Part 2

One way to reduce the overall debt burden is to create inflation by printing more money. If inflation starts going up, nominal wages will also rise, creating more money to pay off debt. Imagine if your income suddenly increased by 10 percent but all prices increased also. You would have more cash to pay off your credit card because that balance would not go up. With inflation, all wages and prices will rise and the purchasing power will go down, but the debt level will drop. And that is already happening. Oil is up from $35 to $55.

Gambling with our bucks

So you’d think that as long as Geithner is shooting craps at one table, the president might not want to bet the rest of the family income at the roulette wheel. But this is an administration that sees “opportunity” in crisis.

College Online Gambling Growing, While Casino Age Limits Shrink

"You're talking about opening up all kinds of gambling to the young, to the highest risk gambling groups," Pat Fowler, Executive Director of the Florida Council on Compulsive Gambling told the Tallahassee Bureau, "The majority of them don't have a real grip on finances and a budget."

Too bad we couldn't have stopped all this wild risk taking by the young before it reached this point.

Hank Greenberg: Born 1925

May 2007
Hank Greenberg: never sell him short

AIG didn't suddenly change its culture that day its former chairman and CEO Maurice "Hank" Greenberg was pushed out the door. But now, two years after his departure, it's certainly a story yet-to-be told about his legacy--the AIG culture and the AIG business strategy and losing its CEO of more than 40 years. If current earnings are any example, for sure the company continues to prosper and prosper mightily.

Meanwhile, there is no stopping Greenberg. How do you interview an 80-something legend?

AIG required a legendary bailout. In hindsight, you could start with that.

Alan Greenspan: Born 1926

September 2007
I didn't see subprime crisis coming: Greenspan

But in a prime time interview to be aired on the the CBS 60 Minutes program in the US, Professor Greenspan admits that he did not see the subprime crisis coming until it was too late - despite evidence of questionable lending practices that saw risky loans given to high risk low income people.

Subprime smells never seem to bother the person who creates them, lol.

Bernard Madoff: Born 1938

January 1999
Amateur hour on Wall Street

The caution flag is out. Bernard Madoff is head of the marketmaking firm Madoff & Co. and also chairman of the trading committee for the Securities Industry Association. He's urging on-line brokers to tell their clients that highly volatile stocks like Amazon and Yahoo are likely to face a severe lack of liquidity during a downturn or a prick in the Internet stock bubble. "The problem is, there is no buffer between the customer and his own tools of self-destruction," says Madoff.

There also needed to be a buffer between the customer and Madoff's tools of self-destruction.

Charles Prince: Born 1950

November 2007
Prince leaves Citi with $60 million

Citigroup chief Charles Prince resigned at a board meeting 04 November 2007, paying personally for the world's top banking group's poor performance in the subprime mortgage crisis.

That being said, I do believe that the young really are the risk takers though. Unfortunately, the older among us feel the need to be the risk givers. It's sort of a Feng Shui approach to financial balance. Put another way, for each person who yins, someone is going to need to be seriously yanged.

Spend our grandkids’ money well

If we’re going to spend our grandchildren’s money to fix a problem we created, most of it should be spent on things that will benefit them.