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GAMING RECESSION: Gaming revenues fall by biggest percentage ever

Figures add up to biggest two-year percentage drop ever

GAMING TAXES DECLINE

Nevada collected $35.5 million in gaming taxes based on December's casino revenues, the Gaming Control Board reported Thursday.

The figure was a 6.7 percent decline compared with $35.8 million in gaming taxes collected in the same month of 2008.

For the first seven reporting months of the fiscal year, gaming tax collections are $346.6 million, a 5.25 percent decline from the previous fiscal year.

LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL

By HOWARD STUTZ
LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL
Feb. 12, 2010
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

It could have been a whole lot worse.

Gaming revenues in Nevada fell 10.4 percent in 2009, the largest single-year decline in state history.

Casinos statewide collected $10.392 billion from gamblers last year, the lowest one-year total since 2003 when gaming revenues totaled $9.62 billion, according to figures released Thursday by the Gaming Control Board.

But the declines lessened in the latter half of the year.

Control Board Tax and License Division Chief Frank Streshley said gaming revenues in the first six months of 2009 were down 13.4 percent compared with the same period in 2008. The last six months of the year saw gaming revenues decline 7.2 percent.

"I guess you can say we improved in the second half of the year," Streshley said. "In reality, that stretch between October 2008 and March of last year was a horrendous period for the industry."

The 2009 decline follows a 9.7 percent decrease in 2008 when statewide gaming revenues totaled $11.6 billion.

The Gaming Control Board has been keeping records of gaming revenues since 1956, and the only year-over-year declines have come in the past decade.

Gaming revenues fell 1.3 percent in 2001 and 0.3 percent in 2002, which were because of the damage inflicted on the national and international tourism industries by the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Streshley said there isn't anything in Nevada's gaming history that he can correlate with the gaming revenue declines of the past two years.

"When you see the industry fall back to 2003-2004 numbers, there is nothing to make any comparison with," Streshley said.

On the Strip, casino revenues were $5.5 billion in 2009, a decline of 9.4 percent compared with $6.12 billion in 2008. Gaming revenues in Clark County as a whole fell 9.8 percent to $8.8 billion.

North Las Vegas, boosted by the opening of Aliante Station in November 2008, was the only reporting area of Clark County to show an increase in 2009. Casinos in the market reported revenues of $286.2 million, a 1.2 percent rise compared with $282.7 million in 2008.

Casinos downtown saw revenues decline 10.1 percent in 2009, while Boulder Strip casinos were down almost 6 percent for the year.

The suffering wasn't just centered on the Strip.

Washoe County's 2009 gaming revenues of $805.2 million were the lowest annual figure since 1989. Both North Shore Lake Tahoe and South Shore Lake Tahoe reported their lowest annual revenue figures in more than two decades.

Declining gaming revenues were reflective of customers' gambling habits. Players wagered $111.9 billion on slot machines, down 10.8 percent from a year ago, and almost $28.6 billion on table games, down 4 percent.

If there was a bright spot, it might have been December.

Gaming revenues statewide were $859.3 million, a decline of 3.2 percent compared with December 2008. The drop followed an increase of 4.4 percent in November, the first monthly rise statewide in more than two years.

Strip casinos, meanwhile, recorded their second straight monthly revenue increase, winning $502.1 million from gamblers, a 5.9 percent jump compared with $474.2 million in December 2008.

Some of the revenue increase was attributed to the opening of the $8.5 billion CityCenter development, including the 4,004-room Aria hotel-casino. Aria opened on Dec. 16, in time for what many analysts have said was a busy New Year's holiday.

New Year's spurred a busy month for baccarat on the Strip. Revenues from the game were $155.7 million, a 101.9 percent increase compared with baccarat revenues from December 2008.

"December marked the eighth consecutive month of year-over-year growth in baccarat win and the fifth consecutive month of year-over-year baccarat (wagering) growth," JP Morgan gaming analyst Joe Greff told investors.

Union Gaming Group principal Bill Lerner, after looking at the data released by the control board, said Aria generated about $56 million in gaming revenue for the two weeks it was open in December.

"We caution against extrapolating this to a full year (or $1.3 billion), as play levels at casino openings can be atypically high," Lerner told clients in a research note.

Lerner estimated that $51 million of Aria's gaming revenue came from table games, nearly all from baccarat, while $5 million came from slots machines.

The Strip results couldn't save Clark County as a whole in December. Countywide gaming revenues were $753.2 million, down 2.4 percent. The figure included monthly declines of 12.4 percent downtown, 25 percent in North Las Vegas, 19 percent on the Boulder Strip and 13 percent for the balance of the county.

Streshley and other analysts said the Las Vegas locals market might be one of the last areas to recover. The troubled economy, high unemployment and the declining housing market play a role in how residents spend discretionary income.

"My personal feeling is we won't see any improvement in the locals market until unemployment improves," Streshley said.

Contact reporter Howard Stutz at [e-mail] or 702-477-3871.

http://www.lvrj.com/news/gaming-revenues-fall-by-biggest-percentage-ever-84117117.html

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CSM: Nevada politicians slam Obama's Vegas comment

Nevada politicians, including Democratic Sen. Harry Reid, took umbrage at President Obama's comments about Las Vegas at a town hall meeting this week.

By Michael B. Farrell Staff writer / February 3, 2010
San Francisco

When President Obama travels to Nevada later this month to stump for embattled Senate majority leader Harry Reid, he’s likely to get the cold shoulder in Las Vegas.

Obama rubbed quite a few Nevadans the wrong way Tuesday when he suggested rolling the dice on the Vegas Strip wasn’t the wisest move “when you’re trying to save for college. You prioritize. You make tough choices. It's time your government did the same."

Perhaps that’s not such bad advice. After all, who would suggest gambling with your college tuition?

But the comment didn’t sit well in a city that banks on tourists coming to “blow a bunch of cash,” as Obama put it at a New Hampshire town hall meeting. Nevada has the second highest unemployment rate in the country (13 percent) and the highest foreclosure rate. The gaming and convention industries have been hit hard, too.

Annual gaming revenues are down 11 percent overall, although the Las Vegas Review-Journal recently reported that casinos saw an increase in November for the first time since December 2007, with winnings totaling $873.2 million.

Senator Reid, who faces a tough reelection bid and sagging ratings, criticized the comment.

"The President needs to lay off Las Vegas and stop making it the poster child for where people shouldn't be spending their money," he said in a statement.
Obama was quick to offer this apology to Reid, one of his chief political allies in Congress.

"I hope you know that during my town hall today, I wasn't saying anything negative about Las Vegas. I was making the simple point that families use vacation dollars, not college tuition money, to have fun. There is no place better to have fun than Vegas, one of our country's great destinations,” he wrote in a letter to the senator.

Obama's comments are unlikely to help Reid, whose favorability rating sank to 31 percent in a recent Rasmussen poll.

This isn’t the first time that Obama has taken heat from Nevadans over a comment about Vegas. Last year he said bankers who take government bailouts “can't take a trip to Las Vegas or down to the Super Bowl on the taxpayers' dime.”

That time, Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman asked for an apology and sent the president letter, saying his comments were “harmful to the meetings and convention industry as a whole and Las Vegas specifically."

This time, Mayor Goodman took the gloves off. "I want to assure you when he comes I will do everything I can to give him the boot back to Washington and to visit his failures back there,” he said at a press conference, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

“Unfortunately, I think that [Obama] has failed to grasp the weight that his words carry,” said Sen. John Ensign (R) of Nevada, in a statement.

“As a result of his irresponsible comment just last year, countless companies and federal agencies canceled their conventions at Las Vegas hotels, costing these hotels and our city millions of dollars. Once again, he has threatened the struggling economy of Las Vegas.”

But Hugh Jackson, the progressive blogger behind the website Las Vegas Gleaner, questions the connection between Obama’s comments last year, which were about bankers taking tax payer-funded trips to Vegas, and the city’s economy.

“What has hurt the economy of Las Vegas has been the near collapse of key components of the American economy,” says Mr. Jackson. “Anyone to assign that particular weight [to Obama's comments] is just trying to score a cheap political point.”

---

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http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2010/0203/Nevada-politicians-slam-Obama-s-Vegas-comment

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>>Nevada Governor on Obama's Vegas Gaffe

Thursday , February 04, 2010

This is a rush transcript from "Your World With Neil Cavuto," February 3, 2010. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: When times are tough, you tighten your belts. You don’t go buying a boat when you can barely pay your mortgage. You don’t blow a bunch of cash on Vegas when you’re trying to save for college. You prioritize. You make tough choices.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

NEIL CAVUTO, HOST: Whoops, he did it again. President Obama bashing Vegas again. He’s already apologized to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who, of course, is from Nevada.

But he didn’t apologize to my next guest, who I think he hates. He is sending a letter to tell the president to cool it with the attacks on Sin City, as it’s known.

Nevada Governor Jim Gibbons joins me right now.

Governor, man, oh, man, if — if there were any doubt about what this guy thinks of you, I think he just proved it there. He didn’t even apologize to you.

GOV. JIM GIBBONS R-NEV.: He didn’t.

And, Neil, he needs to do more than just issue an apology. This is the second time he has dumped on Las Vegas. Every time this president’s words are spoken, people listen. We lost hundreds of millions of dollars, over 400 convention and business meetings, the first time.

I have lost my sense of humor about this. It is no longer funny. It is not acceptable. I notice that there are 48 states in this country that have some form of gaming or lottery or whatever. He did not dis on any of those cities, including Chicago, Illinois.

So, when it comes to Las Vegas, this is disgraceful. It’s tasteless, it’s thoughtless. Nevada has the second highest unemployment.

CAVUTO: But do you think, Governor, that he wasn’t personally trying to slight you or his buddy Harry Reid, who he presumably likes a lot more; he was just saying look, Vegas, many people — you know, I know, obviously, Vegas has many draws...

GIBBONS: Not in the least. I mean, this guy...

CAVUTO: ... but that he’s saying you don’t want to blow money you don’t have? That’s what he’s saying.

GIBBONS: Well, you know, the principle is OK. But don’t single out Las Vegas.

What — what bothers me is, is that, you know, this guy is a very, very articulate speaker. Maybe he needed a teleprompter or something for what he was saying. But he obviously insulted every Nevadan by what he said.

We have jobs, families. We live here. This is an economy that is struggling. We’re second highest in the nation in unemployment. Don’t put an added burden on top of all of that by what you say, telling people not to show up. That’s an insult. I’m not going to accept an apology.

CAVUTO: Now, did Harry Reid condemn him? Did Harry Reid say, you know, you did it again, Mr. President, or anything?

GIBBONS: Well, basically, that’s what a he said. He said, stop picking on Las Vegas.

And, believe me, stop picking on Las Vegas is innocent enough, but when — this is not the first time. If this were the first time, I could understand that. This is not. We made a big deal — and I made it on your show — about the last time this president picked on Las Vegas.

We have had it. We’re done. This is a state that is suffering dramatically. Families are hurting. Do not add to that burden.

CAVUTO: Are things picking up, though? Are you off the mat, so to speak? I mean, some of the numbers I see — and I get them from the various cities and all – they’re – they’re looking better than they were.

(CROSSTALK)

GIBBONS: Well, they are, but it — this is not enough to get us out of the slump that we have been in.

CAVUTO: Yes.

GIBBONS: My gosh, after — six months after the legislative session, we’re about $1 billion short, $900 million short, of making the revenue for state-needed expenditures. We are going to have to call a special session. We’re going to have to go in, cut the budget.

It does not help this state to denigrate the tourism industry. That’s our number-one industry.

CAVUTO: All right.



http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,584815,00.html

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Guardian: Climate scientists admit fresh error over data on rising sea levels

Latest embarrassment comes as key sceptic Benny Peiser backs down in row over fabricated quote
Robin McKie, science editor
The Observer, Sunday 14 February 2010

Climate experts have been forced to admit another embarrassing error in their most recent report on the threat of climate change.

In a background note – released by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) last night – the UN group said its 2007 report wrongly stated that 55% of the Netherlands lies below sea level. In fact, only 26% of the country does. The figure used by the IPCC included all areas in the country that are prone to flooding, including land along rivers above sea level. This accounts for 29% of the Dutch countryside.

"The sea-level statistic was used for background information only, and the updated information remains consistent with the overall conclusions," the IPCC note states. Nevertheless, the admission is likely to intensify claims by sceptics that the IPCC work is riddled with sloppiness.

The disclosure will intensify divisions between scientists and sceptics over the interpretation of statistics and the use of sources for writing climate change reports, disagreements that have led to apologies being made by both sides of the debate. Last week a key climate-change sceptic apologised for alleging that one of the world's leading meteorologists had deliberately exaggerated the dangers of global warming.

In an email debate in the Observer, Benny Peiser, head of the UK Global Warming Policy Foundation, quoted Sir John Houghton, the UK scientist who played a key role in establishing the IPCC, as saying that "unless we announce disasters, no one will listen".

But in a letter to the Observer, Houghton said: "The quote from me is without foundation. I have never said it or written it. Although it has spread on the internet like wild fire, I do not know its origin. In fact, I have frequently argued the opposite, namely that those who make such statements are not only wrong but counterproductive."

Houghton said he was incensed because he believed the quote attributed to him, and to the IPCC, an attitude of hype and exaggeration and demanded an apology from Peiser.

For his part, Peiser told the Observer that he welcomed the clarification. "For many years, the Houghton 'quote' has been published in numerous books and articles. I took Sir John's failure to challenge it hitherto as a tacit admission that the 'quote' was accurate and reflected his view on climate policy. Now that he has publicly disowned the statement, I will certainly refrain from using it."

Houghton's "quote" has become one of the most emblematic remarks supposed to have been made by a mainstream scientist about global warming, and appears on almost two million web pages concerned with climate change. The fact that it now turns out to be fabricated has delighted scientists.

"We do not over-egg the pudding when it comes to the evidence about global warming – and I hope people will now appreciate this point," said Alan Thorpe, head of the Natural Environment Research Council.



http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/feb/14/benny-peiser-houghton-ipcc-apology

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Times London: World may not be warming, say scientists

Jonathan Leake

From The Sunday Times
Times of London
February 14, 2010

The United Nations climate panel faces a new challenge with scientists casting doubt on its claim that global temperatures are rising inexorably because of human pollution.
In its last assessment the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said the evidence that the world was warming was “unequivocal”.

It warned that greenhouse gases had already heated the world by 0.7C and that there could be 5C-6C more warming by 2100, with devastating impacts on humanity and wildlife. However, new research, including work by British scientists, is casting doubt on such claims. Some even suggest the world may not be warming much at all.

“The temperature records cannot be relied on as indicators of global change,” said John Christy, professor of atmospheric science at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, a former lead author on the IPCC.

The doubts of Christy and a number of other researchers focus on the thousands of weather stations around the world, which have been used to collect temperature data over the past 150 years.

These stations, they believe, have been seriously compromised by factors such as urbanisation, changes in land use and, in many cases, being moved from site to site.

Christy has published research papers looking at these effects in three different regions: east Africa, and the American states of California and Alabama.

“The story is the same for each one,” he said. “The popular data sets show a lot of warming but the apparent temperature rise was actually caused by local factors affecting the weather stations, such as land development.”

The IPCC faces similar criticisms from Ross McKitrick, professor of economics at the University of Guelph, Canada, who was invited by the panel to review its last report.

The experience turned him into a strong critic and he has since published a research paper questioning its methods.

“We concluded, with overwhelming statistical significance, that the IPCC’s climate data are contaminated with surface effects from industrialisation and data quality problems. These add up to a large warming bias,” he said.

Such warnings are supported by a study of US weather stations co-written by Anthony Watts, an American meteorologist and climate change sceptic.

His study, which has not been peer reviewed, is illustrated with photographs of weather stations in locations where their readings are distorted by heat-generating equipment.

Some are next to air- conditioning units or are on waste treatment plants. One of the most infamous shows a weather station next to a waste incinerator.

Watts has also found examples overseas, such as the weather station at Rome airport, which catches the hot exhaust fumes emitted by taxiing jets.

In Britain, a weather station at Manchester airport was built when the surrounding land was mainly fields but is now surrounded by heat-generating buildings.

Terry Mills, professor of applied statistics and econometrics at Loughborough University, looked at the same data as the IPCC. He found that the warming trend it reported over the past 30 years or so was just as likely to be due to random fluctuations as to the impacts of greenhouse gases. Mills’s findings are to be published in Climatic Change, an environmental journal.

“The earth has gone through warming spells like these at least twice before in the last 1,000 years,” he said.

Kevin Trenberth, a lead author of the chapter of the IPCC report that deals with the observed temperature changes, said he accepted there were problems with the global thermometer record but these had been accounted for in the final report.

“It’s not just temperature rises that tell us the world is warming,” he said. “We also have physical changes like the fact that sea levels have risen around five inches since 1972, the Arctic icecap has declined by 40% and snow cover in the northern hemisphere has declined.”

The European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts has recently issued a new set of global temperature readings covering the past 30 years, with thermometer readings augmented by satellite data.

Dr Vicky Pope, head of climate change advice at the Met Office, said: “This new set of data confirms the trend towards rising global temperatures and suggest that, if anything, the world is warming even more quickly than we had thought.”

Surface temperature records: policy driven deception? - a report by Joseph D’Aleo and Anthony Watts

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article7026317.ece