Oddly enough, the winner and runner up in the New Orleans World Series of Poker event were both grads from Louisiana State!
Congrats to Walter Chambers, who takes home $787K and Corey Bierria, who takes home $433K!
So what happens after Donald Trump takes his company, Trump Hotels and Casino Resorts into a $1.85 billion pile of debt?
Well, bankruptcy of course.
Does he get fired? No.
Does he get his salary cut? Sure. Now his salary is only $2M per year.
This leads me to two conclusions:
First, bankruptcy court has become a standard, legal mechanism to reduce costs. Originally they owed $1.85B. But after bankruptcy, they are no longer accountable for that spending, and only owe $1.25B. Its a pretty nice deal. Think about it - these guys lost $2 BILLION. That is hard to do. I can't imagine how incompetent I'd have to be in order to lose that kind of money.
Second, this demonstrates the power of Donald Trump as a brand. Clearly, he's a mediocre manager that led his casino through bankruptcy twice. But, even after all his mistakes, the shareholders feel that his name on the brand is the most likely way that their investments will see positive returns again. Otherwise, they would have certainly said, "Donald, your're fired".
In an interview on Tuesday, Steve Wynn, the CEO of Wynn Resorts made the unprecidented statement that "Everyone has something nice to say" about the recently opened Wynn Resorts.
OK - enough joking. Can't wait to see the hotel myself!
California is such a political joke.
We hire The Terminator as our governor.
We pass Proposition 1A, which allows Indian Tribes a monopoly on slot machine gambling.
Then we get upset when the Tribes make bogus claims that urban city areas are actually tribal lands, and suddenly they need to build casinos on them because its "their land".
If you think this is about anything other than money, its not.
We're so caught up in political correctness, we can't decide whether Indians should be allowed to run what would otherwise clearly be ILLEGAL in the state. The laws clearly state that you can't operate casinos, but here we are debating whether Indians can now put these casinos on non-reservation based land.
California - time to get a backbone, time to take the kid-gloves off. We can't please everyone all the time. Sometimes, you just have to say "no".
More info:
International Masters of Gaming Law
Governor, supervisors attack casino proposal (May 19, 2005)
How would you feel if a child's hero was used to promote cigarettes? Or if Fred Flintstone begin appearing in ads for Budweiser? It would probably enrage a lot of parents and cause a PR nightmare for the companies that thought it would be OK to used childhood heroes to sell their adult products.
And yet that's what so many gaming suppliers are doing. We've all seen new slot machines over the years that include themes which could easily appeal to children. Bally for example has Betty Boop, Blondie, Popeye, Felix the Cat and many others. And WMS offers Monopoly, Pac Man, Men in Black and others too. While some would argue that this marketing attracts children to gambling, I've always disagreed as I figured those games were only available to people inside casinos and since the legal age to hang out in a casino is 21, 99.999% of the kids in this country would never see the games.
But now the California Lottery has possibly gone too far. On May 9th, they announced that they're going to offer a Star Wars lottery game. (Source) This game will include a series of 6 collector coins each with a different character from the movie series as well as Star Wars themed tickets.
Doesn't anyone else think this is crossing the line? Lotteries are a form of gambling which, unlike casino games, are advertised on TV and openly displayed inside stores where adults and children shop. Plus many of the California Lottery ticket locations sell tickets from a vending machine which doesn't do anything to confirm the buyer is of legal age.
I have no problem with movies selling out to various products for advertising and promotion. But I think that this has gone too far and I can't help but wonder if Bacardi were to use cartoon heroes in their ads, would parents rally against them?