In anticipation of caucusocalypse, the New York Times' Timothy Egan diagnoses the Vegas economy. His take: residents succumbed to the condition that reigns on the Strip -- gambling fever.
What happened was, one ethos infected the other, and that became the wrong model. In allowing banks and Wall Street to place bets on any piece of paper tied to property — without much consequence for the bettors, as it turned out — the titans of free enterprise embraced casino capitalism. Now, with the presidential campaign in Nevada for a week, in advance of Saturday’s first-in-the-West Republican caucus, you would think we’d be hearing much vigorous debate on what went wrong, here and everywhere that followed the model.