I'm amazed every time I read these articles on the current and ongoing train wreck that is our economy both locally and nationally. I'm no economist but I could see this disaster coming from a 1000 miles away four or five years aog all the while idiots posing as authorities telling me home prices don't fall. I dated a realtor who was pardon me dumb as a box of rocks who had been making 150K+. Right then I knew something was amiss.

Now we get to hear about all these crybabies who had it wrong and are in deep water. Eat crow I say.

I'm not hear just to deride the sheeple. Part of the problem in this country is too many MBA's and useless Lawyers. Parasites who provide no real productivity other than sponging off working class. If the country really wants to even compete in the 21st century we need to start replacing our excessive numbers of lawyers and mba's with engineers and scientists. This comes through education and those that don't wanna put in the hard work, well I got a trailer for you to rent out on Boulder.

Kudos for John Ensign in doing the right thing. As a life long democrat I have now shifted to independent and will be voting against Harry Reid with pride. You took out a loan you couldn't afford, you pay for it. Don't expect welfare on other taxpayers behalf.

Thanks Harry, I'll be looking forward to voting against you and your comrades!

"Just "let(ting) the market start correcting the problems" is exactly the kind of faulty laissez-faire thinking that got us into this disaster."

The governments job was to properly regulate the mortgage markets and too prevent bad loans form originating. They failed at this or were sidelined by powers currently in office. That was their responsibility as "regulators" and they just let their buddies on wall st do whatever they wanted.

It is not the governments job to encourage people who can barely afford rent to get into owning houses in markets because (see above) the government failed at its first task; i.e. regulating speculation, loose money, and bad loans. This is akin to closing the barn door after the horse has been let out.

Governments task is to be a regulator not to hand out more welfare.

Trying to get anyone and everyone into a house is what created the housing bubble in the first place. So called "affordability" programs do nothing more than artificially increase demand. Subprime loans were used to address "affodability" issues.

Not everyone is meant to be an owner of a house. Thats the cold hard truth. Maybe you have to rent for a few years and learn to save, then you can buy. The markets will only truly become "affordable" when the government quits meddling in the natural market forces with their inane socialist programs.

The prices of homes will come down more when demand slackens further because of "unaffodability". But the RE complex doesn't wanna hear anything about prices coming down further(which they will anyways). They'd rather try and get the government to try to prop up unsustainable prices.

Quit trying to socialize the housing market!

A couple of observations:

"Boosters point to the opening of new resorts on the Strip, which will create more than 50,000 jobs through 2010. About 27,000 rooms will be added to an existing inventory of 136,000."

First off, creation of rooms doesn't create jobs. People staying in rooms and spending money creates jobs. "Boosters" don't know wtf their talking about. Creation of rooms = creation of jobs if demand is slackening or non-existent.

Someone in the comments wrote:

"1. Las Vegas is too dependent on McCarran Airport and the bankrupt Airline industry. Airlines have no future, start rebuilding and improving railroads now."

Thats exactly right. Dependency on that airport is nothing but trouble for the city. They need to start planning and building railways(maglev, high speed train, w/e) stations, and everything that goes along with it to California. This will create jobs and good ones at that. Not the lousy strip jobs where those at the top make all the green.