Las Vegas

While Las Vegas faces an existential crisis (and appears to be ignoring it), California regulators are starting to clamp down on water waste. As WSJ reports, about 60 California cities and agencies have imposed mandatory water-use cutbacks, some as high as 50%. In many cases, the rules are enforced by charging higher fees for excess usage. In others, inspectors are deployed to crack down on scofflaws. Sacramento - the state's capital - is among the worst offenders and most heavily 'policed' as a team of 40 inspectors have handed out2,444 notices year-to-date, with fines of up to $1,000 for repeat offenders. Neighbors are encouraged to whistleblow - there has been 7,604 water-use complaints; but not everyone is embracing the change as lawn repair is down 40% - "The propaganda dictates we haven't much choice... It's either do it or you die."

The smart money had a goal, which it now reached via the “multiplier effect.”

An odd thing has been happening in the last few months. Since the Chinese government began to crackdown on 'junkets' and 'corruption', Macau - the hub for Chinese billionaires to smuggle their money out of China - has seen revenues disappointing. So much in fact that, as Reuters reports, gambling revenue in Macau fell 3.7% in June on an annual basis, the first decline in more than four years. It could be coincidence, however, that as Macau has seen growth collapse, Las Vegas has seen Baccarat (the preferred game of China's rich) surge. In May, as Macau growth slumped, Las Vegas Baccarat surged over 85%. While slots (the staple indicator of the 99% in America) continues to decline (-4.4% in May), it seems rich foreigners are finding creative new ways to wash their money out of China.

We've been excited about agriculture for quite some time but this is just nuts. Literally.

"It's just going to be screwed. And relatively quickly," warns Tim Barnett, of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, telling The Telegraph, the situation in Las Vegas is "as bad as you can imagine". After a devastating, 14-year drought drained the reservoir that supplies 90% of the city’s water, the apparently endless supply of water is an illusion as Las Vegas population has soared. As Barnett ominously concludes, "unless it can find a way to get more water from somewhere, Las Vegas is out of business. Yet they’re still building, which is stupid."

In Hillary Clinton's attempt to seem "one of the people", she made the public relations debacle of portraying herself as "dead broke" at the time she and Bill Clinton left the White House. Of course, the reason this attempt at populist pandering backfired is because as is well-known, even the least educated American, the bulk of wealth American president families accrue is not while in office but after, when they hit the speaking/book publishing circuit. This is just what WaPo found when it conducted a review of the Clintons’ federal financial disclosure: it found that Bill was paid $104.9 million for delivering 542 speeches around the world between January 2001 and January 2013, when Hillary left her job as secretary of state.

There is a reason why Case-Shiller titled its summary presentation of the April housing market based on its 20-City Composite index "Rate of Home Price Gains Drop Sharply." The reason is simple: in April the housing market, while still preserving some upward momentum, appears to stumbled severely in April, with the Y/Y increase in the 20-City composite rising "only" 10.8%, down from 12.37% the month before, and the lowest annual increase since April of 2013. And this time there is no snow to blame it on.

It feels like it was only yesterday when we wrote about the plight of what was once supposed to be the ultramodern east-coast competitor to the glitzy kitsch of Las Vegas: Atlantic City's Revel casino which back in February 2013 "filed for bankruptcy ten months after opening." Well, a short 16 months later it is time for an update because Revel, which was supposed to have a viable balance sheet upon emergence from its first Chapter 11 filing, just filed for bankruptcy for a second, and most likely final time: the dreaded "Chapter 22." And not only did the company admit its business model is not viable not due to its overlevered balance sheet, but because of the sad state of the economy and the AC gambling market, it also warned it may shut down permanently if it can't find a buyer in bankruptcy court.

"In retrospect, the spark might seem as ominous as a financial crash, as ordinary as a national election, or as trivial as a Tea Party. The catalyst will unfold according to a basic Crisis dynamic that underlies all of these scenarios: An initial spark will trigger a chain reaction of unyielding responses and further emergencies. The core elements of these scenarios (debt, civic decay, global disorder) will matter more than the details, which the catalyst will juxtapose and connect in some unknowable way. At home and abroad, these events will reflect the tearing of the civic fabric at points of extreme vulnerability – problem areas where America will have neglected, denied, or delayed needed action.” - The Fourth Turning - Strauss & Howe – 1997

"When an activist movement holds the moral high ground against a repressive establishment power structure, the establishment’s primary recourse is to target the character of its principles. The secondary recourse is direct confrontation. If a dissenting organization is not mindlessly vicious in its methods, then simply make it 'appear' vicious. If it is not hateful in its rhetoric, then artificially tie it to people who are. And if a government really needs to kick-start a crackdown, it can engineer its own man-made calamities and blame the groups that most threaten its authority."

• Ukraine, Russia Fail to Reach Deal in Natural-Gas Talks (WSJ)
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• Déjà vu: echoes of pre-crisis world mount (FT)
• Money market rates hit new low as ECB moves gain traction (Reuters)
• 'Dark Pools' Face New SEC Probe (WSJ)
• Buffett Ready to Double $15 Billion Solar, Wind Bet (BBG)
• White House-Congress rift over Bergdahl deal deepens (Reuters)
• Taxpayers Face Big Medicare Tab for Unusual Doctor Billings (WSJ)
• Lean Retirement Faces U.S. Generation X as Wealth Trails (BBG)
• Employers’ skills gap claim does not show up in US wage data (FT)
• He is holding out for the Zuckerberg overbid: Donald Sterling says LA Clippers not for sale (WSJ)

Yesterday's shooting in Las Vegas drew media attention for a number of reasons but perhaps of most note was the chilling comments and premeditation involved. As WaPo reports, Jerad and Amanda Miller simultaneously executed two Las Vegas police officers in a pizza restaurant as the officers ate lunch; and then Jerad Miller covered the dead officers with a Gadsden flag and put a manifesto with a swastika on one of the officers’ bodies. However, as the hours since the disaster go by, more details of the couple have been exposed including Jared's anti-government video-rant below, "Sounds a little like Nazi Germany to me, or maybe Communist Russia... Really, people? It’s time to wake up. It’s getting ridiculous." Comments on his Facebook page also indicated he would be a "martyr" and asked for "the death a hero deserves." However, potentially most interesting is Interior Secretary Sally Jewell noting that the two may have joined militiamen from around the country at Cliven Bundy’s ranch earlier this year.

UPDATE: Las Vegas Review reports 5 dead: 2 cops, 1 civilian, 2 suspects

Multiple shootings and at least one death has been reported after two people (a man and a woman) shot two Law Vegas police officers, stole their gear, and entered a nearby Wal-Mart. As KLAS-TV reports, police say witnesses told them the suspects took the police officers' gear and, as they were walking out of the restaurant after the shooting, they said, "tell the police the revolution has begun." As Las Vegas Review Journal reports, the shooters were still at large as of noon.

With Thomas Piketty's book on inequality topping the charts among the book-reading common-folk, ambitious ex-bankers are enjoying the high-life in ways not even Gordon Gecko could have dreamed up. If greed is good, then this is better as former Lehman execs sell the first ".luxury" website domain names and ex-Goldmanites pitch "curated environments that optimize health" for home living with 'Vitamin-C-infused showers'. Of course, as one banker opines philosophically, "it's all about balance...it's important that people who have the capital are making it as useful as possible."

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• Obama Said to Propose Deep Cuts to Power-Plant Emissions (BBG)
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• KKR liquidates former Goldman Sachs traders-run hedge fund (Reuters)