IT HAD TO HAPPEN...

... Sin City is feeling the pinch. Being that I was there a year ago to the day getting hitched on 7-7-7, I feel this post in pretty apropos. Yup, the good-time capital of the U.S. has hit a losing streak. Check out Guy Adams' report on an epidemic of bankruptcies, foreclosures and mass lay-offs in America's fastest-growing city.

Down and out in Las Vegas

Since the day Las Vegas was created in the shimmering Nevada desert, visitors have been drawn by one simple promise: "What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas". The motto adorns the city's road signs, and has inspired everything from its souvenir T-shirts to the local tourist board's seductive advertising campaigns.

These days, that motto is imbued with a worrying sense of irony. Because America's most outrageous city is facing a growing multitude of problems, and they all boil down to a single, unavoidable point: right now, far too little happens in Vegas, because not enough people are actually staying there.

The onset of global slowdown, high petrol prices, and a nation-wide housing slump is spelling disaster for a town that owes every aspect of its wealth – from that gaudy replica of the Eiffel Tower to those scale models of Venetian canals and the Pyramids of Egypt – to its ability to inspire free-spending hedonism.

With Americans cutting back on luxuries, and the price of transport rocketing, the so-called "Vegas vacation" is facing the axe. This week, as the nation celebrated Independence Day, major hotels were taking stock of a fall in all-important room occupancy rates from their usually impressive 95 per cent levels to nearer 80 per cent.

To read the rest of the story, click HERE.