Hotel developer Steve Wynn, confident he’s sitting on the next big thing, has a response for an archrival’s proclamation that the Wynn era was over.
Back in January, fellow gaming giant Sheldon Adelson, then the third-richest man in America with a $28 billion fortune, said Wynn’s time “has come and gone.”
“Yeah,” Wynn said in an interview with Vegas Confidential, “and I remember when he said it, I started to pack up. I figured anybody who is the master of the universe must know everything. Who am I to argue?
“My reaction,” said Wynn, “is the same as since his arrival on the scene. Total incredulity. He has surprised me in every single way. He’s quite an extraordinary fellow, Sheldon, and his approach has been singular, to say the least, to the industry and to life in general.
“And I think it’s pretty safe to say that hardly any of us have seen anybody quite like Sheldon and we wish him well.”
Whiplashed by an economic storm, Adelson, who built The Venetian and The Palazzo across from Wynn and went full throttle overseas, saw 95 percent of his wealth disappear this year.
“You have to give him credit for being fearless,” said Wynn. “Who else would have enough guts to start six hotels at once without the money to finish them? That’s extraordinary. I know it’s an old-fashioned idea but I’ve always had my money all done before I broke ground. I know that’s old-fashioned these days, but that’s why our interest rate is 3 percent here on our bank line, here and China. I don’t know what anyone else is paying but I borrowed the money before I started anything and my builder told me he’s going to give me back $40-odd million. We’re getting a refund.”
I have never “officially” taken sides in this heavyweight matchup as I like both Steve Wynn’s and Sheldon Adelson’s products and biz steez. And I have swooped mad amounts of fly girls in both cats Hotels.
But I will be willing to mediate if necessary.
For a “Up Economy” fee, of course.
(Thanks to Chris R for the Data Sheets)
The Rest is Up to You…
Michael Porfirio Mason
AKA The Peoples Champ
AKA GFK
AKA The Arsonist who Burns with his Game regardless
The Guide to Getting More Out of Life
http://www.thegmanifesto.com
Official “Encore” Hotel & Casino Las Vegas TV Commercial
Chris R sent me this must read article a while back by Michael Lewis. Michael Lewis wrote one of my favorite book’s Liar’s Poker: Rising Through the Wreckage on Wall Street.
“When I sat down to write my account of the experience in 1989—Liar’s Poker, it was called—it was in the spirit of a young man who thought he was getting out while the getting was good. I was merely scribbling down a message on my way out and stuffing it into a bottle for those who would pass through these parts in the far distant future.
Unless some insider got all of this down on paper, I figured, no future human would believe that it happened.
I thought I was writing a period piece about the 1980s in America. Not for a moment did I suspect that the financial 1980s would last two full decades longer or that the difference in degree between Wall Street and ordinary life would swell into a difference in kind. I expected readers of the future to be outraged that back in 1986, the C.E.O. of Salomon Brothers, John Gutfreund, was paid $3.1 million; I expected them to gape in horror when I reported that one of our traders, Howie Rubin, had moved to Merrill Lynch, where he lost $250 million; I assumed they’d be shocked to learn that a Wall Street C.E.O. had only the vaguest idea of the risks his traders were running. What I didn’t expect was that any future reader would look on my experience and say, “How quaint.”
I had no great agenda, apart from telling what I took to be a remarkable tale, but if you got a few drinks in me and then asked what effect I thought my book would have on the world, I might have said something like, “I hope that college students trying to figure out what to do with their lives will read it and decide that it’s silly to phony it up and abandon their passions to become financiers.” I hoped that some bright kid at, say, Ohio State University who really wanted to be an oceanographer would read my book, spurn the offer from Morgan Stanley, and set out to sea.
Somehow that message failed to come across. Six months after Liar’s Poker was published, I was knee-deep in letters from students at Ohio State who wanted to know if I had any other secrets to share about Wall Street. They’d read my book as a how-to manual.
In the two decades since then, I had been waiting for the end of Wall Street. The outrageous bonuses, the slender returns to shareholders, the never-ending scandals, the bursting of the internet bubble, the crisis following the collapse of Long-Term Capital Management: Over and over again, the big Wall Street investment banks would be, in some narrow way, discredited. Yet they just kept on growing, along with the sums of money that they doled out to 26-year-olds to perform tasks of no obvious social utility. The rebellion by American youth against the money culture never happened. Why bother to overturn your parents’ world when you can buy it, slice it up into tranches, and sell off the pieces?
At some point, I gave up waiting for the end. There was no scandal or reversal, I assumed, that could sink the system. ”
In ancient times Hannibal gave birth to modern war strategy. Leading Carthage through the Alps and Pyrenees with War Elephants to earn many decisive victories against the Romans, he was calculating and fearless.
In today’s market, skilled marksmen/traders/PE bankers know to be the same. Only the war is not fought with swords and shields, its derivatives, the VIX, and economic data a-la durable goods. If you’re longhorn like Texas, you got impaled. Hopefully for your sake you ultra shorted it with SDS, SKF and DXD. You are not wearing armor to the Punic war, it should be Paul Stewart suits, Gucci loafers and you too can live life. Salvatore Ferragamo ties. I’m just saying, I’m trying to maintain my seat at Da Silvano, it is pike mackerel season.
We all know bloods been spilled and it’s still spilling. 7 MC’s have been put in the line and executed. Here’s where you remember that you were born on The Street. With that as your birth right, you need to remember to flex with the market.
If it’s selling join the herd. If it’s rallying, play your pipe. Don’t be in love with your positions. Keep your love locked down and I mean your bank account. That is why you woke up in this life. It’s what provided the villa in Mykonos to meet Mediterranean chicks while having a meze.
I know the hysteria’s bad, the media can’t keep your name out its mouth. But remember, they chose to report, you chose to scalp. They’re wearing Men’s Wearhouse shirts, not even suits, shirts. You’re killing them scooping chicks at the Conde Nast Travelers Awards after party suited down. They’re writing about places you go. The summation of their life decisions led them to media. You’re trading Tribune leverage loans and Petros Brasileiro LEAPS. Convert vanilla CDS from spread to points upfront.
And when you collect, Nas already told you, take it in blood.
Days of Grace tattooed like Cus D’Amato on my arm.
All you hear these days is Regular Guy whining about having no Dough in the Down Economy. More negative energy floating around than at Biggie’s funeral. But everything is going to be alright this morning.
As you know by now, The G is a breed apart. We got our Mojo working. G’s are kneading more Dough than Wolfgang Puck at Spago’s in the 80’s.
Sure G’s like to diss things that need dissing: Bottle Service, Mortgage Brokers, Restaurants serving crappy Dungeness crab cakes, Police, Guys wearing Glittery Christian Audiger shirts, white girls who can’t dance and favor flip-flops over high heels etc. But generally speaking we like to keep positive vibrations.
The Up Economy was cool (actually it has been stylistically, culturally and intellectually the worst decade yet, but that is neither Marinella ties nor Colombian Pies. I will address in a future Manifesto), but the Down Economy is even better:
Girls coming out the Woodwork
I am sure everyone has noticed this. Ever since the Down Economy has been in full effect, girls have been coming back like Bernard “The Executioner” Hopkins. At least twice a day, I get little girls lost re-contacting me with calls and texts. It has gotten to be so sublime and ridiculous that I am actually kicking around the idea of out-sourcing to India a secretary to field all my incoming calls and texts a la The Four Hour Work Week by Tim Ferriss. I think the reason for this goes something like this:
Honey dip settled for some striped shirted fool in the wack BMW whip during the Up Economy. Now “Guy” is out of work, out of dough and can barely afford his sparkly Ed Hardy shirts and queer ripped jeans, let alone a night out on the town or his condo mortgage payment. Now girl remembers you as the brutally handsome, sharply dressed G who was LA, next week MIA, the week after BA. Little does she know, as far as giving up green, “I ain’t the one”. But, I will get Brain like a “know it all”.
Heists
“Note Jobs” are up at Banks. So are “Smash and Grabs”. This only makes it easier for high-end Heistmen like your humble author to ply his trade, as police resources are being used up. Drug dealers are making more money these days, too. Independent dealers are on the rise. All the better to Standover, Oh my Brothers. If you want some pretty polly…you take it.
Public Opinion Improved
Girls are so desperate these days, you can actually, finally, tell the truth about what you do for a living. Just the other night, as an unofficial case study, I told a fly Platinum Digger with light Grey Eyes and lies, when she asked me what I did for a living I said, “I rob Drug Dealers.” The Platinum Digger actually responded, “Wow. That seems like a good job… must pretty recession proof”. In 2005 she would have been running away like Usain Bolt, had I been honest.
Suits have more punch these days than Andre Berto. Everyone, and I mean everyone loves the well dressed, International Playboy/Heistman/Peoples Champ in these grim economic times.
Bring terror, like C4, and boom step in the room with a Custom one button Saville Row suit with Claret red interior, Borelli shirt, Brioni Pocket Square, Berluti shoes, and lighting a cigarette with a Dunhill lighter and you will have girls locking jaws on you like one of Michael Vick’s prized pitbulls. It’s mad Scary. Like Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart”, lyrical poisonous darts or macroeconomic charts.
And with Great Britian’s Drop in currency value since a year ago at 23%, it’s about time to pick up some new Saville Row suits. Trust me, they will pay for themselves.
CASH
Having a huge Bankroll these days is more rare than the seared Ahi at Masa in NYC. So it goes without saying, that having a huge Bankroll is going to drive girls wilder than an opium dusted, bi-polar-crack head drinking Cisco waving around a malfunctioning deuce-deuce. Mascara is melting off China Dolls when you flash rolls. And I am not talking about Beans either.
Music
It hasn’t happened yet, but with tough economic times comes better music. Hip Hop has had an atrocious decade, but with DC’s own Wale and some other dope new school non-hip hop shit, I think we are going to see a turn around. Like Immortal Technique says “The bling-bling era was cute but it’s about to be done, I leave you full of clips like the moon blocking the sun”.
Wale Feat Duffy – Warwick Avenue
Money Making
Making money is actually easier in many ways in a Down Economy. Less clowns all up in the Game. Less talkers. More takers. (See The Top Ten Ways to Make Money in a Down Economy). Just don’t forget to give back to the less fortunate.
Smoking
With less liquid CASH around (and I don’t mean Chris Paciello’s 90’s Miami Beach Nightclub Liquid that I used to hold court at as a young Proto-type G either) girls have less money and get more fiendy for cigarettes. Which means you will have more little girls “setting out that line” at the witching hour every night. Which means you have more chances to throw Voodoo on Fly Girls. And you know I got the Black Cat Bone, mojo bag, the John The Conqueroo and I am going to mess with you. Mean Mannish Boy. Hoochie Coochie Man and all that.
Muddy Waters – Mannish Boy (1971)
Also, in the Down Economy, restaurateurs have less say on whether or not you can smoke jacks in their spots. What are they going to do? Tell you that you can’t smoke when you are their best customer? Light up. And feel the elegant nicotine high. Fly pelican fly.
Rivals
I would love to say I don’t feel pleasure in others failure. But to be honest, I do. I love to ash on my rivals mangled and bloodied bodies decaying in a 5 foot deep lime pit. Metaphorically speaking, of course.
Travel
Traveling is so much easier these days. Way shorter security lines. Sick Hotels, in sick trouble, are offering rooms at prices akin to a mean streets Ghetto flop house. Even Las Vegas can be done on the cheap. Wynn Las Vegas was offering rooms for $169 on a Friday recently. I felt like I was pulling a Heist. (I don’t have to tell you I got my Encore Tower Suite Deluxe King comped. Over 2,200 square feet of Luxury, in case you didn’t know.)
Getting your favorite table at a restaurant is even easier than swooping a slip-sliding Nightlife Princesses in a Down Economy. Restaurateurs even pro-bono you more. Plus, you don’t have as many Red State tourist yokels leaning over your shoulder asking, “Whaat is thaat your eatin’?” when you are trying to relax and enjoy some Foie Gras and a glass of Red.
More Foreign Girls
The Down Economy has made more Euro girls come to America (we will see if it holds up), so you can swoop way more of them without leaving the USA. They may call you a Lothario, a seductor, a séducteur or a freak but the fact remains I swoop a different fly girl every day of the week.
