TESS VIGELAND: "One of the things you realize as you read the article is how much of a microcosm Vegas was for the entire bust across the country. Talk to us a little bit about how pre-recession Vegas really was symbolic of pre-recession America and its mindset."

JOEL STEIN: "you can go to Vegas and you can see the moment when the boom stopped. Because you can see the last house in the housing project, or you can see the level of the hotel where they stopped. So it almost feels like there was just a day when all the credit left, really... I thought after hearing all this stuff about the new economy and thrift that the hotels would kinda be changing, and the rooms would look different, or they'd go back to the cheap buffets. But they're holding ground. They assume that this is another small cycle, America will go back to just how it was....people are gonna patry until the thing burns"
from the segment "How Las Vegas went bust" on APM's MARKETPLACE August 20th, 2009