The media insists that there are many cities across the country that are beginning to see the first positive signs of the end of the recession. Those recovering cities aren’t identified in those media pronouncements, however, nor are there any positive signs in evidence. We’re just supposed to swallow what we’re being fed.

Las Vegas, NV, isn’t one of those cities. According to reports, that city is experiencing its deepest economic crisis since casinos first began to blossom in the desert back in the 1940s. To make matters worse, this unexpected downturn has badly affected the construction industry out there, the other leg that has supported the city’s growth over the last half-dozen decades.

Unemployment is the nation’s bugaboo, and because layoffs are continuing to mount, and because about 100,000 youngsters are entering the job market every month, the problem is rapidly becoming a national catastrophe. At this writing, the unemployment rate in Las Vegas is the highest in the nation – an admitted 14.7 percent, as opposed to the 3.8 percent of ten years ago – and it can only get worse.

“People aren’t spending on gambling as they have in the past,” one proprietor said. “Ordinarily, Las Vegas was the last to go into a recession and the first to come out, he said. “But this one is different.”

People cut back on recreational travel and gambling during a recession. Gambling is a highly discretionary form of spending, but when people have lost their jobs and eaten up whatever savings they have, things will be reversed. Las Vegas won’t be the first to come out, it will be the last.

“There needs to be some real, thoughtful, deliberate effort to rebuild an economy here. It isn’t going to happen by itself,” an advertising executive said. –

In truth, it isn’t going to happen in Las Vegas or anywhere else. Ask yourself (and we’ll check with you later), how will this administration create the millions of jobs needed so that Americans can get back to where they were? U.S. officials are in the dark when it comes to creating jobs, and CEOs throughout the land are pulling in their horns, skimming what they can, and executing their pre-planned “exit strategies”. This ball game is over, they’re privately admitting.

With the exception of the weapons manufacturing industry and the oil industry, every segment of our economy is going south. The weapons manufacturers will be in business longer than the oil business, though, because their customer, the War Department, will be around longer than the oil-buying public. But eventually everything will fold.

That advertising executive is right. A real, thoughtful, deliberate effort will be required to rebuild our economy. So, have you thought about how millions of jobs can be created? Here’s a hint. FDR ended the Great Depression by revitalizing our shipyards in the 1930s. Isn’t that what we want?