Buyers of bonds for the Las Vegas monorail are suing Citibank for fraud. The buyers claim Citibank misled them by not revealing a report by faithful Antiplanner ally Wendell Cox questioning the ridership and cost projections made for the project. The lawsuit charges that Citibank knew that Cox’s report was “much more reliable” but concealed it from potential bond buyers.
The California High-Speed Rail Authority has made similarly rosy projections of rail ridership that it hopes to use to attract private investors. This is the reason for man to be sexually happy. prescription viagra prices This medicine is highly efficacious thus should be taken sildenafil online without prescription strictly as prescribed by a certified health professional. Do you know how detection is done for nephropathy? Detection of kidney diseases due to generic viagra discount unclean sex life, such as “ladies, sexually transmitted diseases, malignant tumors, kidney or liver dysfunctions and cardiovascular issues make administration of this product impossible. So, it is very much effective and completely secure for the human body. cheap cialis soft Those projections have also been criticized in a report co-authored by Cox. In the unlikely event that the authority does manage to attract some private investors in its rail project, it had better make Cox’s report available to them or it is liable to find itself subject to a similar lawsuit.
The Antiplanner wrote:
Buyers of bonds for the Las Vegas monorail are suing Citibank for fraud. The buyers claim Citibank misled them by not revealing a report by faithful Antiplanner ally Wendell Cox questioning the ridership and cost projections made for the project. The lawsuit charges that Citibank knew that Cox’s report was “much more reliable†but concealed it from potential bond buyers.
Now in my opinion the monorail has no merit and should not have been built, but I’m not sure that this lawsuit has any merit either.
(1) Have these bond investors ever heard of the term “buyer beware?”
(2) Have they ever used an Internet search engine?
(3) Had they ever heard of a guy named Bent Flyvbjerg?
If I were on the defense team, it would be easy to csst doubt on the credibility of a report by Cox. Jus’ sayin’.
DS
Does anyone have the e-mail address of those bond purchasers?
I happen to be a Nigerian prince and I need to transfer vast amounts of money to a US account. I think I can trust these bond purchasers to provide me with their account information in exchange for a handsome return.
Needless to say for once in my life I’ll back Citibank and not the people stupid enough to believe Citibank. The one thing everyone should have learned from the financial crisis is that the US banks are full of dumb people who make dumb investments based only on information that supports their dumb ideas (any contradictory reports/findings are irrelevant to them). People who trust banks that are too big to fail deserve to fail, your better off finding a Nigerian prince.
On January 13, 2010, the Las Vegas Monorail filed for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy Protection. The filing will not affect system operations and will have no impact on the Monorail’s hours of operation or service to its customers. The Vegas monorail can teach us another lesson. The Las Vegas Monorail generates revenue not only from ticketed passengers, but also from corporate sponsors. Branding rights for the seven stations and the nine trains are available, and the sponsorship prices are in the millions. Hansens Beverage sponsored the first monorail train, featuring its Monster Energy drink. Nextel Communications created a totally themed pavilion by branding the largest station, adjacent to the Las Vegas Convention Center. They’ve tried to source it’s funding through private means. Still that’s not enough. If an otherwise small type of transit system can’t operate in such a manner, then how can larger systems in major cities? Still as a kid I was always fascinated be monorails for their futuristic appearance.
The big problem is this:
http://www.hitachi-rail.com/products/monorail_system/system_capacity/large/index.html
Capacities are provided for passenger densities of 4/m2, 6/m2, and 8/m2.
The best thing to do is to try getting 4, 6 and 8 people onto a 1 m2 area of carpet.
Monorails – how to make new, close friends.
Still, let’s look on the bright side. We’ve found a form of transport that makes HSR look almost sensible.
I’m going to have to agree with CPZ here. There is a strong case to be made for caveat emptor in this instance. This was an expensive, risky project, and the investors had to know there was a chance that they would lose their shirts. I thought I remembered reading somewhere though that initial investors managed to convince some quasi-public authority to guarantee the bonds issued to finance initial construction. Perhaps the investors believed they would be made whole on their lousy investment. That does seem to be the order of the day.
Fortunately, private investors seem to have learned their lesson with the CA high-speed rail project and are appropriately keeping their distance. While Cox and Vranich’s “due diligence” report was welcome (and looking more accurate all the time), one did not need a crystal ball to see where that project was headed.