The Deutsche Bank has decided to not only spend it time on things like borrowing, lending and handing out mortgages (or encouraging bad credit records) by launching a casino hotel on the Las Vegas strip called the Cosmopolitan Las Vegas.

The project comprises of a massive two tower, 3,000 room casino hotel with restaurants, nightclubs and slot machines. The opening night will have performances by Jay-Z and Coldplay and before-hand there will be a national campaign of TV adverts that go quite risqué with a bottomless hotel bellboy and a tagline that goes: “Just the right amount of wrong.”

It seems quite out of character for a bank to move away from its reputation as a stable, well-established and conservative leading bank and set its sights on the glamorous and high rolling world of Sin City.

Well, it’s all quite logical when you know the full story. Like so many banks a few years ago, the Deutsche Bank was very ‘flexible’ in its loaning policies, and gave the original developer of the property a generous loan. This was about 1 billion dollars back. The developer subsequently defaulted on the loan and instead of auctioning off the ‘half-baked’ property at a loss, the Deutsche Bank decided to put more money into it and get into a whole new kind of business.

The bank made sure that only the best resources were used for the new creation and got its own engineers, architects and interior designers who all contributed to creating a casino hotel that veered away from the sterile, stuffy bank feel and instead created a space with an atmosphere of ‘relaxed luxury’.

Thedailybeast.com has ranked Las Vegas as the dumbest city in America in a recent ‘study’. So maybe there is a direct link between reckless gambling and boozing and other not-publically-talked-about things and stupidity - who woulda thunk!?

The ‘study’ wasn’t hugely in-depth but it did make some good points. The ranking combined a number of factors, including the number of city residents with university degrees, the number of accredited post-secondary institutions and even included the number of non-fiction books sold in the city. What was not used in the calculation was the number of people having rollicking good times and the number of people still having rollicking good times at 5am.

Boston came out on top as the most intelligent city in the US with a score of 176.68 while Vegas got 3.33.
 
It does make sense though. Why get a degree if you’re going to make a career as a Vegas showgirl or a nightclub host or, better yet, a professional poker player? Vegas isn’t exactly the dream destination for your average ‘book worm’ is it?! Note that some of the above mentioned people manage to earn 6 figure salaries without degrees.

I’d much rather visit the dumbest city than the cleverest city – it’d be WAY more fun. Ignorance is bliss, after all.

Jenji Kohan, the creator and executive producer of Weeds, and Matthew Salsberg, the other executive producer of Weeds, have a new comedy project and this time about something even more addictive than weed: it’s about poker and Vegas baby! The show will be called Whales and it will be a half-hour show that revolves around a group of young, super-smart and talented people, some of whom are Harvard and MIT graduates, who decide to pursue glory and move to Vegas where they’ll live in a Vegas-style lavish apartment and play for the World Series of Poker’s $10 million prize.

Shock, shock, horror, horror! Our favourite celebrity hell-raiser has pleaded guilty to two misdemeanour charges surrounding her recent arrest for cocaine possession in Las Vegas.

How very inconsistent of her! We were expecting her to get out of this one somehow, oh wait - she did, she’s not really getting into much trouble for it. She won’t go to jail as long as she stays out of trouble for a year or as long as the law continues its unofficial lenient-to-celebrity-junkies-policy.

What Hilton will have to do is serve a year of probation, pay a $2,000 fine (and remember that $2,000 is a lot to hotel heiresses), give 200 hours of community service and have to complete an intense substance abuse programme.

Bonaventure, who handed her the sentence, did give her a stern warning though. Ouch! We hate those stern warnings but let’s face it, they always work! Look at Lindsey Lohan.

Hilton‘s lawyers cut a deal with the Clark County District Attorney’s office to avoid felony charges by getting Hilton to plead misdemeanour charges for drug possession and obstructing an officer.

After the judgement, Hilton sensibly didn’t stop to talk to reporters but did pull out her compact from her purse to touch up her makeup. Could this have been her way of showing the press that she had no cocaine, of hers or her friends, in her possession this time?

Here’s to your next visit to Las Vegas Miss Hilton!

Online poker and gambling seem to be infiltrating mainstream media more and more these days with even Jay Leno talking about it.

Rep. Barney Frank was called in as a guest on “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno” on NBC to discuss online gambling. Frank’s bill was passed by his House Financial Services Committee at the end of July and is now being considered by the entire Senate.

While on Leno’s show Frank mentioned, to a loudly applauding audience, how the licensing and regulation of online gambling in the US will result in billions of dollars in tax revenue. 

Meanwhile Leno brought up his own argument for why he thought online gambling should not be legalised. This is what he had to say:
 
“To me, Vegas works because you have to go to the desert to get there. You have to make an effort. You go to the desert, you lose your money and you come home. You can’t go to the desert again unless you get more money. If you’re sitting at home and you’re up late at night and you got your little credit card, next thing you know... it’s like a mini bar. You’re not going to eat the potato chips unless they are in the mini-bar.”

Frank was clearly not taken by surprise by Leno’s standpoint and responded by pointing out that gambling is not restricted to Vegas and is widely available in other places and that credit cards would not be used to gamble online if online gambling were to be legalised.

Frank’s overall position seemed to be that adults shouldn’t be treated like children and that they should be entitled to make their own choice (that illusive freedom theme) and when they do make the choice to gamble online there could be a lot of money to be made by regulating it. Leno stuck with his “go to the desert” argument.

Whether we agree with Leno or Frank, the reality is that Leno is the man who has millions of devoted viewers and these viewers will be more likely to take his side.

It seems another ‘celebutante’ has bitten the ‘dust’ this week with the chance of Paris Hilton facing up to four years in prison for cocaine possession.

She was arrested in Las Vegas with her boyfriend, Cy Waits, over the weekend after it seems she kinda bust herself(!?) by literally dropping a packet of cocaine into the hand of a cop. Uber-oops! Hilton was being questioned after being pulled over because of the overwhelming smells of burning marijuana emanating from the SUV she was in. During the subsequent questioning, Hilton attempted to get some lip balm, which is also rumoured to be highly addictive folks, out of her bag when the incriminating packet slipped out.

"As she began to open it, I saw a small bundle of what I believed to be cocaine in a clear baggy begin to fall from the purse and into my hand," wrote Lieutenant Dennis Flynn in the report. Hilton immediately denied that she knew it was there and said she thought it was chewing-gum. I hear powdered chewing gum is very popular these days.

Hilton then changed her mind/story and told the police that the handbag did not belong to her but to a friend. According to her, nothing in the bag except the asthma medication, $1,300 in cash, credit cards and Zig-Zag wrappers was hers. How big was this bag?! In an attempt to verify her story she said the bag was too “cheap” to be hers, thus once again proving that money does not always amount to class.

If Hilton is convicted she could face up to four years in jail and up to a $5,000 fine. David Chesnoff, Hilton’s lawyer, has said: "This matter will be dealt with in the courts, not in the media, and I encourage people not to rush to judgement until all of the facts have been dealt with in a court of law." But it’s just so easy!!

Waits, who is the present beau in case you forgot, has been charged with driving under the influence of alcohol and has subsequently been fired as a manager at a Las Vegas nightclub but is sure to be offered a few spots in some minor reality TV series- perhaps even Celebrity Rehab if he’s lucky- where he and Paris can fight their ‘lip balm’ addiction.

So here’s Hilton’s tally of ‘almost’ offenses in 2010 so far:

•    She was briefly detained in July in Corsica for being caught with a gram of cannabis in her handbag.
•    She was arrested during the World Cup in South Africa after she was bust with a joint at the Brazil-Netherlands quarter final match.
•    Viva Las Vegas! Present story

Before 2010 Hilton was arrested for Driving Under the Influence and was sentenced to 45 days in prison of which she only spent 23 days.

Hmm- notice a pattern here?