Mystery Motel

How to play Mystery Motel

The VGT dispute and construction reset are the latest chapters in a long and bumpy road for Bally’s since winning Chicago’s sole casino licence in 2022. Work has been halted for debris overflow and for unapproved contractors, and the company faced an $800 million funding gap that was eventually filled through a financing agreement with Gaming and Leisure Properties. Potential interference with city water lines also necessitated a significant redesign of the hotel plan.

At one point, the IGB ordered a temporary work stoppage at Bally’s permanent casino following reports of alleged ties between an unapproved dumpster service with organised crime.

Bally’s has been granted two years’ worth of extensions for the permanent project. State law allows for two-year temporary licences, but the Illinois Gaming Board approved an extension to three years in 2023. That pushed the deadline to this September, but Bally’s ultimately received another year’s worth of extensions through language included in the state’s omnibus revenue bill that was passed in June.

What is Mystery Motel?

Rovito, meanwhile, was such a fan of the mayor that he named a dish after him— “Linguini alla Mayor Grasso”—a pasta that comes with “fresh tomato sauce and basil, tossed with a touch of olive oil, and topped with fresh ricotta.”

In an op-ed for the Chicago Tribune in June, Grasso complained that “some members of the Chicago news media stigmatize Italian Americans as Outfit members or mafia operatives whenever it serves to embellish a story.”

Federal prosecutors, however, do not mention the mafia in court documents. They allege the gambling ring generated millions of dollars through illegal sports betting, video gambling, and loansharking operations, with members using intimidation and violence—or the threat of it—to collect debts.  

How to play Mystery Motel

This process of dumping nearly $1 trillion into the U.S. banking system has already begun. How is it going to work? There is currently a $1.5 trillion short term bill hamster wheel that the U.S. Treasury has been running on like a crazed mouse since April. They issue about $1.5 trillion in short term paper every month and pay it back with about the same in new short term issuance. They have about $1.6 trillion stuck in their bank account at the Federal Reserve, and that money is now coming out to pay down that hamster wheel. The issuance of new short term paper is slowing down. All this new money is going to stuff banks so full of short term cash that they will be forced to slam it into the existing supply of short term paper to such an extent that the rates are going to go negative, nominally. Nobody knows how deeply, but it’s definitely coming, probably in the next few days.

Below is the graph of 1-month rates from CNBC. They are about to cross the zero boundary.

When that happens, commodities prices are going to get completely unhinged. The cash on corporate balance sheets is going to start losing purchasing power very fast. And that will only encourage more dumping of it, and increase the positive feedback loop now already in place.