Billionaire Club Goes Broke

[OhioChick]

Source: AP

Ultra-Exclusive Yellowstone Club Near Bankruptcy

POSTED: 6:35 am EST November 24, 2008

BILLINGS, Mont. -- Running out of money may seem unlikely for a private resort whose members includes billionaire Bill Gates and Los Angeles Dodgers owner Frank McCourt, but that's the fate that will befall the ultra-exclusive Yellowstone Club this week unless it can line up another loan.

Less than two years ago the club's owners were pursuing ambitious plans that they said included the world's most expensive home, a $155 million, 53,000-square-foot behemoth complete with heated driveway. That project was never built. Now the Yellowstone Club is one of at least four high-end resorts that have sought bankruptcy protection in recent months.

Like the others, the Yellowstone Club was heavily leveraged, meaning huge loans were taken out to develop the ski hill, golf course and multimillion dollar mountainside condominiums on 13,600 acres near Yellowstone National Park.

When the credit crisis hit, the money dried up. A $4.5 million interim loan recently arranged through Credit Suisse was only enough to keep the club going for three weeks, leaving members clamoring and hundreds of creditors owed at least $399 million jockeying to get their money back.

Read more: http://www.newsnet5.com/money/18047573/detail.html

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:nopity:

[shanti]

1. good n/t

[Ganja Ninja]

2. My heart bleeds.

[bdamomma]

8. my feelings exactly.

[OhioChick]

22. Mine, too. n/t

[OffWithTheirHeads]

3. Excellent

nt

[madrchsod]

4. oh my....how the mighty have fallen

[Ian David]

5. Shouldn't a country club for billionaires be completely tricked-down to? n/t

[54anickel]

6. You realize this hurts the working class of the area the hardest. The masons, electricians,

carpenters, etc that were building these resorts as well as the people employed to run them.

To the 2nd poster - no, it's not "good", not good at all.

[lumpy]

14. The government should 'bail' those local workers out via

make-work programs. The investors/owners of the resort should take their lumps with whoever owning 'true title' taking over the operation.

[madrchsod]

15. so true....but it`s time to think about

putting these guys back to work by building roads,bridges,and schools. there is a billion of dollars worth of work in our national forests..the same forests that fdr built and has`t been maintained for years...

[Uncle Joe]

19. What hurts the working class the most are American Pharaohs

intent on building ridiculous Pyramids to themselves in stead of constructively using their wealth toward any sense of public good or benefit. What effect do you think structures such as these have on the working class's property taxes?

One family would live in that home after it was built, these same self-centric egomaniacs could have built fifty homes. They could have invested in an ongoing business to employ the working class.

[flygal]

20. Well, I'm from MT and I can tell you many people turned to this line of work

from something else. MT needs to focus on something other than catering to millionaires. There is too much of MT building up the best parts - Glacier, Missoula for the rich and they aren't creating other economic sectors - only service. Butte has done a good job restructuring itself. Mt is a huge unpopulated stated - there are lots of energy sources under utilized. Enough with the building bad assed homes.

[arikara]

7. Some parasitic billionnaires clamoring after losing a few million,

or seniors losing the small pension they were existing on. Which is worse?

Its the end of capitalism as we know it, brought about by those same useless billionnaires.

[qwlauren35]

23. I can't ding Bill Gates as a "useless billionaire."

He does a lot of good. I don't know how many others in this "club" are as philanthropic.

However, I get the feeling that the club "owners" are not the same as the "members". And it's the owners who were overambitious, overleveraged, and about to face bankruptcy.

They reached for a piece of the pie... and it's not working out. Can I blame them for trying? I'm not sure.

Many, many women paid for their children's college education by working for the wealthy. We have business franchises now that depend on it. Think Merry Maids. And its likely that Merry Maids is going to suffer in this economy. And I think they deserve sympathy.

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

9. Entry in Day Planner:

"Be sure to cry myself to sleep tonight"

Nothing wrong with success and rewards for hard, ethical work. The trouble is that for a lot of these guys, the only thing they worked hard at was the screwage of others and the economy.

[Maine-ah]

10. what about the people employed at these resorts?

[lumpy]

16. Before this is all over, I venture to say there will be people out of

work all over the nation. Maybe the businesses who have been operating on credit should die a natural death with the spoils going to whoever has legal title to same, or sold to solid investors. The US government make-work programs put in place during the FDR adminstration should be revitalized to alleviate workers work-loss (that is if the givernment has anything left after the papasites grab it all).

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

18. I cannot change that fact.

I also hate that these people and so many others will be paying the price for the greed of their true lessers, the parasites and liver flukes that have plagued this society, without anyone staying their greedy and truely worthless hands, for the last 30 years.

That all said, how long do we prop up the fortunes of parasites? Where is the point of sufficiency? Is there one, in their minds?

[4lbs]

11. I'm laughing my ass off at this bit of news. You'd think that the billionaires that stay and frolic

at this club have the means to each pitch in $50 million.

[Tangerine LaBamba]

12. I'll wager

that Mrs. Blixseth isn't crowing about how good her divorce settlement was, now that the opulent package appears to be going belly-up.

Somewhere, an ex-husband is laughing his ass off..............................

[RCinBrooklyn]

13. Stop EVERYTHING!!! We need to help the billionaires first.

[Mari333]

17. Oh NO not the Billionares!

[callous taoboy]

21. An exclusive country club nearby

is on the ropes. They had siginificant holdings in Lehmann Bros. Bush Sr. and a few movie stars have second (third, fourth, fifth?) homes there. The place was developed in 2002.

[SammyWinstonJack]

24. Aww.

:nopity: