This week’s Gazette column talks about the latest developments in the Mashpee Wampanaog/Middleboro casino saga. This week came news that one set of can’t-fail investors(Kerzner etal) have been replaced by a better set of can’t-fail investors described by the Cape Cod Times as “Kien Huat Realty, a subsidiary of Genting Group, the top gambling company in Asia”.

To do real analysis of this, we need to know the specifics of the agreement between the old investors and new ones. What happens to all the debt the Mashpee have been accumulating? What happens to the land? What allows the new investors to cut and run?

My feeling is that Kerzner wouldn’t walk away from a viable project and that the new investors are buying into a long shot for short money. My other feeling is the Middleboro BOS will keep their heads firmly stuck in ….. the casino sands and fail to react to this new development – as they have failed to react to all other developments since Casino Summer ’07.

Meanwhile Middleboro is left twisting in the wind in some sort of self-induced casino purgatory. The prospect of the casino has done as much or more damage than an actual one would have.