MGM customer volumes are falling again. That means the MGM economic indicator is flashing red. Back in July 2014 I introduced this little technique here as one part of a triangle for predicting a shift in economic trends. As the largest employer in Las Vegas and still primarily a Las Vegas company, customer volumes at MGM can be used as a proxy for the amount of money flowing through Las Vegas as a whole. In turn, the amount of money flowing through Las Vegas can be seen as an indicator of overall economic health in the US. If volumes are rising at MGM, credit is rising and boom times are continuing. If customer volumes are falling, credit is falling and the economy may be in trouble.

Due to the pitfalls of using only a single indicator for assessing these trends, I suggested a triangulation approach back in 2014. The second part of the triangle is the money supply coming out of the Federal Reserve, and the third is economist Andrew Lawrence’s Skyscraper Index, which he proposed in 1999. That is, the construction of the world’s tallest building tends to coincide with recessions.

Last week we discussed how the second part of the triangle, money out of the Fed, is already faltering, and this during a time of the year when it typically is not a problem. Now, the third part of the triangle might be in place as well. In a January article, CNN wrote an expose on one monstrosity of a skyscraper, Saudi Arabia’s Jeddah Tower, what would be the world’s tallest building scheduled to be completed by 2020 and standing just over 1 kilometer high. If and when completed, it will put the Tower of Babel to shame. It will cost about $1.4B to complete.

Interestingly, a modern reading of Biblical story of the Tower of Babel can reinterpret the tale as the world’s first recession. Everyone gets together for an enormous construction project, but it is never completed and the economy breaks up again as people return to more earth-bound interests, AKA the consumer sector. In recessions, grand projects get put on hold and people return to their more basic needs. Granted it’s probably not the intended message of the story, but it fits well enough.