Admitting Mistakes

I wonder. Yesterday, billionaire Sam Zell, who bought the Tribune Company in 2007 and has since gutted the Chicago Tribune and L.A. Times into near-oblivion while still not solving their problems, admitted he shouldn't have bought the company. Zell told Bloomberg TV:

"By definition, if you bought something and it's now worth a great deal less, you made a mistake and I'm more than willing to say I made a mistake. I was too optimistic in terms of the newspaper's ability to preserve its position."

The same could be said for virtually every major deal in Vegas and Vegas' "ability to preserve its position" in the past few years: Las Vegas Sands' bizarrely aggressive approach to Macau, Station Casinos and Harrah's going private, the major mid-decade mergers, MGM Mirage building CityCenter and so on.

Who in Vegas, I wonder, will be first to stand up and admit that they made an error in judgment? Who will be first to acknowledge that the misery visited upon this city and these companies right now is not merely the helpless result of an unexpected economic disaster? Who will say, "We screwed up, we should have had a contingency plan because these are uncertain times and anything could have happened?"

Just asking.