“Gaming industry wildcatters are thrilled with the reconstruction prospects for New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. They say anyone with a craps table should be able to make a mint as the richly funded reconstruction turns the fertile crescent into the Wild, Wild West.

“This won’t be another Las Vegas, where it takes at least a $1 billion ante to open. Expect, they say, a replay of the California Gold Rush, where fortunes were made on the backs of gambling and loose behavior,” reports today’s Las Vegas Review-Journal.