Yesterday, the International Times Herald ran a Bloomberg article called Defaults in Las Vegas turn investment banks into decorators. I can only imagine the number of signatures that have to be gathered to actually change a paint color! Here’s an excerpt:

Since January, when Ian Bruce Eichner, a New York developer, defaulted on a $760 million loan, Deutsche Bank has been giving Perini a monthly check for $70 million to continue construction. It is now in full swing with 2,800 workers on site and a dozen cranes towering overhead.

Deutsche Bank, which declined to comment about the Cosmopolitan, is one of a dozen investment banks that rode a five-year boom in commercial real estate by financing developers and landlords while profiting by packaging loans into securities. But credit markets seized up in 2007, sticking banks and brokerage firms with commercial mortgages and bonds. The amount for large U.S. banks alone reached $169 billion, according to Fitch Ratings.

The Cosmopolitan is clearly worth more to Deutsche Bank as a finished product than a construction site. It’s still scheduled to open in late 2009.

But the Cosmopolitan has other problems too: Cosmopolitan Magazine is suing them over their name! Hearst Publications insists “the Cosmopolitan development has tried to confuse the public into thinking the project is associated with the publishing company.” Now I don’t know about you, but I don’t see how I can confuse the two. Here’s what the Cosmopolitan will look like. Now, here’s what Cosmopolitan Magazine looks like.

Next thing you know, they’ll be forcing bars everywhere to pay a royalty every time they serve a Cosmo.