The WSJ on A1 looks at the bizarre world of commercial real estate, where just because you lose your lenders and investors a couple hundred million bucks here and there, doesn’t mean you can’t do it all again. The paper profiles a New York developer who’s about to be wiped out of his billion-dollar-plus casino and condo development in Las Vegas. It’ll be the second time in the last two decades one of his major projects has gone belly up, not to mention a couple of other properties he’s owned that he’s lost or had to put into bankruptcy.

Forget about all that—would you lend a billion dollars for this?

For the retail space, they ordered up a pair of 28-foot industrial robots programmed to box, to dance to “Disco Inferno,” and to play 12-foot Fender Stratocaster guitars. On the roof above the casino and stores, they planned a five-acre “beach” with sand, cabanas and a pool with artificial tides.

Toyota skids

Seemingly unflappable Toyota’s profits dropped 28 percent last quarter in what its president called a “severe business environment.” It predicted its annual profit would drop this year for the first time since 1999 because of the U.S. downturn.

The WSJ on B1 leads with “an ill-timed bet on the U.S. truck and SUV market” causing the decline, though it also says a weak dollar and higher prices for materials hurt, too. The FT:

Toyota’s gloomy guidance bodes ill for the global car industry’s prospects this year as the Japanese company produces more compacts and other fuel efficient cars—such as the Prius petrol-electric hybrid—than competitors such as General Motors. It makes relatively few of the larger vehicles consumers are shunning as petrol prices spike. Toyota outsold GM in the first quarter of this year and is expected to overtake it soon as the top-selling carmaker.

The NYT inside its business section says the American market’s woes will push the company faster into newer markets like China. Bloomberg says an S&P report predicts car sales this year will be the lowest since 1995. General Motors offered to give a parts supplier $200 million to help it settle a strike that’s been going on for ten weeks.

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