Schwab Stock Drops 50%
The US house "overwhelmingly" passed new legislation this week to further clarify internet gambling laws and to curb the popular activity. Among the measures intended to thwart gamblers is a prohibition against the use of credit cards or wire transfers to pay for gambling debts.
I haven't read the law, but here's an obvious work-around: Transfer the money to an offshore account that is not (directly) related to internet gambling. Then transfer the money to your bookie.
Or here's another way: the gambling houses require you to put money up front into an account with them. You aren't paying a gambling dept because you haven't yet gambled with that money. Later, when you lose a bet the casino takes money from your account.
Oh, and of course the law exempts several types of gambling, including horse racing and state run lotteries. And the stock market, the biggest gambling operation in history.
I saw a NightLine piece this week about bodog.com. I think they guy was right when he said that if the U.S. Congress really wanted to put him out of business they would legalize internet gambling so that the big U.S. casinos could get into it. That would hurt his business more than anything, though to be fair, I suspect it would also increase the total amount of gambling being done.
It should also be noted that the measure has yet to pass the Senate. For my international readers (ha!) who aren't familiar with the way laws are made here, a law must pass both the House and the Senate and be signed by the President to become law. The Senate has shot down several recent attempts to kill internet gambling and may do so again.
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