Las Vegas is a city with a warning for America. Empty suburbs, exposed ribs of unfinished mega-casinos, and a desert reclaiming lost territory for coyotes and barrel cacti. It’s a stark reminder of what threatens America’s other big cities. What happened in Vegas isn’t staying in Vegas.

Las Vegas used to be synonymous with hope. It is literally an oasis in the desert. It was a place dreams were made and fantasies came true. During the boom years, almost anything seemed possible. Two-hundred-and-forty-foot Bellagio fountains? Soaring Stratosphere hotel? Even the Eiffel Tower and the Great Pyramids? It’s got them all—to the soundtrack of coins crashing and neon lights flashing. It was paradise for the escapist.

Unfortunately, it was all unaffordable—in more ways than one.

Thanks to an unabashed penchant for aggressively feeding human vices, Las Vegas was one of the world’s hottest economies for over a decade. In 2007, it was ranked 14th out of the world’s largest and best metropolitan areas. It was America’s fastest-growing city. Houses were going up so fast that the common joke was that construction workers were building homes for construction workers. Migrants legal and illegal flocked to the city for a piece of the action.

Casinos sprung up out of the sands. In 2007, the famous Stardust casino was imploded to make way for a new massive $4.8 billion Echelon Place casino and resort, on 87-acres. This colossal project was supposed to include 5,000 rooms, five hotel operators, five unique spas, a 140,000-square-foot casino, 300,000 square feet of shopping space, a 750,000-square-foot convention center, 30 restaurants, and two massive stadium-style theaters—plus residential parcels for the super-wealthy.

And the Echelon was only one of many construction projects changing the Vegas skyline. The $3 billion Fontainebleau was another. Condominium towers, office complexes, mini-malls, golf courses, and every other project was expanding. Developers looked into the future and thought they saw a never-ending stream of money and growth. But as we now know, it was all a mirage.

Fortunes were made and lost and made again. Parcels of dusty, rock-strewn desert traded hands like baseball cards. Tortoise pasture made land speculators millions. One now-famous former-maid-turned-realtor—turned-convicted-felon—made so much money she had plans to preserve a historic house by raising it onto the roof of a multistory commercial complex. Speculators even began bidding up property on the far side of the Hoover Dam more than 35 miles away.

The city’s reputation as a place where anything goes kept the tourists coming and the construction industry booming. While Vegas briefly tried to re-market itself as a family-friendly destination, the seedy side never went away. In fact, when that failed to bring in the families, Las Vegas promptly went back to what drew tourists: the adult industry.

Nevada’s legalized prostitution laws attract countless teenagers and university students from around the country. Las Vegas reality tv shows play off these themes, with the newest showcasing the life of Vegas gigolos—complete with “real life” pornographic sex scenes. Sex tourism is an integral part of the Vegas economy. And Las Vegans are proud of it.

Ironically, in 2004, over 128,000 people tied the knot in Las Vegas—making it the marriage capital of America. Amazingly, according to the Las Vegas Sun, 5 percent of marriages in America take place near The Strip.

Vegas during the fat years was the place that more Americans wanted to move to than virtually anywhere else. The greater metropolitan population zoomed from around 500,000 in 1980 to around 1.9 million at its peak—one of the fastest growth rates in the country.

That in itself speaks volumes about America. What makes living in the middle of a hot, dry desert so appealing? Vegas’s popularity says a lot about America’s mental condition and what we value as a society.

Walking down Las Vegas Boulevard, seeing the sparkly high rises, the smiling faces, the hustle and bustle, you might be tempted to think that life continues as usual despite the Great Recession—but it is just one colossal bluff.

You don’t have to look too far to see the amazing transformation of this boom-to-bust town. Just look down—as in, beneath the street.

Underneath Sin City’s most famous casinos is a secret world: a matrix of flood tunnels that run for miles. Yes, Las Vegas has another kind of underground community: people—even families—living like rats. And when it rains, sometimes drowning like rats, too.

It is a life far from ordinary, but it is becoming far too common. It is estimated that the population of the underground could be as many as 700. Granted, that is just a fraction of Las Vegas’s 14,000 homeless, and most have drug and alcohol problems, but the collapsing economy has added to these ignoble rolls. On occasion Matthew O’Brien, author of Beneath the Neon, sees teddy bears and other toys in the makeshift shelters, evidence that children are living in the damp, dark, cockroach-infested, broken-glass-and-hypodermic-needle-strewn tunnels too.

It is a terrible picture, made the more so by the show of gaudy consumption and extravagance just feet above their heads. People dig through dumpsters while others with diamond rings just around the corner drop $1,000 a hand at the Black Jack table. Those with more money to spend and an appetite for other pulls of the flesh can join private parties at rooftop pools.

When you can’t stomach looking down or up anymore, shift your view to the silent suburbs.

When the great recession hit, no other major U.S. city was more devastated than Las Vegas. Here is where the most pain has been felt by the most people.

Consider this: If you bought a home 20 years ago, it is now probably worth less than you paid for it, according to SalesTraq figures. Prices have fallen by more than 60 percent from their peak in 2007. People talk about Japan’s lost decade. This makes that look mild in comparison.

About two thirds of Nevada homeowners—around a million households—now owe more on their mortgages than their house is worth.

For those looking for a really scary bet: What are the odds that more underwater homeowners choose to walk away from their mortgages? What do you think that will do to local banks and the economy?

The Nevada Association of Realtors reported in January that one quarter of foreclosures were by people who could afford to make their house payments but chose to throw in the chips and walk away anyway. Theirs was a calculated decision based on the odds of recovery. For these people, buying a house was simply a gamble that didn’t pay off. Time to cut their losses and leave someone else to pay for it.

It was a lesson many first-time buyers missed. Last year when the federal government distorted the market by giving first-time home buyers a 10 percent credit to purchase a home, many got lured into the market thinking they were getting a good deal. It turned out to be more of a government-sponsored “bait and switch.” After the 5.4 percent drop in house prices last year, and taking into account closing costs and realtor fees, these newbies are now part of the underwater crowd.

And prices are still falling and will continue to fall, at least until the wave of foreclosures peaks or a U.S. dollar collapse triggers hyperinflation. The over-under on that one is a wager even the most astute economists would be smart to avoid.

For four straight years, Nevada has taken the national foreclosure rate prize. One in every 11 households received a foreclosure filing last year. And judging by the number of delinquent loans, foreclosures are predicted to increase again this year.

Las Vegas’s local housing market is so bad and so many properties are vacant that Section 8 renters have become a hot commodity—even for high-end properties with pools, putting greens and state-of-the-art exercise facilities. At least the rent checks are guaranteed to come—courtesy of the government.

On the employment front, many hope things can’t get any worse. That may turn out to be optimistic. On April 6, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported 13.7 percent unemployment in Las Vegas. But when you include people who are under-employed and those people who have dropped out of the labor force due to discouragement, the real unemployment rate is probably closer to 25 percent.

Those are Great Depression levels. And the view from the suburbs and beneath the streets, and all the unfinished giant casinos confirm it.

Las Vegas is a microcosm of the economic nightmare that has gripped the entire nation. It’s the poster child for the economic bubble.

By now everyone should have a pretty good understanding of what caused the collapse of the residential home market and Wall Street and thus America’s Great Recession. At its core, the collapse was due to a breakdown in moral values.

Who doesn’t remember the thousands of now notorious “liar loans”; appraisers inflating valuations; lenders knowingly overlooking suspect documentation because they were just going to sell the mortgage to someone else anyway; credit-rating agencies providing triple-A ratings to risky subprime mortgages despite knowing that many were up to 10 times riskier than similarly rated investments; and the National Association of Realtors telling people it is always a good time to buy and vigorously denying the existence of a housing bubble—even as the bubble was clearly popping.

As it turns out, the housing bubble was all based on fraud and greed. And not even all the cosmetics in Vegas could hide it.

Now the bust is being made worse by fraud and greed too. Las Vegas is ground zero for people preying on those who are most desperate to save their houses. The city has a whole cottage industry of mortgage foreclosure fraud and schemes, says Nevada’s attorney general. The big banks are getting in on the action too. The robo-signing scandal, banks foreclosing on homes without documentation proving they own the mortgage, puppet rocket-docket judges legalizing improper foreclosures. That’s Las Vegas.

But perhaps the most shocking thing is that despite the bust, despite the national recession and the worst economic shock since the Great Depression, so many people still have so much money to burn that they still head to the desert city to throw it away.

That’s the thing about vices and addictions: It’s hard to get rid of them. And in tough economic times, they can seem even more appealing. For this reason, despite the terrible economy, the city probably has at least a short-term future—but for all the wrong reasons.

Las Vegas was a symbol of American prosperity unlike any other city. Post-economic-crash, it still is a symbol—only now it stands as a reminder that in the end, sin never pays. Heed the warning and look around: What happened in Vegas isn’t staying there.