An Olympic Debt

With the Vancouver Olympics being the first "post 2008 recession Olympics" many people are wondering if it's a good thing for countries to spend so much money on sporting events when countries right now are already in great debt. Canada, who is hosting the winter olympics, has already a bumpy history of being able to pay off olympic debts. When the summer olympics were in Montreal in 1976, it created a financial disaster for the city. The city just payed off it's last debts from the olympics last year, over 30 years later. Taxes were raised and people were layed off and poverty increased in Montreal after the games and since they've never fully recovered.

Also China who's olympics in 2008 cost $40 billion, has also seemed to have dug themselves in a hole they can't seem to get out of. China anticipated that the Beijing Olympics would create a major increase in tourism to their country. I hasn't, and that's because Olympics are short lasting and after they are finished people forget about them. People don't want to see where past Olympics were, it simply doesn't interest them.

Vancouver is quite possibly going to put itself and the rest of Canada in years of debts. What they need to do is make sure that all of their facilities will be built for long term use, so that ticket sales for post olympic events help lower their debt. Fortunately many of the venues for the olympics will be places that were already built beforehand, unlike in China were almost all the venues were completely new.

As for the US, we lucked out in having the 2016 Summer Olympics be in Rio de Janeiro and not Chicago. With our countries debt already being $12.5 trillion, I think we should start figuring out ways to start saving and stop spending.

Learn more at: http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2009/01/13/national-post-editorial-board-vancouver-s-very-own-olympics-debt-debacle.aspx

and

http://boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2008/08/22/caught_under_a_mountain_of_olympic_debt/