{"id":308634,"date":"2010-02-11T16:37:56","date_gmt":"2010-02-11T21:37:56","guid":{"rendered":"tag:business.theatlantic.com,2010:\/\/3.35823"},"modified":"2010-02-11T17:25:36","modified_gmt":"2010-02-11T22:25:36","slug":"did-the-olympics-break-the-greek-government","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/308634","title":{"rendered":"Did the Olympics Break the Greek Government?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Here’s an angle on the Greek financial crisis I hadn’t considered: Victor Matheson, The<\/strike> a member of the Sports Economist group blog, argues<\/a> that one reason the Greeks wound up in such deep financial trouble is that they went deep in hock to pay for the Olympics:<\/p>\n

Greece’s federal government had
\nhistorically been
\na profligate spender, but in order to join the euro currency zone, the
\ngovernment was forced to adopt austerity measures that reduced deficits
\nfrom just over 9% of GDP in 1994 to just 3.1% of GDP in 1999, the year
\nbefore Greece joined the euro.<\/span>
<\/span>
But the Olympics broke the bank.
\nGovernment deficits rose every year after 1999, peaking at 7.5% of GDP
\nin 2004, the year of the Olympics, thanks in large part to the 9
\nbillion euro price tag for the Games. For a relatively small country
\nlike Greece, the cost of hosting the Games equaled roughly 5% of the
\nannual GDP of the country. <\/span>
<\/span>
Of course, the Olympics didn’t
\nusher in an economic boom. Indeed, in 2005 Greece suffered an
\nOlympic-sized hangover with GDP growth falling to its lowest level in a
\ndecade. <\/span>
<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n


That would certainly follow the pattern of crazy
\ncivic development projects in which stadiums and museums are supposed to
\n somehow substitute for everything that is missing in the local
\neconomy.  But the governments in question don’t usually end up in receivership<\/i>.<\/p>\n

Fun
\n Olympic factoid of the day:  the television news yesterday reported
\nthat the Whistler ski complex had essentially been developed in the
\nhopes of the area someday scoring a winter Olympics.  I have no idea if
\nthis is true, but it seems both plausible and deeply troubling. 
<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span>

\n

\n Email this Article<\/a>
\n Add to digg<\/a>
\n Add to Reddit<\/a>
\n Add to Twitter<\/a>
\n Add to del.icio.us<\/a>
\n Add to StumbleUpon<\/a>
\n Add to Facebook<\/a>
\n

\n\"\"<\/a>
\n\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here’s an angle on the Greek financial crisis I hadn’t considered: Victor Matheson, The a member of the Sports Economist group blog, argues that one reason the Greeks wound up in such deep financial trouble is that they went deep in hock to pay for the Olympics: Greece’s federal government had historically been a profligate […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":80,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-308634","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308634","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/80"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=308634"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308634\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=308634"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=308634"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=308634"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}