January 18th, 2009
Like every good plot, the Vancouver Games Village fiasco is thickening nicely.
One might imagine that the Council would allow the defaulting developer, Millenium, and its usurious financiers to go to the wall, sue the sods for whatever losses the city has suffered, appoint a new contractor, and press on with the project.
But no. The council is choosing to bail out Millenium, and trying to raise additional funding to not only finish the project but repay the hedge fund loans. It’s Fanny Mae, AIG, and Citibank all over again!
The reason, it turns out, is that 250 of the studio apartments have been pre-sold at prices which, although well below the anticipated final per unit cost (C$1m plus), are nevertheless, significantly higher than could be obtained in the current recession-spooked market. Were the developer allowed to default, these sales would become null and void.
Of course it’s a lose-lose deal for the poor bloody Vancouver taxpayer.
OK. So what, you may well ask, has all this got to do with sailing? Not much actually except, of course, that there is a pattern to all this Olympic nonsense. This is yet another example of overly ambitious city fathers being tricked into penury by the venal ambitions of the IOC.
Like the America’s Cup, the Olympics are a great sponge which soaks up money and resources - but the difference is that this is not the discretionary play-money spending of zillioniares, but the precious resources of people like you and me.
Hands-up anyone who had warm and fuzzy feelings about Olympic President Jacques Rogge persuading the pesky Chinese to lighten up on human rights and freedom of speech? http://crew.net.nz/forum/blog.php?p=49
So much has happened since August that one might be forgiven for forgetting, for example, the ”special protest zones” set aside (at Rogge’s behest) for the good folk of Beijing to stage their protests.
Well today’s New York Times reports that this was all a cunning trick.
Not one permit was issued and the poor sods who naively applied were instead arrested. Mr Ji Suzam 58, a native of Fujian province, who applied to protest at the Purple Bamboo Park, one of three designated areas, was instead given three years in the slammer.
Two old ducks in their 70s , pissed off about paltry compensation for land taken for the games, and who similarly applied, had been earlier sentenced to “re-education through labour”.
Nice work Jacques.
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