Brazil: Showing "the world we can be a great country!"

As the Olympics Near, Brazil and Rio Let the Bad Times Roll

Ahhh, yes, the Olympics. The opportunity for yet another country to show the world it is great, while systematically destroying that country, and impoverishing the people.

More below.

"The country’s economy has also fallen off a cliff, its gross domestic product dropping by 3.8 percent last year alone. Both the state of Rio de Janeiro and the city are broke — and the federal government is not in great shape, either. Teachers and the police have had their paychecks delayed. Those much-praised social programs have been cut back. Inflation is on the rise. So is crime. The state security budget has been cut. Just days ago, armed men attacked Rio’s largest public hospital, successfully freeing a drug kingpin."

Oooofff! 

"In April, a top state official, Leonardo Espindola, publicly acknowledged that Brazil’s problem could affect the Olympics and damage the country’s image. “We are nearing a social collapse in our state,” he said.

Cities that hold Olympics rarely, if ever, break even on the Games. In Rio’s case, it won’t even be close. Brazil originally budgeted more than $14 billion to hold the Olympics, money that would be spent on infrastructure — stadiums, transportation improvements, the Olympic Village and so on — as well as security and other logistical requirements.

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That number is now estimated at about $20 billion. But Rio is only likely to reap, at most, $4.5 billion in revenue, said Andrew Zimbalist, a sports economist at Smith College whose recent book, “Circus Maximus,” examines the economic consequences of the Olympics and the World Cup."

Social collapse, and an Olympics ROI of $20 billion minus $4.5 billion or $-15.5 billion! Ugly! I wonder how many zika patience, or poor could have been helped with that amount of money? Instead it went to feather the beds of politicians, contractors, and other public parasites.

"The Games will go on, of course, and for those of us watching on television, it will be a splendid spectacle. Most of the Olympics will take place in a kind of bubble, largely divorced from the city’s problems. But after they end on Aug. 21, almost three weeks after they begin, most of us will move on. The people of Rio will be left to pick up the pieces."

Just so. Lather, rinse, repeat. The next time it will be the same, only a different country and peoples will be ground finely under the wheels of the Olympic machine.