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Newest Bailout: 2010 Olympics
Vancouver games get $369M loan approved
By Jason Farago
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Posted Jan 19, 09 11:42 AM CST
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(Newser)
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The global recession is putting the 2010 Olympics Games in Vancouver in peril, writes Canada's Globe and Mail. This weekend the provincial parliament in British Columbia passed an emergency bill that allows the host city to borrow $369 million to make sure the athletes' village will be ready in time. The original lender to Vancouver cut off funding last fall, and the city has been subsisting on high-interest bridge loans.
Both the federal and the provincial government had refused to help Vancouver pay for further construction, leaving the city to pay $70,000 a day in interest alone. The government insisted that the city will be ready to host the winter Games in February 2010, but one opposition politician who opposed the bill laced into Vancouver for overspending. "Let's call this what it is," she said; "it is a corporate bailout."