Word: billion
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...that has to be balanced with the danger of runaway costs, which seem almost guaranteed when it comes to the Olympics. Brad Humphreys, professor of the Economics of Gaming at the University of Alberta, keeps count on Olympic budgets. His tally is a tale of excess: Athens budgeted $1.6 billion for the 2004 Games but wound up spending $16 billion. Four years later, Beijing budgeted the same amount, $1.6 billion, for the 2008 Summer Games yet spent an enormous $40 billion. London originally planned to spend $8 billion for the 2012 Games; the current estimate is $19 billion and rising...
...Games. It has taken the city more than 30 years to pay off its extravaganza, the cost of which is still not entirely known, according to Humphreys. The Olympic stadium was a particular disaster; originally budgeted for C$156 million, it ended up costing the city C$2 billion, including numerous fixes to the roof and years of interest payments. The Quebec government had to introduce a special tobacco tax to help pay down its Olympic investment...
Beyond the lavish palaces of the last Shah in north Tehran, beyond the sweeping Enqelab (or Revolution) Street, which cuts through the city center, and even beyond the southern outskirts of the city's rambling tenements, looms the Islamic Republic's most notable landmark: the $2 billion tomb of its founder, Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini. Though situated on a desolate piece of desert convenient only if you're headed to the international airport, the enormous scaffolding-enclosed shrine, still under construction 20 years after the Supreme Leader's death, is an essential part of the pilgrimage for devout Iranian Shi'ites...
...unclear how deeply a new batch of sanctions against Iran would cut, particularly since the U.S. needs Moscow and Beijing as signatories if it wants the initiative to pack a punch. Russia and Iran have shared economic interests, and according to some estimates, China has some $100 billion tied up in Iranian oil and gas reserves. Both countries have been unwilling to rebuke their strategic partner in the past. A watered-down set of sanctions might be disappointing to those, like Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who want to "cripple" Iran. But they wouldn't be out of the ordinary...
...these sanctions have brought about change." That's particularly the case when they?re leveled unilaterally. A 1997 study by the Institute for International Economics found that since 1970, unilateral U.S. sanctions met their stated goals less than 20% of the time, while costing the U.S. at least $15 billion annually in projected export revenues...