no money pit

Artists impression of 2012
The banking debt hole I've written about previously is becoming easier to spot and now we see banks looking for ways to cover their part of the hole. I wonder if the banks concerned will continue to sponsor expensive sports like Grand Prix racing as a result of the need for frugality?

The big numbers have provided an ideal time to announce the miscalculation of the Olympics funding, where the original estimates of £4bn seem to now be north of £9bn.

I wonder if the old "take the number you first thought of and multiply by four" will ultimately apply for this grand project.

At the original amount, it worked out to around £150 per taxpayer, now its around £350 and using my 4x calculation it would go to £650. Using the £9m calculation it works out to about £4.50 a month per taxpayer between now and the start of the Games, assuming the Lottery puts up a couple of billion. I see private industry is still in for $150 million, although that is a bit of a rounding error on the general calculation.

Another way to look at it is to take £9bn and estimate the daily burn rate. Using rough maths, where a year has 220 working days, its about 900 days to start of the Games, which is around £10m per day spending rate, assuming it was linear.

I expect to see charts.

Current status 2008