I enjoy watching the Olympics. Generally, they are exciting and well organised. But the cost and the bureaucracy has reached ridiculous proportions. So has the hype and the self- importance of the officials, not to mention the corruption that seems to attend these huge events.

Host cities invariably promise new investment, tourism, and development. Governments insist that the games will pay financial dividends. This has been shown to be untrue by experts who devote themselves to studying such things (for instance: Andy Zimbalist of Smith College, Allen Sanderson of the University of Chicago and Bob von Rekowsky of Fidelity Investments).

London, like other Olympic hosts, says its investment paid off. The British government went farther than most to back up its claims, citing a massive five-year, 1,000 page study conducted by a respected team of consultants. This report by Grant Thornton (it cost $2 million!) concluded that by last summer, Britain had already earned at least a billion dollars more than the $15 billion it spent on the 2012 Summer Games. Forecasts for the future went into the tens of billions of dollars.

However, Stefan Szymanski, professor of Sports Management and Economics at the University of Michigan, was the only person with expertise in statistical number crunching who looked at the study before it was published, and he describes it as a “political document” that ignores the economic research showing Olympics are almost always unprofitable. (Based on a report in The Week)

The British government has scrambled egg on its face. But at least it really did try to do some good to the east End of London, and designed the Olympic facilities intelligently for practical re-use, even if the London economy slumped during the event.

Epicurus might well have said,”Look, life should be enjoyed and it was a good party. But the best thing the British could have done is to tell the truth and stop these ridiculous claims that hosting the Olympics is a financial bonanza. It is not. And countries like Brazil need to know that”. Moral: scale the whole thing down.