Tuesday, August 05, 2008

Olympic inflation

I was wondering how much the Olympics might have added to world-wide inflation, with figures like £20 billion being quoted as the cost – presumably just of constructing the assets - & more than 40,000 tonnes of steel being used for the main stadium alone. That plus the deadline which puts the buyer in a weak bargaining position – though perhaps not in China

Well, assuming that a trillion is a 1 followed by 12 zeros, I think £20 billion is less than 1½ per cent of China’s GDP & 40,000 tonnes is less than 0.1 per cent of one month’s Chinese steel production (do not quote me on any of this)

Does not sound all that inflationary against everything else which is going on