Australian Left Review
Article Title
China Shop: Medal Industry
Abstract
Before that lucky Spanish archer fired the arrow that set the Olympic Games ablaze a loose federation of local forecasting economists predicted that our athletes would come away with a bagful of medals including six gold. The economists based their forecasts on past evidence which showed our athletes always perform better in times of sluggish economic growth than when general affluence prevails. Their premise was that our dollar driven athletes would pull out all the stops to land lucrative marketing contracts and media exposure to cushion their return to a recession hit homeland.
This paper has been withdrawn.