Olympic bid a high-stakes gamble for Abe, Abenomics

It's worth noting that Tokyo 2020's Olympic budget is ten times larger than the government's Fukushima clean-up budget.

Nipporinoel, that's disgraceful... and not very surprising. Way to go, ECOJAPAN. More and more it seems like it's time to cut my losses and re-invest in some education or a new career back West. It's been real, but Abe is giving me the heebie-jeebies.

Wow! I don't envy the IOC. Their three choices are, a country at war, a country that's broke and a country under siege from a nuclear disaster. Is their a fourth choice?

Abe and his old-school chaps want to think it's 1960 again, and that the Japanese miracle will happen again. Keep dreaming.

Fukushima proble more important than Olympic .

If Tokyo wins, it will just be more tax payers money being shifted to the Abe and LDP friendly cement and steel corporations. It will give a short term boost to the economy with little lasting effects and provide the nation with a distraction from general social and economic decline and rising income disparity that accompanies a declining birthrate coupled with neo-liberal economic policies.

“The world is watching to see if we can carry out the decommissioning of the Fukushima nuclear power plant, including addressing the contaminated water issues,” Abe told cabinet ministers last Tuesday as they decided on the emergency measures."

It's a shame that's what it takes.

If the IOC chose Tokyo, then I can see that they are nothing less than a inresponsable greedy organization.

Madrid: well they have six years to clean they finance.

Istanbul: almost the same, six years to stop whatever is going on.

Tokyo: well, radiation take hour many years to go away? 10.000 years or something? And the thing is getting worse as the day past.

So there you go, who do you thing have better chance?

Meanwhile the nuclear situation is being controlled by incompetents. Over 160,000 refugees, and not a peep out of Abe's mouth save meaningless platitudes about "doing our best".

How did these 3 horrible choices end up as the final 3??

One way or the other, Japan will not be better off than the current state that it is in now.

Boy oh boy I cant wait for all the nasty comments to fly once this is decided, the losers will surely be spitting plenty of venom after this race is over!

Madrid was plagued with high unemployment, deep recession and the resulting social unrest.

Soooooo Isn't it time to let another nation "remake" itself ???

Strange how people change... When I wrote (on the same subject) :

Tokyo knows better than most how an Olympic Games can rebrand a city

Therefore it should also know that it is not only time to let another city "rebrand" itself (for whatever that means) but time also to get to work on much more urgent "domestic affairs" : Fukushima clean-up, relocating displaced Tohoku citizens...

I received 4 "thumbs up" but now (because I used a different word ?) I get minus 1 ? How fickle people are ! I still believe Tokyo doesn't deserve the games and should let Spain (to use the same word) have a chance to "rebrand" itself...

Paddy Power rates Tokyo the strong favorite ahead of Saturday’s IOC decision at odds of 8-to-15, versus 2-to-1 against Madrid and 9-to-2 against Istanbul

Interpreting odds is a bit of a challenge, but expressed in terms of probability Tokyo has a 65% chance of winning the bid, against 33% for Madrid and 18% for Istanbul. (The three percentages add up to 116% to account for the house margin.)

seems fairly true and would like to agree to Reuters Report except for last two lines about Nikkei 225.

It will give a short term boost to the economy with little lasting effects and provide the nation with a distraction from general social and economic decline and rising income disparity that accompanies a declining birthrate coupled with neo-liberal economic policies.

and Fukushima will be forgotten the moment Tokyo wins 2020 Olympics bid.

If you can calm down, and see which city is the most suitable place to held on Olympic, then it must be Tokyo. I dont know how many of you have been to Japan before, but its one of the safest city in the world. But things which Japanese government has to concern for Olympic is anti Korean demonstration by anti Korean people around Tokyo. That goddamn thing makes image of Japan worse.

“The ladder would be pulled out from under the market and the Nikkei could drop 500 points on Monday,” said Daiwa’s Kinouchi.

Probably stock exchange veteran and billioniare if he predicts things so sharp...

Six years is a long time. Things that will NOT go away in 6, 10 or 20 years is the radiation in Fukushima. Turkey would take longer to recover from the world economic meltdown than Spain will and Turkey is also dealing with area wide unrest. Spain has its issues with the recession and some social unrest but NOTHING compared to Turkey.

With China's current bullying tactics and NK's Great Wing Nut Leader, adding in Japanese people's reluctance to continue using nuclear power and the inevitable power shortages that have and will be increasing every year I'd say Tokyo looks like a second choice in stability behind Madrid. Six years to clean up Spain image vs Japan image.

I've been to Spain and driven from Barcelona down the east coast to Valencia then up to Granada then down to south and back up to Madrid and on the surface you have wouldn't noticed the problems that show up daily in the media reels unless you go looking for it. The same goes for Japan. Yeah sure most of us are maybe biased or just aren't fazed anymore about NHK and the likes with all their hype. Yeah in Osaka some parts have gone down in the last 6 years but in the end people are still living and life is still going on just with a little more stress that's all.