Dragging this back to topic, I was a resident of Atlanta in 1996. After the IOC basically slapped Billy Payne and company on the face for not licking their boots enough, I have kept two observations...
First, Billy Payne, the overall mastermind and inspiration for the bid, finished the Olympics with a cool half million in personal debt.
"I didn't do this to get a reward at the end of the day," he added. "People who trusted me and people whom I loved pulled off an enormous success. That is the reward, and nobody owes me anything other than the opportunity to help where I can."
Also,
"Atlanta benefited more than any other city in the history of the Olympics," said A.D. Frazier, the chief operating officer for the Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games. "Afterward, we had no debt and we left behind a legacy of privately funded structures the city would not have seen otherwise."
Atlanta's growth since 1996 is directly due to the recognition the city got under the Olympic rings.
Now compare that with what's happening now...