Costly Chinese Bird's Nest

Last year, the Chinese-hosted Olympic Games showed off a glitzy new open-topped stadium known (due to the twig-like appearance of externally-visible steel lattice supports) as the Bird's Nest.  It turns out that the soccer team set to play in the stadium has backed out of the deal, and the structure's operators are struggling to make money in a venue with an $8.8 million dollar maintenance cost.

Currently, the main business there is ticket sales to tourists who want to walk around and buy trinkets in a gift shop.  The hope is apparently that the structure will within a few short years anchor a major shopping district.  The fact that the planet is plunging into a major international credit crunch and financial depression makes the creation of a major new shopping district something of a puzzle -- perhaps the brainchild of command-economy strategists -- but we'll see.

The decision to make the costliest Olympics ever might yield more expense yet.