Whistler's new bobsled track: CDN $105 million (Credit:© VANOC/COVAN)

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When all is said and done, preparing for the Winter Olympics in Vancouver and Whistler will have cost close to CDN $6 billion. (About $5.6 billion in U.S. dollars.) And that’s just the price tag to get everything built, before the Games have even begun. What did British Columbia get for all that money? Was it all worth it? (For more stories on the Winter Games click here.)

Also on this edition of the podcast, news about Toyota and Moscow McDonald’s turns 20.

• Voice of America article
• mcdonalds.com
• CBC video archive: McDonalds in Moscow

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This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

MARCO WERMAN: Twenty years ago Ukraine was still part of the Soviet Union.  Mikhael Gorbachev was still in power.  But the Berlin wall had just come down and things were changing fast.  At that pivotal moment, in the bleakness of a Russian winter, a bright new sign appeared in Moscow.  It was the Golden Arches of McDonald’s.  That was exactly 20 years ago this week.  Analyst Masha Lipman was then, and still is, a resident of Moscow.  Masha what was it like when McDonald’s arrived there?

MASHA LIPMAN: It was indeed a sensation.  It will be remembered that the year 1990 was the year of acute shortages.  The Soviet economy was for all practical purposes falling apart.  Amidst this grim environment there appeared this shining place and people rushed, they rushed there because this was something very new.  There were very long lines.  People were waiting in the cold for one hour or even longer and when they got in, one of the things that struck me, and I remember it to this day was how the employees were able to keep the place clean.  That was one of the things that impressed us.

MARCO WERMAN: Right, and it wasn’t just about, of course, what the place looked like, it was about the burgers and the fries.  To help us remember why a McDonald’s was so different, here’s an excerpt from a news report by Canadian Broadcasting’s Don Murray from opening day back in 1990 where he spoke to the first customers.

DON MURRAY:  Their verdict on the feast was mixed.  I don’t like it at all, he says, it’s not Russian.  This woman doesn’t know what she just ate, but she said it was unusual and delicious.  We’re all hungry in this city, she says, we need more of these places.  There’s nothing in our stores or restaurants.

MARCO WERMAN: Nothing in the stores and restaurants.  Masha Lipman, that last voice as you know, was a vivid reminder of just how difficult life in Moscow was back then.  How hard was it just to get food in 1990?

MASHA LIPMAN: Well it was basically hunting for food.  You had to be always on the alert so if you went by a street and saw a line, you would find out what was on sale and probably stop and forget about your other doings and wait to get at least something.  Even things as basic as milk.

MARCO WERMAN: The other thing that was certainly new and different about McDonald’s in Moscow in 1990 was the customer service.  Here’s another excerpt from Don Murray’s story from 1990.

DON MURRAY:  I spilled my milkshake, he says, and I thought they’d bawl me out.  Instead, they gave me another one.  All of the staff have been taught to smile relentlessly, all the time.

MARCO WERMAN: Masha Lipman what was so unusual about the staff at this new McDonald’s smiling in 1990?

MASHA LIPMAN: The grim faces and rude manners of Soviet sales people were proverbial.  I think at the time McDonald’s had this hiring policy in which they tried to pick only those people who had not had the experience of working in the Soviet catering system or the Soviet food stores.  People who smiled naturally.  You were met with a real crowd of young people behind the counter and all of them were smiling at you.

MARCO WERMAN: When was the last time you went to McDonald’s?

MASHA LIPMAN: Not too long ago.  I sometimes do.  It’s fast.  You know, when you have some things to do in the morning outside of my office and then going back to the office, I sometimes drop by and get something to eat there very quickly just because it’s so fast.  The McDonald’s that I have in mind is the same first McDonald’s.  Actually I’m sitting here in my office, it’s within two minutes from where I sit.

MARCO WERMAN: One in five meals in the United States is a fast food meal.  That leads here to obesity.  Are people in Russia 20 years after the opening of the first McDonald’s looking with more scrutiny at this restaurant that at first seemed so magical?

MASHA LIPMAN: Well at first it did.  And also there is the anti-American sentiment which is quite substantial in Russia.  And, of course, it’s common to say that McDonald’s is poor quality and McDonald’s is using a lot of fat.  McDonald’s is not good for you.  It’s unhealthy food.  But I guess no matter how people may grumble, they still think it’s convenient, it’s cheap and they do use it.

MARCO WERMAN: Masha Lipman of the Carnegie Moscow Center reflecting on the arrival of McDonald’s in Moscow 20 years ago this week.  Thank you Masha.

MASHA LIPMAN: My pleasure.

MARCO WERMAN: And thanks to CBC’s Don Murray for that blast from the past.  You can check out his original story via our website, the world dot org.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

On October 29^th, the US Commerce Department announced that the nation’s Gross Domestic Product, or GDP, grew by an annual rate of 3.5 percent in the quarter that ended in September. So by one measure, technically we are out of recession. But it sure doesn’t feel like the hard times are past us for the one in ten Americans who are unemployed and looking for work.

This got us thinking in the newsroom: How effective is GDP at gauging the health of a nation’s economy? After all, GDP doesn’t factor in things like the environmental consequences of growth. Build some new machinery, but pollute a nearby river: GDP goes up. We weren’t the first people to question the validity of GDP as the best measure of a country’s well-being. I got the idea for a story by reading Eric Zencey’s op-ed in the New York Times, which questions the usefulness of GDP. (And of course, Zencey wasn’t the first to come up with the thoughts in his op-ed, but who really has an original thought anymore these days?) Zencey’s commentary, and the arguments of many others are stirring some debate over just how effective of a tool is GDP. The French say it’s time to find a better economic indicator. So too do groups from Nepal to Brazil to Vermont who are looking at ways to measure happiness and well-being to gauge a nation’s economic health.

Traditional Thai Greeting

And while we’re on the subject of happiness, how happy can a people truly be without access to a McDonald’s happy meal? I’m not a regular McDonald’s visitor, but I have to say, when I’m having a tough day on the road thousands of miles from home, the golden arches bring a familiar feeling of welcome. (Personal testimony: McDonald’s strawberry milkshakes hold up as excellent in Ukraine, Italy, and Peru.) In this podcast, we’ll hear from a nation where it’s no longer possible to get a Big Mac. I ask you: Just what are we Americans supposed to do there if we’re having a bad travel day???

And check out this classic Thomas Friedman column about the Big Mac and global security.

McDonald’s is to close its business there because the country’s financial crisis has made it too expensive to operate its franchises there. The fast food giant said its three outlets in the country would shut – and that it had no plans to return. Besides the economy, McDonald’s blamed the “unique operational complexity” of doing business in an isolated nation with a population of just 300,000.

And the country losing its Golden Arches soon is Iceland.

Svein Gudmarsson is a reporter with Iceland’s state radio.

• BBC coverage
• The Guardian: McDonald’s to quit Iceland

Read the Transcript
This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

JEB SHARP: And the country losing its golden arches this weekend is Iceland.  Svein Gudmarsson is a reporter with Iceland’s state radio.  Tell us exactly why McDonalds is closing in Iceland?

SVEIN GUDMARSSON:  Well, the reason is simple.  Since last year, the Icelandic krona or currency has devaluated so much that the cost of importing the goods to make the MacDonald’s hamburgers and chips and whatever they use to make them, has almost doubled.  So the regulations of the MacDonald’s stipulate that their franchisee has to import everything, and he cannot compete any more with the local hamburger restaurants.

SHARP:  They would rather insist that everything is imported than keep their restaurants open?  Do you understand the background to that?

GUDMARSSON:  I think it has something to do with certificates that producers of meat and cheese and so on have to have, from MacDonald’s.  And apparently Icelandic producers aren’t big enough to get these certificates.

SHARP:  So it’s some sort of standards, quality control issues.

GUDMARSSON:  Yes, that’s right.

SHARP:  So you were in MacDonald’s today.  I gather there were three in Iceland. Who was loving it in Reykjavik today?

GUDMARSSON:  Well, I went early today like you said to our MacDonald’s restaurant nearby where I work, and it was absolutely packed.  There were so many people buying hamburgers there, and of course, the restaurant is closing down on Sunday.  So apparently word had spread that this would most likely be the last MacDonald’s trip here in Iceland.

SHARP:  And what do you hear from the owner of the franchise there in Iceland?  What’s he going to do next?

GUDMARSSON:  Well, he’s quite upbeat actually, because he is going to establish a new restaurant with a different name called Metro.  And he’s saying that now he can finally buy meat and cheese and buns and whatever from a local producer, which costs less, and he hopes that the quality will be better.

SHARP:  Now if burger chains in Iceland will be using more local sources for food and materials, that sounds like good news for the environment.

GUDMARSSON:  Absolutely. It is not good for environment having to transport a lot of food over long distances, when it can be grown or produced locally.  This is good also for Iceland economically, because quite a lot of money and currency left the country to buy all that stuff, which could be produced in Iceland.  Instead, this money now goes to local farmers, and even the money that the owners of MacDonald’s in Iceland had to pay for the franchise will stay in Iceland, which is definitely good news for our country that is quite starved with foreign currency.

SHARP:  So not necessarily good for your health eating the burgers, but better for the health of the planet.

GUDMARSSON:  You’re spot on.

SHARP:  And just a point of language, do people say “Big Mac” in Iceland, or was there a colloquial?

GUDMARSSON:  Yeah, I think Big Mac has always been called just simply a Big Mac, but the Quarter Pounder, or Royale, as I think it is called in the US, was always called “góður borgari” which means just, “a good citizen.”  It was actually the prime minister of Iceland who took the first bite of a Big Mac back in ’93 when the first MacDonald’s restaurant opened.  He is a very controversial figure still in Iceland.  He only left office five years ago and when he became the governor of the central bank, and was the governor of the central bank when the bank collapsed in Iceland, so now many people are wondering if he is actually going to be the one who takes the last bit of MacDonald’s.

SHARP:  Svein Gudmarsson is a reporter with Iceland State Radio.  Thanks very much.

GUDMARSSON:  Thank you.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.