White Elephant
A "white elephant" is a something that is more expensive for the owner to keep than it is worth, but which the owner cannot get rid off.
How It's Used
“The evil Clyde has in vengeance given me a route that is a ‘White Elephant,’ a term which he once applied to me during the course of one of our business conferences. Resentment and jealousy have again struck me down.” —John Kennedy Toole, A Confederacy of Dunces, (New York: Wing Books, 1980), p. 272. “For some cities, the legacy of the Games has been cost overruns, heavy debt loads and white-elephant stadiums, aquatic centers and velodromes. The costs of hosting the event keep spiraling upward. Beijing is investing almost $40 billion in next year's Games, significantly more than the $14.2 billion previously budgeted…
“Construction costs in Chicago are expected to reach $2 billion, including $366 million for a temporary stadium (the new thing, to avoid the white-elephant problem) and $1.1 billion for a privately developed Olympic Village that would turn into mixed-income housing afterward.” —Emily Steel, “Do Host Cities End Up Winners?” The Wall Street Journal, April 7, 2007, p. A2. “Having said that, watching the UN continue its kabuki theater concerning North Korea makes me want to shut the place down, convert it to condos and remit the funds to the former member states. Even in a down New York real estate market it is almost certain to be a better return on investment for the dollars poured into that white elephant on the East River than 'outcomes' like the proposed sanctions on Pyongyang.” —David J. Rothkopf, “You Can’t Spell Unproductive Without the Letters ‘U’ and ‘N’,” Foreign Policy, June 11, 209. Links Beyond eAlmanac
Wikipedia article on White Elephants
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