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Crowdfunding Greece's Repayment

posted by cmn32480 on Thursday July 02 2015, @11:23AM   Printer-friendly
from the let-the-people-repay dept.

DECbot writes:

To add to the other Greece Breaking News story (Greece Defaults, Still Wants Bailout)....

The Ars Writes:
Thom Feeney, a London shoe shop worker who started a campaign to raise €1.6 billion (that's US $1.78 billion). Feeney's IndieGoGo campaign, started just two days ago, has already raised an astonishing €478,575 (or $533,010) from more than 30,000 people.

"All this dithering over Greece is getting boring," Feeney wrote on his IndieGoGo page. "Why don't we the people just sort it instead?" He added that to come up with the €1.6 billion, every member of Europe would only have to give €3 each (well, technically you'd only need to collect from members of the European Union; that's not even counting any potentially generous Swiss or Norwegian people.)

The campaign has six days left to raise money. If €1.6 billion isn't raised, all the donors will get back their money.

This afternoon, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) declared that Greece was officially in arrears, but it has not yet declared that Greece is in default. Technically, the IMF could offer Greece an extension of its debt repayment obligation. On July 5, the country will hold a national referendum on whether to sign a deal demanding even stricter austerity from the nation.

But, if Europeans all chip in, maybe we can just put this silly bailout business behind us.

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  • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday July 02 2015, @12:09PM

    by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Thursday July 02 2015, @12:09PM (#204175) Journal

    I know these things can have a snowball effect

    Now (about 12PM UTC), the total pledged amount is €1,385,000+: almost 3 times more than TFS mentions.

    Or everyone gets their money back.

    Yes, I pledged. What the heck, as it happens I like Ouzo.

    --
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
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  • (Score: 2) by MrGuy on Thursday July 02 2015, @12:16PM

    by MrGuy (1007) on Thursday July 02 2015, @12:16PM (#204177)

    Three times as much is great. It's still WAY off track to come close to what's needed. It's now 0.1% of the way to the goal.

    Raising over a million dollars for crowdfunding is amazing as an achievement. But it's like raising $100 towards the price of a $10,000 new car. You're orders of magnitude off from the scale you need to be at. This needs to pick up at an exponential rate to have a prayer of hitting the goal.

    • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday July 02 2015, @01:03PM

      by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Thursday July 02 2015, @01:03PM (#204207) Journal

      This needs to pick up at an exponential rate to have a prayer of hitting the goal.

      Each person needs to convince other 3 - less than the typical pyramid schemes usually going with the power of 6

      --
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford

      • (Score: 3, Insightful) by frojack on Thursday July 02 2015, @07:35PM

        by frojack (1554) on Thursday July 02 2015, @07:35PM (#204370) Journal

        Let me try to convince you what a bad idea this is.

        What possible incentive would there be for Greece to start living withing their means if you pay off the debt they so glibly accumulated over the years.

        What possible incentive would there be for the lenders to stop laying debt traps by funding regimes with no visible means of support, if everybody fills their coffers for them out of sympathy for their victims?

        How soon will you have to do this all over again when, once again, there is no consequence to overspending and walking away from debt?

        This is a fundamentally unworkable idea, which, in the extremely unlikely case it succeeds even to a marginal degree, simply kicks the can down the road a very short distance.

        --
        No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.

        • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday July 02 2015, @10:16PM

          by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Thursday July 02 2015, @10:16PM (#204450) Journal

          Let me try to convince you what a bad idea this is.

          Let me tell you why I pledged:

          1. it's extremely improbable to crowdfund 1.6 billion in 10 days
          2. I know the above
          3. I hope that the Greek people will look at the campaign progress, see that there are world people (not banks) is trying to help them (and fail) and learn:
            • not to do it next time
            • need to start finding other solutions by themselves
            • maybe consider in their search for solutions those people willing to help

          Yeah, maybe I'm naive and let IndieGoGo have my money for a week to pay their corporate asses from the accumulated interest

          --
          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford

    • (Score: 4, Insightful) by curunir_wolf on Thursday July 02 2015, @02:17PM

      by curunir_wolf (4772) on Thursday July 02 2015, @02:17PM (#204244)
      Congratulations are in order for the IMF. After a long history of raping an pillaging third world countries, they are now able to cause financial collapse in the first developed nation. Kudos to the economic hit men that pulled this one off.
      --
      I am a crackpot

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 02 2015, @09:30PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 02 2015, @09:30PM (#204427)

        Yes, all those innocent Greeks. Poor innocent greeks. They were just doing nothing, spending money and then the big bad world took and took all the money from greece. Yeah, poor innocent Greeks.

        • (Score: 2) by curunir_wolf on Sunday July 05 2015, @05:50PM

          by curunir_wolf (4772) on Sunday July 05 2015, @05:50PM (#205331)
          No doubt it will be only the Greek bankers and politicians that actually caused the financial issues that will pay for the fallout, and all the actually innocent Greeks that did the right thing and simply worked to make a living will not suffer any of the consequences at all...
          --
          I am a crackpot

    • (Score: 3, Interesting) by TheRaven on Thursday July 02 2015, @04:21PM

      by TheRaven (270) on Thursday July 02 2015, @04:21PM (#204298) Journal
      Probably a bit to do with corporate donation schedules, but the reason that the FreeBSD Foundation runs an end-of-year pledge drive is that they tend to get 50-75% of their donations in the last two weeks of the year. People are more likely to donate to things close to deadlines.
      --
      sudo mod me up

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 03 2015, @02:37PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 03 2015, @02:37PM (#204720)

        Are you sure it's not a certain fruit branded abuser picking up the slack to keep bsd barely alive?