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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.
Original Submission
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 02 2015, @12:34PM
they did lower their standard of living, and rather massively:
- both wages and pensions went down 40-60% across the board,
- they lowered governement expenses by 20% in 5 years (absolotue figures)
- they also have near 30% unemployment and 50+% unemployed youth
- 45% of pensioners now get less then the poverty line
- health coverage is now so bad that 'doctors without borders' is the main provider
- they lost a 3th of their small businesses
- suicides rates are at record levels
(you can actually find the above numbers in mainstream sources, but only in the in-depth documentaries)
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 02 2015, @12:37PM
They did all this after decades of corruption and profligate social spending. The barn door was open and the horse gone at the turn of the century.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 02 2015, @02:38PM
You're reply and Greece's situation is akin to person A being choked to death by person B while person B keeps yelling: "why are you letting yourself be choked... start breathing again..."
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 02 2015, @02:50PM
It's completely self-inflicted. Nobody made them join the EU, borrow money, or spend it all. No one is choking them.
(Score: 1) by sce7mjm on Thursday July 02 2015, @07:50PM
Think you'll find they didn't actually qualify to join the euro. So actually they were encouraged to join. Probably by the same people who lent them the money, and don't forget what they were buying with the money, military equipment from Germany, civil engineering products from the rest of Europe. The lender doesn't want the lender to go bust, this has been a political nightmare from beginning to end. The lenders want the interest and the capital with no risk. So actually both sides should suck it up.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 02 2015, @09:33PM
And yet, they continue to spend huge amounts of money on military, when the money is needed elsewhere. Greece has no fucking idea how to handle money, and that's the root of the problem.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 02 2015, @04:22PM
Yes, and everyone knew about this. The country has been close to a debt crisis ever since it fought off the Ottomans nearly two centuries ago. Yet despite all that, they were still allowed to join the Euro zone and they still were allowed to borrow at inconceivably low interest rates.
You can't place blame on the Greeks alone. The other prospective Euro member states of the day are just as much to blame. As are the financiers of Greece's debt. All of them should have known better.
Also consider the fact that up until the eighties, it was not uncommon for countries to be acquitted of part of their debt because the burden of interest had simply become too big. Somehow, that apparently has become a no-no since.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Thexalon on Thursday July 02 2015, @04:34PM
Prior to the crisis, Greece was spending less of their GDP on social welfare than either France or Germany [ft.com], the same countries that are currently berating the Greeks for being profligate social spenders.
What's particularly dumb about all of this is that Greece was prepared to make loan payments that were going to chip down the national debt very slowly, but the problem was that Germany in particular was unwilling to accept their rate of repayment. To use a car loan analogy: Let's say you borrowed $12,000 to buy a car at 5% interest over 3 years, in 36 monthly installments of $350. You contract a severe illness, and you find yourself so strapped for cash that you can only come up with $315. Now, the $315 is enough to pay back the loan with more interest in 42 months, but the bank decides that instead of accepting your $315 and negotiating terms you can actually manage, they will instead refuse to accept your partial payment and will repossess your car. And now you can't get to work to do the job that convinced the bank you could afford the loan in the first place, and so your credit is in shambles and the bank didn't get their money back. And the bank is saying you are solely responsible for this when they could have accepted the $315 a month, tacked on some extra interest on the end, and eventually gotten their $12,000 back.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.