How to Save Greece? Try a Fundraiser
With Greece facing a loan payment of 1.6 billion euros to the International Monetary Fund on Tuesday, a man in London named Thom Feeney took it upon himself to launch a fundraising campaign for the financially strapped country on Indiegogo, an international crowdfunding site. As of late Monday afternoon, more than 400 people have pledged about 7,000 euros to the “Greek Bailout Fund,” and those numbers are climbing steadily.
Feeney says on Indiegogo that he is frustrated with European ministers and “all this dithering over Greece.” As Feeney states, “The European Union is home to 503 million people, if we all just chip in a few Euro then we can get Greece sorted and hopefully get them back on track soon. Easy."
He says he can clear the whole mess up with a contribution of just over three euros from each European. “That’s about the same as half a pint in London or everyone in the EU just having a Feta and Olive salad for lunch.”
Incentives for donors include a postcard with an image Alex Tsipras, the Greek Prime Minister, for a donation of three euros, and a Greek feta and olive salad for six euros. Ten euros gets you a small bottle of ouzo, and a pledge of 25 euros will earn you a bottle of Greek wine.
So far at least 90 donors will be expecting postcards, 35 can look forward to a salad, 40 have signed up to receive a bottle of ouzo, and 30 can expect a bottle of wine. But whether anyone will actually receive their rewards remains to be seen. Like the Greek creditors, the donors will have to wait and see if their payments ever arrive.
Update: As of Tuesday morning, more than 10,000 people have donated about 170,000 euros, and the numbers continue to rise. Feeney has stated that all the money will be returned if the fundraiser fails to reach its target.
Number of the Day: $132,900
The cap on Social Security payroll taxes will rise to $132,900 next year, an increase of 3.5 percent. (Earnings up to that level are subject to the Social Security tax.) The increase will affect about 11.6 million workers, Politico reports. Beneficiaries are also getting a boost, with a 2.8 percent cost-of-living increase coming in 2019.
Photo of the Day: Kanye West at the White House
This is 2018: Kanye West visited President Trump at the White House Thursday and made a rambling 10-minute statement that aired on TV news networks. West’s lunch with the president was supposed to focus on clemency, crime in his hometown of Chicago and economic investment in urban areas, but his Oval Office rant veered into the bizarre. And since this is the world we live in, we’ll also point out that West apparently became “the first person to ever publicly say 'mother-f***er' in the Oval Office.”
Trump called Kanye’s monologue “pretty impressive.”
“That was bonkers,” MSNBC’s Ali Velshi said afterward.
Again, this is 2018.
Chart of the Day: GDP Growth Before and After the Tax Bill
President Trump and the rest of the GOP are celebrating the recent burst in economic growth in the wake of the tax cuts, with the president claiming that it’s unprecedented and defies what the experts were predicting just a year ago. But Rex Nutting of MarketWatch points out that elevated growth rates over a few quarters have been seen plenty of times in recent years, and the extra growth generated by the Republican tax cuts was predicted by most economists, including those at the Congressional Budget Office, whose revised projections are shown below.
Are States Ready for the Next Downturn?
The Great Recession hit state budgets hard, but nearly half are now prepared to weather the next modest downturn. Moody’s Analytics says that 23 states have enough reserves to meet budget shortfalls in a moderate economic contraction, up from just 16 last year, Bloomberg reports. Another 10 states are close. The map below shows which states are within 1 percent of their funding needs for their rainy day funds (in green) and which states are falling short.
Chart of the Day: Evolving Price of the F-35
The 2019 National Defense Authorization Act signed in August included 77 F-35 Lightning II jets for the Defense Department, but Congress decided to bump up that number in the defense spending bill finalized this week, for a total of 93 in the next fiscal year – 16 more than requested by the Pentagon. Here’s a look from Forbes at the evolving per unit cost of the stealth jet, which is expected to eventually fall to roughly $80 million when full-rate production begins in the next few years.
