In January, I was invited to give the keynote address
at an economics conference in Greece put on by the Athens University of
Economics and Business.
There I met many of the professors who support the
monetary reform solution to the ongoing Greek austerity tragedy. I was
also invited to visit the office of Greek radio/TV talk show host,
Georgios Tragas, known as the most popular man in Greece. He asked me to
return to Greece this summer and make a documentary explaining the
problem to not only the people of Greece but to the relatively wealthy
Greek community living outside of Greece -- around the world.
Tragas paid to have 30,000 copies of “The Secret of
Oz” translated into Greek to be inserted into the February 2013 edition
of his magazine, “Crash”, the largest political magazine in Greece.
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/16989668/Bill%20in%20Crash%20mag.%20Feb.%202013%20bigger.jpg
The Problem in Greece
Greece is falling apart. Greek unemployment has risen
to nearly 27% -- twice the average rate of the rest of the Euro Zone and
nearly 4 times that of the U.S. But the suffering is even greater for
the Greek youth – those aged 15-24 – where unemployment has reached a
staggering 57%. 1,000 Greeks are laid off every day. It’s not going to
get better. It’s only going to get worse. Why? Because debt is crushing
the life out of the Greek economy. This debt will only get bigger and
the GDP smaller from here on.
What Can We Accomplish
The population of Greece is about 11 million people.
But the Greek expatriot community worldwide numbers another 7 million
people. Greeks worldwide are more confused and divided than ever. There
are now 7 political parties with members in Parliament. Four years ago,
there were only five.
Greeks will be excited to get behind a simple solution
that will fix the problem and make Greece a strong, sovereign, and
mostly self-sufficient nation once again, but we need a simple, sensible
solution that everyone can understand and get behind.
Since Greece and Cyprus are closely linked, we are
going to include Cyprus in the solution section. Large depositors in
Cypriot banks just took a haircut of nearly 50% of their money. In other
words, their deposits were cut in half – stolen – as collateral for
additional loans from the European Union. This could easily happen in
Greece as well.
In May, Mr. Tragas announced on his TV show that I was
coming to Greece as soon as I finished Jekyll Island. He and two others
have pledged a little over half the money necessary to produce this
film.
Running Out of Time
I thought I had secured the necessary additional
funding on a couple of occasions. But the problem of putting together a
partnership spanning 2 or 3 different nations without spending all your
money on attorneys has been difficult. So I’ve decided to go to the
crowd funding community to ask for your help.
The rainy season in Greece is Nov-Jan. We have to
complete filming in October. We can do indoor interviews after that, but
the outside standups all have to be completed in October. Then we can
return to the U.S. and edit in November and get it out in December,
hopefully with a strong theatrical distribution in Greece and elsewhere
with large Greek populations.
The Plan
So here’s the plan. I need to go to Athens right away
and spend a week with my collaborators to finish up the script and scout
locations before filming starts. Then, I’ll come back to the U.S. on
the 20th, mount up my equipment and be back in Athens on Oct.
1 to start shooting. It’s tight, but it’s doable. That’ll take about
$12,000 in prep so this is a short-fused Indiegogo.
Then a second Indiegogo will run through August to
complete the funding. Should all the funds not be raised, we will make
do with what we have.
In Conclusion
The Euro experiment is broken, but the nations on the
bleeding edge will suffer prolonged pain for years until one of them
finally gets the political will to break away from this union of
ever-increasing national debt. You can hasten the Euro’s demise and
dramatically lessen the duration of the incredible pain that all the
southern Euro nations are going through by helping Greece and Cyprus
escape earlier than later.
Won’t you help out, please?
Source
banzai7
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