Thanks for the english lesson Deltapapa, I know you mentioned at the end that this had happened before but your opening line implied that it was a first, as in 'they are in serious danger of going under', also the phrase cry wolf is as you correctly pointed out is aimed at those who consistantly make statements that are not truthfull so that when they finally tell the truth no-one believes them.
This fable has become corrupted in its use and is generally used in cases such as VTST's who state they will make people redundant and ground the aircraft if we do not give money, by a set time, when the money is not forthcoming by the first deadline you are correct that they then have to legally carry out the threat of handing out the redundancies which makes the core supporters to go into overdrive to save their friends and colleagues jobs and save the aircraft from being grounded.
This has in the past been a succesfull aproach to funding the aircraft so no-one has actually been made redundant post the threat and the actual issuing of those notices, and the aircraft still flew for the last two years. So when people say cry wolf, again you are technically correct that this is an incorrect analogy, but it is the closest and simplest that some people use rather than think of a more pertinent analogy, like possibly emotional blackmail, or possibly scaremongering to consider two possible alternatives.
I will now add one of these
as I have no intention of going off topic to far and engaging in further semantics, as I was mearly trying to explain why some people use the term 'cry wolf' with regards to your post and obviously missed the point by some distance
. Regards ER