Re: Eurozone will collapse...
 

seems to me that whatever happens Cyprus is screwed .The banks will be emptied because the general public don't trust them ,the Russian money launderers will remove their money because they are just greedy crooked sob's and won't want to pay 10% of their billions meaning the banks who lent 8x the Cypriot GDP at a time when the banks where supposed to be reigning in their lending and keeping capital in the bank are royally screwed and will probably fail anyway

---------- Post added at 17:01 ---------- Previous post was at 16:56 ----------

If someone has to pay then maybe the Russian oligarchs should contribute a lot more ,they have used Cyprus for years to hide their money ,that's why president Puttin is so upset.Reckon he's got a stash he's going to lose 10% on.

I wonder how many Cypriot MP's have moved money out of Cyprus into other banks in the last few weeks ?

Re: Eurozone will collapse...
 

The MPs are probably surprised too. This doesn't seem to have been a well-thought out plan.

As for the Russians. I don't really know the extent to which their interests are linked up with Cyprus. I do think that the Cypriot people may want to find ways to express their rightful anger at this plan other than making anti-German slogans. If you were a voter in Germany and you were being asked to bailout another country that didn't live within it's means and then saw it's people slagging you off you might be a bit peeved.

Re: Eurozone will collapse...
 

Tomorrow will be the crunch day. Cypriots would have been expecting to be able to get at there money tomorrow but now they will find that the banks are shut till Thursday. I expect protests to develop into riots by tomorrow evening. The EU is going to get nothing but bad press over this.

Re: Eurozone will collapse...
 

i think it is an absolute disgrace and a breach of trust in the highest order and it will have much wider implications .If the Cypriot people are expected to contribute to a bail out then raise taxes ,don't raid peoples savings .It should also be pointed out that the UK government is repaying any money taken belonging to British servicemen and government employees so it will still be costing us money .
Personally i think all EU citizens should be protesting about this because it will happen again if they are allowed to get away with it this time.
Maybe this is an experiment by the big EU players to see how much they can get away with ,using a small country of little consequence to begin with ,or is that just the conspiracy theorist in me ;)

Re: Eurozone will collapse...
 

Money we should be demanding back from the thieving EU central bank.

Makes sense to me. :tu:

Re: Eurozone will collapse...
 

It'd be interesting to find out if there were any sudden and significant withdrawals made by the great and the good just before the announcement was made. That's the sort of thing a free press is handy for...

Re: Eurozone will collapse...
 

I wondered about that earlier and i would be starting investigating the Cypriot government ministers who would have had advanced warning ,maybe Barclays or RBS have had a sudden rash of new accounts opened by unknown foreigners

Re: Eurozone will collapse...
 

I wonder how many of those Cypriot government ministers will survive if this gets nasty ?

http://news.sky.com/story/1066463/sa...o-be-protected

I see the group of EU bullies has started to change there tone now, i wonder if its got anything to do with the fact they know there in the wrong and there is a chance that Cyprus will tell them to bugger off.
HOWEVER

Re: Eurozone will collapse...
 

Good see they've stepped back from the insane option. Although the tax on higher earners might happen still.

It's not ideal but let's remember that they're the ones asking for a bailout. Cyprus can tell them to 'bugger off' but then they have to either find the money from elsewhere or deal with the consequences of not having the money. Also while anti-German feeling may be high it's not outrageous for them to expect the Cypriot Government to find some of the money themselves rather than getting it all from the German taxpayer and other European nations.

Re: Eurozone will collapse...
 

This is very crazy situation and presedent. I am sure if cypriots thought if it went to help nation recover they maybe less against it. To me sounds like theft from bankers and germans. Unless reading it wrong and money going cypriot government. Basically if its going to germans, bankers its putting bailout onto savers.

To me its last dice throw of failure from IMF and Germans to force crazy austerity everywhere. No body saying we dont need to get finances under control it does. How much this down to bankers over leveraging fiat currency in the world. Surely fiscal system needs to be in place you cant just crash and burn everything. All I get the so called experts and everyone panicking. Level heads nead to be looking at the situation but all they doing is coming out all sorts crazy ideas. Sadly which just making things alot worse than need be.

Re: Eurozone will collapse...
 

Anti-German feeling being on the increase in Europe isn't exactly a recipe for the harmonious EU we've all been sold along the way is it. Rightly or wrongly, if the common and growing perception is that the Germans are forcing unacceptable levels of austerity on people in S. Europe, this cannot bode well for the future and I reckon this will not be forgotten in a hurry. Let's just hope the resentment we've seen in recent times doesn't continue to simmer away and result in conditions ripe for extremists of one sort or another to flourish. It's been happening in Greece and there's no sign of an end to the austerity at the root of it.

Re: Eurozone will collapse...
 

The attitude towards the Germans is really unfair however. A lot of people seem to be basing it on German's past history. If this is the case then Britain itself has a pretty mixed record when it comes to invading, dominating and oppressing the people of other countries.

What is happening is quite simple. A number of countries spent considerably outside what they could afford and they need a bailout because of the wider economic climate and problems specific to the Eurozone. Germany, whose own economy is threatened by these countries going under, are the largest contributors to giving these countries significant amounts of money. When they give these money they want assurances that it will be used to prevent the crisis and not to prop up a failing system for a few more months.

Yet the people protest against Germany for imposing those restrictions. The answer is simple, don't take their money. This is like you giving your neighbour money to keep their house and then them calling you everything under the sun because you won't let it be spent on another other than the mortgage.

Re: Eurozone will collapse...
 

That's extremely simplistic.

Germany has enjoyed a massive competitive advantage since the foundation of the Euro because its exchange rate and its interest rates have been artificially weak. Wealth has flowed into Germany from the rest of Europe and some of the Southern economies have lost 20% of their competitiveness relative to Germany in that time.

It is the Euro system that has caused this and it is the pig-headed determination by the policy elites, including domestic politicians in Germany, that the Euro must be saved at all costs, that is forcing bail-outs and massive austerity on the failing economies of the Med.

The traditional solution in any one of these economies would have been to devalue the currency. Membership of the Euro means they cannot do that. So yes, it is true they should have acted more prudently with their finances, but then when a country's political tradition of generations has been for lax economic management, granting it sudden access to the low interest rates of the Eurozone was a bit like giving an alcoholic the keys to an off licence.

Re: Eurozone will collapse...
 

Yes in some ways it is, which is why I wrote "rightly or wrongly". History is littered with examples of extremists who've unfairly but successfully blamed others for all their ills.

Having said that Chris is right to point out that the German economy has done very nicely out of having a currency which is much lower than the DM would have been. I think it's fair to argue then that the Germans haven't been acting entirely selflessly in bailing out the lazy men of Europe. The constraints of the Euro have suited their economic needs very nicely thanks and at the expense of poorer countries.

In matters such as these we can argue about who's right and who's wrong but it's public perception which matters in the end and if enough people start blaming the Germans for all their ills and the German public for example demanding harsher measures in return for assistance we could all be in for big trouble.

Re: Eurozone will collapse...
 

Oh I don't think they acting selflessly. If their economy wasn't tied into the Eurozone they wouldn't have given a toss.