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Originally Posted by martyh
my understanding was that it was the government that needed the bailout from the EU ,the EU said yes you can have one but only if there is a levy on deposits held in Cypriot banks .What has been mentioned on news reports is that the cypriot banks where/are awash with money from Russian billionairs who used the banks to launder their money so i don't think the banks where skint or where would the levy on deposits come from
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I am pretty sure they need the bailout to save the two banks. The banks are certainly not awash with money and are only still going because they've been getting "emergency liquidity", i.e cash for day to day operations, from the European Central Bank.
They were liable for a lot of Russian money. The Eurozone didn't want to be seen to be bailout out rich Russians so said that some of the bailout, which would have amounted to more than the entire GDP of Cyprus, would have to come from Cyprus itself. However if the bailout is being used to save the banks then you could just as easily they say that the EU is only bailing them out to a point. That point as been changed to protect those savings under €100,000 and 80% of those over €100,000.
---------- Post added at 19:37 ---------- Previous post was at 19:36 ----------
The thing is, if the bailout didn't happen and the ECB stopped the emergency liquidity then the banks would have collapsed and people under €100,000 would have been refunded but everything over €100,000 would have been lost.
So again. What was the alternative?