He agreed to close down the second-largest bank, Cyprus Popular, and inflict heavy losses on big depositors, many of them Russian, after Cyprus's outsize financial sector ran into trouble when its investments in neighboring Greece went sour.
I utterly fail to understand how the outright theft of depositors' money can have anything but a economy killing effect. How is that considered a rescue?
The real pain here is that the socialists, even when confronted with the collapse of an untenable system, are doing everything they can to avoid addressing the root of the problem. As long as they won't ditch socialist redistribution schemes, the economy will collapse and won't be rescuable.
Cypress is showing socialist collapse on a small scale. Large scale, it may take longer, but it is still inevitable. "Too big to fail" does not exist.
It's not a rescue. And you can discount anything the local Cypriot pols are saying. The fact is that Cyprus should never have been in the EU in the first place. They are only in because back when times were better (or appeared better), the Greeks were able to able to shove them into the EU against will of Germany. This is a chance for the northern block to get some revenge and cream off the profitable Russian business for themselves. BTW, the Russians got out of this mess completely whole. You can take that to the (Belgian) bank. This is war without tanks. Tanks are expensive.