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The Whole World Will Revolve Around The Tiny Island Of Cyprus Wolf Richter, Testosterone Pit Jun. 28, 2012, 8:41 AM Finland doesn’t get the white-hot attention Germany does, but it should because it could be the driving force behind a breakup of the Eurozone. And it fired another shot: it demanded collateral for its share of the billions of euros that Cyprus would receive from the bailout Troika. Cyprus is the fifth of 17 Eurozone countries to ask for a bailout. It’s panic time. The first tranche, €1.8 billion, is needed by June 30 to prop up its second largest...

"We had proposed a levy with a rate of zero below €100,000, and a higher one afterwards," said the official. "The Cypriot president did not want to agree to a levy higher than 10 per cent, and if you do the numbers you get the 6.75 and 9.9 [percent]." Cypriot officials insisted no levy on smaller depositors was impossible. One senior Cypriot official involved in the talks said that because about 35 percent of all deposits are below the threshold, exempting them would mean a rate so high for the rest that it would no longer be viewed as a...

Markets Are Diving All Across Asia Joe WeisenthalMarch 17, 2013 The weird thing about finance: A bailout deal that will save Germany a few billion in taxpayer dollars (by shifting the burden to Cypriot depositors) is wiping exponentially more than that off the world's market indices today. CNBC's Deirdre Wang Morris tweets a photo of the CNBC Asia market wall, which is as good a way as any other to see the carnage.

The president of Cyprus Nicos Anastasiades said in a televised address on Sunday that the controversial bank levy being imposed as part of an EU bailout deal is the "least painful" option available under the circumstances President Nicos Anastasiades said Sunday that a controversial bank levy on private depositors in Cyprus banks as part of an EU bailout deal was the "least painful" option for the financially embattled island. "I chose the least painful option, and I bear the political cost for this, in order to limit as much as possible the consequences for the economy and for our fellow...

(Reuters) - Europeans' faith in the safety of their savings has been shaken by a levy on Cypriot bank deposits to pay for a bailout, even though there was no sign of a rush to withdraw cash in Madrid or Dublin. People told Reuters they were angered but unsurprised that politicians should dip into citizens' deposits. And as bankers expressed concern the proposed terms of Cyprus's bailout could unnerve savers elsewhere, some leftist leaders voiced outrage. Euro zone finance ministers want Cypriots to pay up to 9.9 percent of their deposits in return for a 10 billion euro ($13 billion)...

Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades told his citizens on Sunday that he has chosen the least catastrophic option and confirmed that depositors will get bonds linked to natural gas earnings for the haircut their bank accounts have suffered. He also said he is trying to change the terms imposed on Nicosia for the bailout of the 10 billion euros. In a televised address Anastasiades admitted that Cyprus is undergoing “the most tragic moments since 1974,” in reference to the Turkish invasion that has led to the occupation of the northern third of the island. “The first option would have led to...

ANALYST: The Cyprus Deal Could Be The 'Trigger' We Were Waiting For In Europe Matthew BoeslerMarch. 17, 2013, 10:41 AMStephen Z on Flickr On Thursday, Société Générale analysts made a prescient call on Europe. "It is far too early to dismiss euro area crisis as a key [market] driver," wrote SocGen's Vincent Chaigneau. "We fear another shockwave in the spring." As it turns out, they may not have had to wait very long. News this weekend that the ECB, EU, and IMF bailout of the Cypriot banking system will include an instant 10 percent "tax" on bank deposits before banks...

Let me first (try to) give you a justification for the seizure of bank deposits in Cyprus. Everybody who knows any thing about Cyprus also knows that the domestic banks were a parking lot for Russian hot money. I wrote about this back in 2011 (Link). There are a gazillion other articles saying the same thing. That being the case, the seizure of some of the black Russian money as part of a bailout for Cyprus is not really a surprise. With dirty money flowing in, the stupid banks in Cyprus used the deposits to buy crappy assets like the...

Cyprus’s central bank has written to the island’s lenders to ask them to block customer’s transfers and payments, according to reports on the island. Cypriot website 24h revealed on Sunday that the Central Bank of Cyprus wrote to Cypriot lenders on Saturday, March 16 to ask them to stop all form of payments from their accounts, even those that were from one account at the bank to another.The measure comes after the Eurogroup asked Cyprus to impose a one-off tax on depositors as part of its bailout. Kathimerini English Edition understands that the capital controls do not apply to the...

Very few things give me nightmares… Yesterday’s event in Cyprus was one of them and the media is conspicuously silent. What do you get when you combine worldwide Marxist elitists, bankers and the media? A worldwide depression and a new dark age. The IMF (in case you are wondering who they are) is using Greece as a proving ground for the rest of us. It is a fascist Petri dish. They just implemented an across the board tax on all bank accounts over a holiday with no warning and no recourse. 9.9% if you have over 100,000 Euros in the...

The Cypriot cabinet has declared Tuesday a bank holiday, for fear of capital flight, and this may even be stretched to Wednesdayas depositors are certain to withdraw huge sums from the Cypriot banks after the haircut imposed. Nicosia postponed from Sunday to Monday the tabling in Parliament of the bill including the measures for the Cypriot bailout – including a bank account haircut and a tax hike on interest and corporate earnings – but the European Central Bank insists on a rapid voting because there are already signs a domino effect will follow across European lenders and markets from Monday.There...

There's two bulls standing on top of a mountain. The younger one says to the older one: "Hey pop, let's say we run down there and f*** one of them cows". The older one says: "No son. Lets walk down and f*** 'em all".                           - Robert Duvall in ColorsThe world was shocked this weekend to learn that the European Union would fund the bailout of Cyprus by confiscating the assets of ordinary bank account holders.  Core Europeans and Americans no doubt comforted themselves that such a...

Cyprus's parliament on Sunday postponed an emergency session to discuss a levy on bank savings imposed to partially fund an international bailout needed to stave off bankruptcy. All meetings were postponed until Monday, the Cyprus News Agency reported. Earlier, Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades postponed an informal meeting of lawmakers called for Sunday morning. Several parties in the 56-member chamber, where no party has an absolute majority, were meeting on Sunday morning to formulate positions over the bank levy. Three parties have already said they will not back the plan.

In the wee hours of the night, the Eurogroup of eurozone finance ministers agreed to bail out Cyprus, after a year of negotiations. Cyprus needed a 17 billion euro bailout loan for its banking system, but the Eurogroup was only willing to come up with about 10 billion euros, so the difference had to be made up by penalizing depositors: 9.9% on deposits above 100,000 euros, and 6.75% on smaller deposits.

You can be forgiven for thinking that you don't need to give a hoot about what's going on in Cyprus this weekend. After all, it's just a little island somewhere in the Mediterranean. But what's going on in Cyprus could actually matter--not just to the rest of Europe, but to the rest of the world. Here's the short version of what's happening: Cyprus's banks, like many banks in Europe, are bankrupt. Cyprus went to the Eurozone to get a bailout, the same way Ireland, Greece, and other European countries have. The Eurozone powers-that-be gave Cyprus a bailout--but with a startling...

British society is scared of offending “vocal and aggressive” Muslims, claims a former adviser to Barack Obama. Professor Lawrence Krauss made his comments after threatening to walk out of a debate hosted by an Islamic group at the University College London where organizers would not allow men and women to sit together. The Islamic Education and Research Academy (iERA) told women to sit at the back, while men and couples were sent to the front. Three people who objected were ordered to leave. … “People are not only afraid to offend, but afraid to offend a vocal and aggressive group...

Shocking! It is difficult to describe the weekend bailout package to Cyprus in any other way. The confiscation of 6.75 percent of small depositors' money and 9.9 percent of big depositors' funds is without precedence that I can think of in a supposedly civilised and democratic society. But maybe the European Union (EU) is no longer a civilised democracy? The consequences are unpredictable, but we are clearly looking at a significant paradigm shift. This is a breach of fundamental property rights, dictated to a small country by foreign powers and it must make every bank depositor in Europe shiver. if...

"Fitch predicts Cyprus will request aid from EU mechanism" headlines Politis. On Wednesday 10 August, the rating agency downgraded Cypriot debt by two notches, making the island a likely bailout candidate. Fitch Ratings’ initiative, coming a week after the appointment of a new minister of finance and a cabinet reshuffle, "is not reassuring" for Cyprus, which is currently in the throes of a serious institutional crisis, writes the Cypriot daily. On 10 August, the new government announced an austerity plan, but "failed to secure support from the opposition" explains rival daily Phileftheros, which amounted to "a double blow for the...

Dimitris Christofias had a serious look on his face as he spoke of a "gut-wrenching" decision, but a "necessary evil." The Cypriot president was not giving his people good news. Christofias, in his televised address last Tuesday, reminded viewers of his country's darkest hour, the Turkish invasion of northern Cyprus in 1974. In return for billions of euros, the "troika," made up of the European Commission, the European Central Bank (ECB) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), will essentially take control of the Mediterranean island.The Cypriot government and representatives of the troika negotiated for almost five months over the terms...

FITCH GOES ON RAMPAGE: CUTS SPAIN, ITALY, BELGIUM, CYPRUS, AND SLOVENIA Simone Foxman January 27,2012 Fitch just cut the long-term issuer ratings of 5 EU countries: Belgium: AA+ to AA Spain: AA- to A Italy: A+ to A- Cyprus: BBB to BBB- Slovenia: AA- to A It affirmed Ireland's BBB+ rating with a negative outlook. Borrowing costs have been sinking for these countries lately–particularly for Italy and Spain—after the European Central Bank announced liquidity support measures in early December that have lessened mounting worries about the health of the banking system. While Fitch says that it supports EU leaders actions...