Free Republic

Yesterday, we first reported on something very disturbing (at least to Cyprus' citizens): despite the closed banks (which will mostly reopen tomorrow, while the two biggest soon to be liquidated banks Laiki and BoC will be shuttered until Thursday) and the capital controls, the local financial system has been leaking cash. Lots and lots of cash. Alas, we did not have much granularity or details on who or where these illegal transfers were conducted with. Today, courtesy of a follow up by Reuters, we do. The result, at least for Europe, is quite scary because let's recall that the primary...

As expected, Russian depositors are fleeing Cyprus (and the EU/IMF) seeking protection from the tax crazed Troika/IMF/EU. http://mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSBRE92L0PI20130322?irpc=932 Of course, Russia and other foreign depositors should help clean up the mess in Cyprus. Not Northern Europe or Germany. Paul Krugman has a nice summary on his NYTimes blog: http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/21/cyprus-the-sum-of-all-fubar/ Notice that moving deposits to the USA is not discussed. Could it be that our Federal Reserve has already levied a tax on US depositors already? Via quantitative easing? Yes, savers are certainly experiencing a heavy tax via money printing. Stay tuned. Like the warning in “Twister”, “An F5 is coming!!”...

German Chancellor Angela Merkel stressed in a phone call with the president of Cyprus that his country hold talks only with international creditors on its bailout deal and not third parties like Russia, a government spokeswoman said on Tuesday. "A telephone call between Mrs Merkel and the Cypriot president took place yesterday evening," the spokeswoman told news agency AFP. " The chancellor once again emphasised that the negotiations are to be conducted only with the Troika," she added, referring to the term used for the European Union, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund. The comment was made...