rumour control has it, that, they have already taken the money from the accounts
when the banks reopen (if they do) things may get very interesting ...

And they will not open till next Tuesday. Things are getting desperate there now. What it will be like in a week will determine how things pan out. It's a cash only economy now. Even cheques are being refused as there is no guarantee that they will be paid when the banks open.


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I expect a bater system will emerge. How developed it gets will depend on how the banks behave and how people’s money is treated.

Barter is only good if you have something worth bartering. Though I suspect it will be a very long time before banks are trusted fully there. The problem is not in Cyprus but in the rest of Europe. If there are even whispers of trouble then the chances in any country that there will be a bank run. Though lots of money from the rich in Spain and Italy is already here. They and the Greeks have been propping up the London property market for the last three years. There has already been a silent bank run on Ireland Greece and Spain for the last few years. The way to think about what will happen is to place yourself in their position. You might start to reduce your bank balance to the absolute minimum, just enough to cover that months bills, everything else you keep in cash. It becomes harder to do that when you have lots of money and rely on its income. So people will try and spend it, buying property or company shares, possibly abroad. It is easier to transfer money out of accounts quickly that way.

this part of a report by the guardian makes you think ...



http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/ma ... ree-plan-b

i wonder why gas prices are sooo high here
this may lift the lid on a few things (smile)

but energy costs are still going to rise ...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politic ... ggest.html

Amazing. As soon as one of your doom scenarios becomes plausible in a very small way, you guys just upgrade to some ludicrous Mad Max absurdity. From a psychological perspective, you two should stop and wonder what exactly it is about disaster and human suffering that turns you on so much that you are resorting to these rapidly escalating public fantasies about it.

By any rational standard, the Cypriots are going to be harshly dealt with with. But you two are just going to sit there and wish for more, because the actual outcome will be such a disappointment to you both (in or out of the Euro, they will still have banks).

not by our doing, we have no say.
but by the system and those that run the system

and the most powerful element that can cause distrust in the system, is abuse of anyone’s/everyone’s value ...

I still think a lot of these skint countries would be better outside the Euro (not outside the EU). They need to attract tourists with good exchange rates etc.

If they stayed within the Euro they need to take huge losses, but one of the major problems with European banking has been the expansion abroad. German banks are in particular trouble. They have lent badly all across Europe and are leveraging the German government to bail them out by imposing the debts onto the national governments. That is what destroyed Irelands finances. They were running a small surplus prior to the crisis and now are still running a huge deficit. Greece also had a fiscal problem which was made worse by a banking crisis, which again they had to bail out, and is why Greece is in trouble. Add in the refusal to allow proper write offs and Greece will go bust eventually it is not a matter of if but when. Cyprus was particularly hit when its banks took big loses on Greek government debt. So they were in trouble last year, and have stagger on for this long. Again Cyprus is expected to bail out the bank with tax payers money one way or another. The Germans insistence on depositors being hit really shows how clueless they are. That was the one thing that will destroy the banking system, as it depends on the confidence of depositors to keep them afloat. When you lose that there will be bank runs. What will be happening from now on will be people moving funds around so that no account or bank has more than €100 000 or £85 000 in the UK, as sums above this are vulnerable. I know people in the UK who have been doing that recently.

Though until the Cypriots pick their poison no one knows what will happen. If they somehow manage to get the bailout without hitting depositors then the crisis could be solved but banks should be allowed to collapse and shareholders wiped out. Only as the debt liability of the banks is reduced will any stability return. Banks are still too big for most economies including ours. Barclays are particularly at risk. Even though they made the claim that they were not bailed out by the tax payer they were bailed out being a counter-party to AIG so benefited substantially from that bailout.

Ultimately they could all stay in the euro if the debts were written down. The fact that the Troika will not allow that means that eventually they will all leave the eurozone, until then they will just destroy the economies of all the periphery until this happens.

BBC News now reporting Bank of Cyprus has put a €100 per day limit on withdrawals. Imagine what's going to happen if a horde of people outside a bank get told 'no, we won't let you withdraw your money'.

Feck me.

So no expensive purchases soon then. I spend more than that on my monthly shop!

That'll help their economy no end.

What do they do at the end of the month for mortage payments etc. Will banks still take them from accounts. Will the banks demand instant repayments on teh lot? This could get very chaotic very quickly.
If I where them I'd do what was needed to get the current bail out and use that to keep the country going for a few months while very quickly organising a new currency. Having that in place will make it less painful for the people there if they chose to leave the Euro when they need (and they will need) another bail out soon.

That is more than enough for most people. Don't forget that people will do it every single day, from now on. All my bills come to less than £200 a month, so for me it would not be a struggle, but if you drink or smoke it might be tougher.


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the deal has been done ...



so it begins ...

Just what the euro parliament needs, making an enemy of several very hacked off unsavoury Russian billionaires.