As a Greek with contacts in Cyprus, his opinion is one of the most valuable ones out there. Here it is:
We have now the latest bailout plan and contrary to the spin in parts of the western media it is COMPLETELY DIFFERENT from the plan we saw last week.
What was utterly outrageous about last week’s plan was its seizure of money from deposits held in every account in every bank across the entire island of Cyprus. This offends against every principle of banking, the rule of law and of private property I know of. By what logic, if solvent debtor A owes me money, am I required to lose money to bail out insolvent debtor B with whom I have no connection at all? The Cypriot government and the Troika compounded the outrage by extending it even to deposits that held less than 100,000 euros. This was blatantly illegal since it violated the EU’s own deposit insurance scheme. As I said, what all this managed to do was transform a problem of two Cypriot banks into a systemic problem of the entire Cypriot banking system.
Though you would not know it from the way it is being reported by the western media this morning, the entire calamitous idea of a deposit raid has been entirely dropped. There will be no raid on deposits whether above or below 100,000 euros. What is happening instead is what should have happened last week. The two insolvent banks, Laiki and Bank of Cyprus, are being merged and restructured. Since they will not be bailed out and since Laiki is being effectively liquidated, the bondholders of Laiki (one of whom is a Russian businessman) will be completely wiped out. The big deposit holders in both Laiki and Bank of Cyprus will also take a big loss. This is not because their deposits in Laiki and Bank of Cyprus are being raided as was proposed last week. It is because they will suffer a commercial loss (or “haircut” if you prefer) as creditors of debtors who have become insolvent.
What proves that the Cypriot authorities and the Troika were at all times aware of the blatant illegality of last week’s proposals, is that the statement setting out this week’s agreement that has been issued by the the eurogroup specifically says that deposits below 100,000 euros (including those in Laiki and Bank of Cyprus) will be fully protected in accordance with the EU’s deposit insurance scheme. What is that if not an admission that last week’s proposed raid on those deposits was illegal?
We now therefore have a bailout agreement that at least conforms with the law. What are its further implications?