Cyprus rejects demands

Einhard

Why is it always someone else's fault? The situation Cyprus is in has been generated almost entirely by the Cypriots themselves. Sure, their banks were badly exposed to the Greek financial mess, but nobody forced them to expand into Greece. So the Cypriot economy is fooked. Without some assistance, their bankign sector is likely to go belly up. That's a pretty catastrophic scenario. The EU agrees to give them said assiastance. There's no coercion. They Cypriots have a simple, democratic choice to make. Choose this, or choose that. And yet, somehow, it's the fault of the EU and the IMF? If I was German, I'd be getting seriously pIssed off at all the bailing out I'm being expected to fund, only to be spat at by the same irresponsible nations who are doing he begging in the first place. Since when has fiscal irresponsibility been such a laudatory virtue?

dharma200

just saw the prime minsiter of the Turkish side of Cyprus on TV, and he seemed quite confident it will all be great

and the big tunnels they have to ship the water in..... and the fact greeek cyprus wont be able to use the gas for collatoral... seemed rather pleased with himself so he did.....

Einhard

Einhard wrote: »

Why is it always someone else's fault? The situation Cyprus is in has been generated almost entirely by the Cypriots themselves. Sure, their banks were badly exposed to the Greek financial mess, but nobody forced them to expand into Greece. So the Cypriot economy is fooked. Without some assistance, their bankign sector is likely to go belly up. That's a pretty catastrophic scenario. The EU agrees to give them said assiastance. There's no coercion. They Cypriots have a simple, democratic choice to make. Choose this, or choose that. And yet, somehow, it's the fault of the EU and the IMF? If I was German, I'd be getting seriously pIssed off at all the bailing out I'm being expected to fund, only to be spat at by the same irresponsible nations who are doing he begging in the first place. Since when has fiscal irresponsibility been such a laudatory virtue?

I would honestly love to hear an answer to this from any of the anti-German contingency that we have floating around here like flies these day.

books4sale

hatrickpatrick wrote: »

If your car dies because you're using the wrong kind of petrol, you don't just say "fair enough I'll never drive again", you throw out the petrol and try a different kind, right?

WTF? NO WRONG!

How many different kinds of petrol do you think there are?

Its petrol or diesel...simple as!

mickdw

drdeadlift wrote: »

its ridiculous

Crazy. And what about when they open the bank doors. Is this limit still goin to be in place?
They cannot save those banks now. People will still pull the cash out as fast as they can.

Varik

They've accepted a deal, they're getting rid of the second largest bank.

Only accounts below €100k are guaranteed, if you had more than that then it gone.

clairefontaine

How much are they taking?

Augmerson

EU doing this on purpose to piss on the Russians.

Bullseye1

Augmerson wrote: »

EU doing this on purpose to piss on the Russians.

Not exactly a good idea when they control the gas supplies.

Sergeant

Augmerson wrote: »

EU doing this on purpose to piss on the Russians.

Anything to back this extremely bold claim up with? Why would they do such a thing?

Three Seasons

hatrickpatrick wrote: »

I know this is a joke post, but can you explain how exactly such points are any less legitimate than a currency? The only difference is in who issues them and where they can be spent, which are factors based purely on agreement. If I owned a Dunnes Stores there would be nothing preventing me from accepting tesco vouchers and paying my staff with them.
All currency is valueless and works because everyone agrees to use it as representative of the value of what's being traded. That system is not working now.

The solution is obviously to change the method of trade. What we're doing instead of adjusting how much we trade based on this artificial maths, even if it means we waste good food because we can't sell it, and people go hungry because they can't buy it.

Something is obviously wrong with the system if it's possible to have a surplus of actual supply and yet quality of life is going down.

Why isn't that system working?

More trade takes place than nearly ever before.

Define how a money system "works"?

ejmaztec

Sergeant wrote: »

Anything to back this extremely bold claim up with? Why would they do such a thing?

Weren't the Russians bellyaching about the Irish bank deal, for the same reasons they're bellyaching about the Cyprus one?

Shenshen

Augmerson wrote: »

EU doing this on purpose to piss on the Russians.

As I understand it the Russians were asked if they had any interest in "saving" the place last week... and said njet.

Caliden

If they manage to 'Tax' (read: steal) 20% of people's after tax savings then it scares me a little bit as it could be an option should we need to 'tighten' the belts further down the road.

Saying that the property tax is already doing the same thing but only applies to homeowners. It's all a bit mental being honest. They're going to run of out names for these new 'taxes'.

Carbon footprint tax might be just around the corner, you pay for the amount of carbon dioxide you emit (breathe)

Curly Judge

Getting yourself in financial shyte has consequences.
Be you big bank or small citizen.

mickdw

Curly Judge wrote: »

Getting yourself in financial shyte has consequences.
Be you big bank or small citizen.

Getting yourself in financial shyte has consequences for the small citizen be you big bank or small citizen.

Tiddlypeeps

Einhard wrote: »

Why is it always someone else's fault? The situation Cyprus is in has been generated almost entirely by the Cypriots themselves. Sure, their banks were badly exposed to the Greek financial mess, but nobody forced them to expand into Greece. So the Cypriot economy is fooked. Without some assistance, their bankign sector is likely to go belly up. That's a pretty catastrophic scenario. The EU agrees to give them said assiastance. There's no coercion. They Cypriots have a simple, democratic choice to make. Choose this, or choose that. And yet, somehow, it's the fault of the EU and the IMF? If I was German, I'd be getting seriously pIssed off at all the bailing out I'm being expected to fund, only to be spat at by the same irresponsible nations who are doing he begging in the first place. Since when has fiscal irresponsibility been such a laudatory virtue?

I don't understand this poor Germany attitude that floats around about as often as the f**k Germany attitude. It's in Germany's best interest to make sure that the banking system doesn't collapse in any Euro zone country. If any country using the Euro goes bankrupt the whole Euro zone will follow suit.

I would argue that bail outs are more in the interest of European countries who aren't currently struggling with a banking crisis.

An example to explain, if we gave two fingers to Europe and said f**k this were out. We ditch the Euro, walk away from our debt and then shortly afterwards all European countries are forced to follow suit. The people we trade with would be in the same boat as us, so it would be in their and our interest to find a new way of trading with each other ASAP. The people who get f**ked over in this scenario are people with money in the bank, it would all be gone over night. Anybody with actual goods or services to offer would recover just fine and quite quickly.

If countries who are struggling continue to get bailed out then the system continues working for the people and countries with money in the bank at the expense of people and countries who don't. It may seem like Germany are doing countries favours by propping up their banks but in reality they are only looking out for themselves.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm not advocating that we should just ditch the Euro. The second scenario might work out, if the rich countries keep propping up the struggling banks in the poorer countries then the system might eventually stabilise and start growing again. That would arguably be less painful than having to start from scratch. I don't know nearly enough about economics to say if this is possible. We could be looking at another few years of before the system reaches critical mass and explodes anyway.

Some people believe that the Euro will collapse anyway, if they are right then I agree with them that it's better to let if fail quickly instead of dragging it on for years of pain.

Unfortunately tho the people that are in power are typically people with money, so they would be the most hit by a collapse in the Euro so a forced collapse will never happen even if it was in the best interest of the citizens.

Grayson

Caliden wrote: »

If they manage to 'Tax' (read: steal) 20% of people's after tax savings then it scares me a little bit as it could be an option should we need to 'tighten' the belts further down the road.

Saying that the property tax is already doing the same thing but only applies to homeowners. It's all a bit mental being honest. They're going to run of out names for these new 'taxes'.

Carbon footprint tax might be just around the corner, you pay for the amount of carbon dioxide you emit (breathe)

To be fair, we needed them. It's nasty, really nasty to throw them on in a recession/depression. But during the boom FF gave so many tax breaks and funded the building industry so much that 60%+ of our income was coming from the building trade. The bigger the boom got, and the higher the prices, the higher the amount that came in from property. They should have placed the property tax there halfway through the bubble, to slow it down and manage it a bit better, but they didn't want to.
Now FG are having to repair the damage. Mervyn King, the head of the bank of England said before the last election there that that would be a good election to lose. The annoying thing is that the people who caused this mess aren't in power any more, but that doesn't matter because the people who are imposing taxes and making cutbacks are the people who are going to be tarred by this. And in 5 years time FF will come back to power having "Reinvented itself". It'll take FG and labour 20 years to get past the mess created by others.

Grayson

Tiddlypeeps wrote: »

I don't understand this poor Germany attitude that floats around about as often as the f**k Germany attitude. It's in Germany's best interest to make sure that the banking system doesn't collapse in any Euro zone country. If any country using the Euro goes bankrupt the whole Euro zone will follow suit.

And that's why Germany's doing it. But in this situation Germans were being asked to prop up banks that had Russian deposits. There's no way German voters would have gone for that.

Caliden

Grayson wrote: »

To be fair, we needed them. It's nasty, really nasty to throw them on in a recession/depression. But during the boom FF gave so many tax breaks and funded the building industry so much that 60%+ of our income was coming from the building trade. The bigger the boom got, and the higher the prices, the higher the amount that came in from property. They should have placed the property tax there halfway through the bubble, to slow it down and manage it a bit better, but they didn't want to.
Now FG are having to repair the damage. Mervyn King, the head of the bank of England said before the last election there that that would be a good election to lose. The annoying thing is that the people who caused this mess aren't in power any more, but that doesn't matter because the people who are imposing taxes and making cutbacks are the people who are going to be tarred by this. And in 5 years time FF will come back to power having "Reinvented itself". It'll take FG and labour 20 years to get past the mess created by others.

It's a shame but you're right. FF are sitting back pointing the finger telling Labour/FG how they've ruined this country but the fact is that they're the ones making all the hard decisions and FF were the lads who seemed like saints during boom times.

I really hope you're wrong when it comes to election time and that people remember the real people who got us to where we are today but if I were a betting man I'd put my money on FF to hold the majority of seats.

Tiddlypeeps

Grayson wrote: »

And that's why Germany's doing it. But in this situation Germans were being asked to prop up banks that had Russian deposits. There's no way German voters would have gone for that.

The source of the banks deposits are irrelevant.

The banks loaned out 90% of those deposits to people who were unable to repay them.

When the person who deposited the money in the first place tries to withdraw it the money isn't there. The bank is forced into bankruptcy.

Nonoperational

Sounds much better than what happened here anyway. Not.

But don't let that get in the way of the lunatics congratulating them for standing up to Europe etc etc.