Bye bye Cipro, avanti il prossimo...

L'editoriale di Pissarides sul Financial Times è sintetico, chiaro, militante e ampiamente condivisibile:

Cyprus finds not all nations are equal - FT.com

Alcuni spunti di riflessione raccomandandovi di leggere per intero l'articolo:

The trouble, according to the troika of the International Monetary Fund, European Commission and European Central Bank, is that this also brought large amounts of bank deposits to Cyprus, blowing up the banking sector to “unsustainable” dimensions. Deposits are about eight times gross national product. This figure, however, is still smaller than Luxembourg’s and not too different fromg that of Malta or Ireland. (...)

The way Cyprus has been treated by its eurozone partners shows that far from the currency bloc acting as a partnership of equals, it is a disjointed group of countries where the national interests of the big nations stand higher than the interests of the whole. Meanwhile, the haphazard decision-making in the eurogroup continues.

Following the Cyprus agreement, the chairman of the group declared that this would be a template for the future. Panic spread in the eurozone, the value of the euro dropped; and then the denial came, on the same day – the remarks were taken “out of context”. Cyprus is a “special case”, apparently. We wait to hear what is special about it.

Decision-making in the eurozone has reached a new low. Regardless of whether the deal for Cyprus is good or bad, observing the way that decisions were made, contradicting one week what was said the week before, designing templates and withdrawing them overnight, pushing Russian investors away from Cyprus one day and wooing them elsewhere in Europe the next, casts serious doubts on the ability of this group to make the decisions to push Europe forward to financial stability and economic growth.

Nicosia is now an eerie place: deserted streets with people glued to their television sets for the latest news. Many foreign journalists carry big cameras in the hotels and opposite parliament. There is total desperation. The smiles have gone. Nothing like this ever happened before. Where do we go next? It is difficult to say. There are the gas reserves off our coast giving some hope, but “they” might take them away too.

A business services industry does not need big banks, I keep saying. We might revive the sector. But what if the foreign companies leave? There are already stories of wealthy Russians getting phone calls from Malta, Latvia and other places to move their business there.

The future is indeed bleak. It is not clear what is coming next and from where.

Preparati nello spirito da Pissarides potete ora leggere questo post su Zero Hedge:

When Will Deposit Haircuts Take Place In Other European Countries?

Visto che il debito greco è stato ristrutturato da poco dovrebbe toccare al Belgio...o alla Slovenia...secondo Zerohedge

The reality however is that all of Europe's banks have a soaring bad-asset overhang, and sooner or later it will have to be resolved.

It is now common knowledge that such resolution will not take place via additional liquidity injections, but through impairment of the various liability classes as per the reverse waterfall of seniority: first equity, then capital and reserves then junior debt, and finally, senior debt and deposits (with secured senior debt last).

The lesson here is: do your homework, and know your bank. If one's deposits are in a bank that has, or is rumored to have, many bad loans, then pull your money and either put it in a safe bank, put it offshore, or just keep it under the mattress.

Because what happened in Cyprus is now, despite all promises to the contrary, the template for what will happen to all the countries to the right of Cyprus on the chart above.

It's only a matter of "when."