Friday, March 22, 2013

Cyprus will not be the next Greece

Tiny Cyprus may have made a lot of mistakes. It may have taken in Russian mafia money, laundered it, and made lots of bad loans many times in excess of its deposits. Maybe it's greatest mistake of all was adopting the euro in the first place.

But it won't be making the same mistake as Greece. For as much as Cyprus and Greece are culturally similar, Cyprus will not submit to the demands of Germany. It will not inflict crushing austerity on its people in the name of saving its creditors or saving the euro.

Here's what an important Cypriot government official and former finance minister had to say:

If we cannot come up with the €5.8bn in a few days then I think we will go to the Cyprus pound. That will be the end of Cyprus in the eurozone. We're going to exhaust all other possibilities but what can we do? If we have no other solution we cannot leave the people without money.

"We cannot leave people without money."

Finally, some sanity! And some courage. Let that be a lesson to the "leaders" of Greece, Spain, Italy, Britain and the United States, too!

If there was a way to buy Cypriot stocks, if Cyprus does leave the euro, I'd totally load the boat!!

6 comments:

delgursh said...

This article that I came across seemed MMT-ish. They used "automatic stabilizers." And said austerity increases the deficit in the long run. At least someone else said it.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/03/22/wbi-more-on-the-chicken-and-egg-deficit-and-jobs-issue.html

Ignacio said...

Let that be a lesson to the "leaders" of Greece, Spain, Italy, Britain and the United States, too!


Don't think this will happen, there is too much cowardice around. And in the EU specially, it seems the euro-vision of continental european politicians, the zeitgest and obsession of a united Europe behind a single flag, is too strong to revert the euro.


"It will be the euro, or it will be chaos", politicians have made their mind, they have spoken, they said (nevertheless!) than the only way to have a peaceful Europe, free of wars and violence, is with an European project, and with the euro.



Myopic.

Malmo's Ghost said...

Damn it!, Cyprus capitulates:

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2013/03/cyprus-capitulates-to-eurozone.html#comment-1162836

Jonf said...

Too bad, looks like the ECB and Germany wins again.

Malmo's Ghost said...

Looks as if those depositors with over $100k will be hit with an up to 70% tax to cover the bail-in. So far all those below will be spared. Russia looks to be taking the biggest hit of all.

I think the EU, demonetization of so called money laundering Russians aside, is finally supplying the rope to hang itself with. Good.

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