The wounded, bleeding elephant in the room in Brussels today is the awful damage that has already been done to Europe's economy.
Local firms in Cyprus saw business dried up as the country's banks remained closed, and customers learned the full scale of the crisis.
The looming capital controls (restrictions on cash withdrawals, bank transfers, etc) will hurt trade, possibly for months. And the destruction of parts of the Cypriot banking sector will take a great, big chunk out of the country's economy.
A well-respected fund manager based in London who blogs/tweets as Pawelmorski says the scale of the economic destruction achieved in the last week is unheard of 'without the use of weapons'.
He wrote yesterday....The combination of laying waste to the financial sector and tearing up the savings of thousands of residents means that Cyprus won’t return to current levels of output for a decade, a funeral pyre which bears comparison only with Greece. There are four shocks happening at once; the bog-standard austerity shock; the trauma of bank withdrawal controls; the wealth shock; and the structural shock of wiping out the financial sector. The bailout bill is certainly going to get a lot higher too, as a larger amount of debt is piled onto a smaller economy.
The central bank in Cyprus imposed a €100 a day withdrawal limit at cash machines for all local banks on Sunday to avert a run on lenders, as the island's leaders meet its international lenders for last-ditch talks to avert a financial meltdown.
The central bank in Cyprus imposed a €100 a day withdrawal limit at cash machines for all local banks on Sunday to avert a run on lenders, as the island's leaders meet its international lenders for last-ditch talks to avert a financial meltdown.
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Cypriots had reacted to the agreement with European leaders with relief as it appeared that at least deposits below €100,000 had been spared the levy.
In the streets and cafes of Nicosia, and on TV chat shows aired in homes across the nation state, the feeling was that the country had been saved but at a high price.
Interior minister Sokratis Hasiko encapsulated the mood, describing the EU-IMF-backed bailout as the best of a bad range of choices.
"We had got to the point where we were discussing a [depositor] haircut of between 50 and 60%," he said, adding that the Cypriot parliament's rejection of the first accord, with its highly controversial levy on depositors big and small, had been hugely negative for the country's banks. "So this is the best we could get."
One Russian oligarch, Alexander Lebedev, played down the amount he stood to lose in Cyprus as no more than $10,000. "It's not worth talking about," he said. "Cyprus was always a transit jurisdiction – money would pass through and then go to Lithuania, Latvia, Belize, Switzerland, everywhere. There are plenty of ways [to avoid capital controls], they can split accounts."
The multimillionaire owner of the Evening Standard and Independent expressed doubts that capital controls to be imposed by the Cypriot government in order to stem a bank run would work. "Certain schemes can be put into place," Lebedev said by telephone from Moscow. "This is how Cyprus was making money."
One Russian oligarch, Alexander Lebedev, played down the amount he stood to lose in Cyprus as no more than $10,000. "It's not worth talking about," he said. "Cyprus was always a transit jurisdiction – money would pass through and then go to Lithuania, Latvia, Belize, Switzerland, everywhere. There are plenty of ways [to avoid capital controls], they can split accounts."
The multimillionaire owner of the Evening Standard and Independent expressed doubts that capital controls to be imposed by the Cypriot government in order to stem a bank run would work. "Certain schemes can be put into place," Lebedev said by telephone from Moscow. "This is how Cyprus was making money."
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