How to cause a run on the banks

[DodgyAgent]

So when a lot of people who, I would suspect quite knowingly, put their money into banks that offered basically a way of not paying tax in their own country are annoyed (I'm not including Cypriots themselves who are paying the burden of having what seems to be now corrupt banking system) when such tactics as this thread is seen as wholesome by a government?

I feel sorry for the Cypriots as whatever happens they're ****ed but I don't feel sorry for those people who squirreled away their funds here to bypass their own countries finance laws.

So you think that this type of behaviour by the government is justifiable because they like you decide to make moral judgements about what is and what is not "justifiable"? So then we have taxation determined by people like you with their subjective opinions?

[SimonMac]

It's a stroke of genius. Persuade people that there money isn't safe anywhere. The only sensible course of action is to spend spend spend it. This will kickstart the economy in no time.

So you really think that all the people who were drawing out money from the cash machines went and spent it the next day rather than stick it under the bed? Or should they have bought gold?

[darmstadt]

So you think that this type of behaviour by the government is justifiable because they like you decide to make moral judgements about what is and what is not "justifiable"? So then we have taxation determined by people like you with their subjective opinions?

WTF are you rambling on about? The financial crisis in Cyprus has been brought about by greedy financiers and incompetent ones at that, backed up by a government who have been too liberal in regulating them. The people who will pay are your common worker who has saved for their old age. Once again its the rich ******* over the poor with their greed...

More than 40% of the money held by Cypriot banks is by foreign depositors which begs the question, why? Quite a large percentage of that 40% are UK citizens, why? Maybe the Cypriot government could start by taxing those depositors at a rate equivalent to what they would pay in their own countries, maybe then some of it would find its way back to the UK where it is needed. Maybe, just maybe a country might stand up to the financial community but don't hold your breath (if a country as powerful as the UK can't then Cyprus definitely won't be able to...)

[petergriffin]

But - perhaps someone with a better memory can remind me - didn't Italy do something exactly like this some time ago? Possibly in the 1990s? From one Sunday night to Monday morning, 10% was taken from all Italian bank accounts. Not that politicians and men of respect would have had any advance knowledge of this coming.....

It was 0.6%. Yet a robbery. However back in Blighty banks have de facto applied negative interest rates for years. It takes 2 years of nir to shave 10% off your account.

[doodab]

More than 40% of the money held by Cypriot banks is by foreign depositors which begs the question, why? Quite a large percentage of that 40% are UK citizens, why?

Because there are about 65,000 Cypriots in the UK?

[darmstadt]

Because there are about 65,000 Cypriots in the UK?

Are they Cypriots or do they hold a UK passport? Its bit like this:

Russia has expressed its anger about the levy, which would hit its nationals, some 30 of whom are reported to have been granted Cypriot citizenship after depositing at least €17m into local banks, making investments of €30m or registering businesses on the island.

Which means that these 30 odd people are no longer Russian citizens but Cypriots. At least it can't be blamed on Asil Nadir and Polly Peck...

[doodab]

Are they Cypriots or do they hold a UK passport?

About 25,000 are Cypriot nationals, the rest were born there but hold UK passports or perhaps dual nationality. I'd guess a lot of them came here after the partition. I know a few people who's parents did just that. Of course, the children, being born here and holding UK passports, don't show up in the statistics, although they may still have ties to the place or 2nd homes there.

[Doggy Styles]

...However back in Blighty banks have de facto applied negative interest rates for years. It takes 2 years of nir to shave 10% off your account.

That's irrelevant to what Germany wanted to do in Cyprus.

[Mich the Tester]

About 25,000 are Cypriot nationals, the rest were born there but hold UK passports or perhaps dual nationality. I'd guess a lot of them came here after the partition. I know a few people who's parents did just that. Of course, the children, being born here and holding UK passports, don't show up in the statistics, although they may still have ties to the place or 2nd homes there.

There are also British businesses using Cyprus as a base for trading with the middle east and Israel; go to some of the hotels in Limassol and you'll find people cheerfully trading with each other who would normally not even tolerate sharing oxygen together, like Israelis and Palestinians, or Russian Jews and Saudis, often with British businesses brokering the deals.

Anyway, why are many Europeans avoiding tax? Is it because our governments have become so huge and bloated that they can't pay for themselves without biting off great chunks of people's liberty and getting in the way of people who are trying to trade internationally?

It's quite convenient for European governments that some of the account holders are allegedly Russians who are suspected of avoiding taxes or having allegedly criminal incomes, because that makes it easy to **** over all of the international account holders and tell Joe Public, who has now even less means to secure his own modest wealth, that it's all about getting the money from those nasty tax evaders and criminals.

This is a stupid plan and it is bullying of the lowest kind; while banks all over Europe, in the big powerful countries, were rescued, let's pick on some tiny little country that can't really build any other major source of income than being a banking and trading centre for overtaxed businesses from elsewhere and drive it back to the poverty whence it came. It's like saying "you little upstarts should go back to farming olives and dragging them on rickety trailers to the market with lame old donkeys; we don't want sweaty little plebs like you in our world of shiny offices and luxurious social systems". Yuk. It makes me want to heave.

[darmstadt]

That's irrelevant to what Germany wanted to do in Cyprus.

Wrong, its what the neoliberal troika of the IMF, EU and ECB wanted to do. As you will see in each of those acronyms, 2 have the first word of Europe and one has International which means that is what the rest of Europe and the world wanted to do to Cyprus.