Posted on 06/28/2012 6:35:58 AM PDT by blam
The Whole World Will Revolve Around The Tiny Island Of Cyprus
Wolf Richter, Testosterone Pit
Jun. 28, 2012, 8:41 AM
Finland doesn’t get the white-hot attention Germany does, but it should because it could be the driving force behind a breakup of the Eurozone. And it fired another shot: it demanded collateral for its share of the billions of euros that Cyprus would receive from the bailout Troika.
Cyprus is the fifth of 17 Eurozone countries to ask for a bailout. It’s panic time. The first tranche, €1.8 billion, is needed by June 30 to prop up its second largest bank, Popular Bank. And suddenly, Bank of Cyprus, the largest bank, needs €500 million. That’s just the beginning.
All its big banks have been eviscerated by Greek government bonds, Greek corporate debt, a real estate bubble that collapsed, and a title-deed scandal that they colluded in—whose outcrop is now gumming up their balance sheets [I warned about it in October.... Another Eurozone Country Bites the Dust].
Though the government denied any amounts had been discussed, Reuters' “Eurozone sources” attached a number to it: €10 billion—for a country that acceded to the Eurozone in 2008, has a GDP of only €17.3 billion, and has the population of San Francisco (just above 800,000). It takes a lot of talent to accomplish so much with so little.
In return, the bailout Troika will prescribe its bitter medicine: bank recapitalizations, structural reforms, privatizations, reductions in civil servants, and budget cuts. Communist President Demetris Christofias, who speaks fluent Russian, attended university in Moscow, and is an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, had already endeared himself to the bailout Troika—the European Commission, the ECB, and the IMF—by accusing them of being run like a “colonial force.”
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(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
Cyprus is in Asia, what is it doing in Euroweenia?
Let it go down.
Cyprus is in the Medeterranean. Turks and Greeks inhabit the island.
Cyprus is in the Medeterranean Sea. Turks and Greeks inhabit the island.
Make that the Mediterranean Sea.
The Euro is beginning to look like a crowd of three day dead stiffs stumbling around looking for a hole to fall in.
I would laugh if it weren’t so pathetic...
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