The "test" is not yet over. Angry nazi-chancellor-bitch continues pressuring and threatening this small but brave country.
All banks in Cyprus are now closed and outward money transfers are frozen until next Tuesday.
Are you kidding me? Germany is trying to SAVE Cyprus from going bankrupt, and the people of Cyprus, like Greece, is just expecting a hand out from Germany without any pain. This is the problem with Euro, it can't be easily inflated like the USD.
In my view, things are simpler than that. Germany* does not give a
shit about any other country and that's to be expected. Neither Italy or Greece gives a shit about anyone else. In the big-boys game, decisions are driven by carefully planning
short term gains in various fields. In Democracy the most important thing for a corrupted or professional politicians (as the officials who run the countries all over the Eurozone), is to be re-elected. There are elections in Germany to be held. The official narrative by the national media pundits, backed by the coalition (as of this week indirectly but now directly) says that good German is paying for the sins of the Southern Europeans! That's of course half the truth, as it often happens in these situations, every side chooses to paint in bold the part of the truth that makes him look bold.
To cut it down, I firmly believe, that if this was 2012 Cyprus would be saved with a bailout of 6BL (which is a ridiculous price to pay for "saving" the EU) but there are elections in Germany and Merkel has to make a point: Germans will not pay anymore for bad bad bad PIIGS + C.
Truth is that the German government and the EBC has raped Greece even making money out of Greek bonds, not accepting ANY sort of reduction to the bond price. Last time it made 17 Bil. EUR out of Greece. That's a pure rape. As for Germany's money, they go to Greece, recycle and go back to Greek Bond-Holders which mostly are French and (yes exactly... ) GERMAN banks. What good old fashioned German banks tried and some still trying desperately to do, is sell (at a good possible price) Greek bonds to the government. Recently they accepted a haircut but it was at least half of what it should have been. Greece has defaulted but since it's politicians (and population) apparently prefer to die than to get out of the Euro, German banks are still making money out of corpses.
The rhetoric that German wanted to save the EURO is true: As Cyprus economy is based on a superfluous banking sector, German economy is based on exports. Germany (via EURO) was making sure that Italians, Spaniards (and other pigs) were able to take credit and buy BMW's and Mercedes. Once these countries leave the EURO they will get back to their good old currency which will be devalued so much... Then bye-bye exports. If aliens on the Moon or Chinese (which is ridiculous) do not start buying massively German products, I foresee a hard time for Germany. So YES Germany wanted to save the Euro, but didn't give any loan, or made any sort of move the did not totally and utterly suited the local elites. They didn't give a shit about the social death of Greece (Nazi's are at 14% in pools and it's partly Germany's policy direction that made it happen), they didn't give a shit about Italy - even the remarks about 2 clowns winning the ballots were utterly stupid, selfish and arrogant - or Spain.
Spain and Italy would be much more easy to handle if they were not able to see what happened in Greece and while Greece had Papandreou who committed political suicide (and for what? Greece has 30% unemployment, corruption is rampant as always, suicidal rate is the biggest in Europe and the HDI is going 2 position down every year) and flew away. So no one in Italy or Spain was eager to follow the same path. In Italy Monti tried and we'll never hear from him again.
My prediction is that Germany has already decided to end the Euro. They are looking for a scapegoat, because they have an already awfully bad reputation and don't want to be the country the finally ended the Euro.
And to give dues where we should, France is equally responsible for the current situation. The lack of leadership throughout Europe, at a political level is astonishing. Leaders all over Europe are treated like shit by local and foreign bankers. At some point a collision will come and it won't be with foreigners, although social discomfort is on the raise (I don't want to know how many Germans are preparing for vacations in Southern Europe this year, they will be far less welcomed and same goes for Southerns planning to go North), the bankers are still free-riding.
Oh! that was a long one :-)
Cheers!
* When I say "Germany" I mean specifically the Government coalition.
