IT’S OFFICIAL: Banks In Europe May Now Seize Deposits To Cover Their Gambling Losses!
“For the first time since the collapse of Lehman Brothers, those who lend their money to banks or keep their money in banks are at risk.”
- IT’S OFFICIAL: Banks In Europe May Now Seize Deposits To Cover Their Gambling Losses!
by Henry Blodget, http://www.businessinsider.com/
As expected, Cyprus and the EU reached a new late-night bailout deal last night that will reduce the chance that Cyprus’s financial system and economy will completely implode. The new deal is better than the last deal in one key respect:
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Deposits under 100,000 euros will be protected
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That’s very important. Those deposits were ostensibly “insured.” To seize them, the way the last bailout deal would have, would have been grossly unfair and would have set a truly alarming precedent.
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Now, small depositors in European banks can breathe more easily. At least in this case of gross malpractice on the part of reckless bank managers, their life savings have been preserved. Alas, the good news ends there.
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Although deposits under 100,000 euros will be spared, deposits over 100,000 euros will be seized and subjected to an as-yet undetermined haircut–with the confiscated money going to bail out the gambling losses of the aforementioned reckless idiots who run some of Cyprus’s banks.
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This seizure, needless to say, will dampen the enthusiasm of rich depositors for keeping money in banks that get themselves into financial trouble. And because many, many banks in Europe have gotten themselves into financial trouble, this will create a general state of unease among rich depositors throughout the Eurozone.
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And it should wig out some bank lenders, as well. After all, never before in the history of this global financial crisis has a major banking system allowed depositors to lose money, no matter how reckless and stupid and greedy their bank managers have been. And only rarely have bank lenders–those who hold bank bonds–been asked to pony up.
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In this case, however, the depositors will lose money. Perhaps a lot of money. And if there had been big bank debtholders in Cyprus, they probably would have been socked with losses, too.
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read more!
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