You know this levy on Cyprus bank deposits? It’s not a levy. A levy is a kind of tax, and what is happening to the people with bank deposits in Cyprus is no kind of tax, although today the European Commission spokesmen have been insisting it is.
How can it be a tax when the depositors are going to be ‘compensated’ with shares in the bank? I mean, when you pay your income tax, George Osborne doesn’t compensate you with shares in RBS.
No, what’s happening in Cyprus — assuming that the Cypriot parliament is just as gutless as the new Cypriot president, Nicos Anastasiades, in capitulating to eurozone demands — is nothing but the seizure of private assets for the benefit of the euro project (and for the benefit of Angela Merkel in the coming elections, which here in Brussels means the same thing).
But the seizure is even more than that: it is the nullification of the EU law which requires that all bank deposits up to the value of €100,000 be guaranteed.
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