Cypriot Parliament to Vote on New Bailout

Today the Cypriot Parliament is voting on a replacement bailout plan, swapping the widely-derided deposit confiscation scheme for a nationalization of pensions at state-run companies. The issue now, assuming that parliament passes the new bailout plan, is whether the troika accepts it. This is from Liz Alderman's "Cyprus Lawmakers Prepare to Vote on a New Bailout" article this morning:

Before concrete details emerged, German leaders made it clear they would not back a deal that involved nationalizing the state-owned companies’ pensions, a measure that is rejected in Berlin as more socially dangerous than even the original plan to tax smaller savings. 

In a closed-door meeting with members of her junior coalition partner, the Free Democrats, Chancellor Angela Merkel made clear her impatience with the government in Cyprus, stating that “under no circumstances can we give up our principles,” the public television network ARD reported. 

“When you consider that there was massive resistance against involving the savings, then it is not easy to see how tapping the pension funds, which we view as socially a much more drastic step, is a very good idea,” Steffen Seiber, Ms. Merkel’s spokesman, told reporters. 

Germany is not alone. Luc Frieden, Luxembourg’s finance minister, expressed frustration over a lack of communication in Nicosia, telling Germany’s RBB radio, “It is difficult that we are not getting any details from Cyprus.”

Krugman in his column this morning, "Treasure Island Trauma," predicts that Cyprus will go the way of Iceland -- the banks, swollen by foreign deposits, will collapse and domestic depositors will be protected:

My guess is that, in the end, Cyprus will adopt something like the Icelandic solution, but unless it ends up being forced off the euro in the next few days — a real possibility — it may first waste a lot of time and money on half-measures, trying to avoid facing up to reality while running up huge debts to wealthier nations. We’ll see.

But step back for a minute and consider the incredible fact that tax havens like Cyprus, the Cayman Islands, and many more are still operating pretty much the same way that they did before the global financial crisis. Everyone has seen the damage that runaway bankers can inflict, yet much of the world’s financial business is still routed through jurisdictions that let bankers sidestep even the mild regulations we’ve put in place. Everyone is crying about budget deficits, yet corporations and the wealthy are still freely using tax havens to avoid paying taxes like the little people. 

So don’t cry for Cyprus; cry for all of us, living in a world whose leaders seem determined not to learn from disaster.

A post on naked capitalism responds to Krugman by stressing that Cyprus is not some outlier like the Cayman Islands but very much in tune with old Europe:

As for the size of the banking sector relative to GDP, Krugman seems scandalized that the banking sector is so large relative to its economy. Yes, this is a risky model, and Cyprus made the mistake of being overly dependent on one huge client, Russia. But Cyprus is hardly alone in being a financial center with banks that are a big multiple of GDP. Luxembourg is the really extreme case here, with a banking sector at over 20x GDP. England’s banking sector is 6x GDP. Swiss banks were 6.8x GDP in 2010 (Switzerland has forced much higher equity requirements on its banks, so its balance sheets have shrunk since then). Singapore also has an outsized banking sector. But let us remember that the EU has also set out to trash the Cyprus banking sector pretty much overnight with the deposit garnishing threat. It is important to recognize that while a restructuring was necessary, the severity of the crisis and the degree of damage that will be inflicted on the economy was not.

This is not to underplay Cyprus’s problems. But it would help to depict them accurately.