Simon Wren-Lewis is puzzled here.
Tag: Eurozone incompetence
Colm McCarthy has a terrific piece in today’s Sunday Independent.
To his comments about money laundering hardly being something confined to Cyprus, I would add the following link.
It seems that we still don’t know how this crisis is going to end. But here is one big dilemma that I see. Implicit in Colm’s article is a recognition that a meaningful banking union is a pre-requisite for a sustainable EMU. That means common supervision, a centrally-funded deposit insurance system, and a common, tax-payer-friendly, and (where necessary) jointly funded resolution system. The core reference on banking union remains this piece by Pisani-Ferry, Sapir and Véron. This past week’s events have clearly reinforced the case for such a banking union, which necessarily involves some element of fiscal union. Without it, EMU is a dangerous place to be.
And here is the dilemma (aside from the fact that it is being made increasingly clear that the Germans are never going to be convinced that such a system would be one involving mutual insurance, rather than one-way transfers, and that the idea of a meaningful banking union may therefore be dead in the water in any event). Do the rest of us want to get even more deeply involved with a Eurozone whose decision makers are as incompetent as this lot? And do those of us who live in small countries really want to get more deeply involved in a club in which big, powerful countries and small, weak countries are not treated as equal members?
Update: according to the FT, German banks (among others) are going after the Russian business that has up to now been located in Cyprus.
I can’t quite believe that the EC has said this, but they apparently have. Unbelievable. Its obvious implication is that bank runs in troubled countries, if they ever happen, now risk being nation-wide, rather than limited to failing banks. Hat tip Eurointelligence, who call the statement hugely damaging, and Gavin Kostick in the comments.
You leave the computer switched off during the holiday weekend, and look what the Eurozone does while you’re away! I guess we don’t know yet what the final outcome is going to be in Cyprus, and I fully share Sharon Bowles’ hopes that we haven’t seen the final word yet.
But if small depositors are going to take a hit, then, as a reminder of what we will have lost, here is a handy set of links to various EU documents and regulations regarding banking deposits. This citizen’s summary which reflects the media reports of the time helps explain why people have persisted in leaving their money in peripheral European banks for so long. It seems mad to tear this guarantee up on the grounds that Cyprus is sui generis, since as Tolstoy (almost) said…
Update: Tuesday morning, and we still don’t know what is going to happen; maybe the guarantee for savings of less than €100,000 will be honoured. But I fear that Karl and the many other commentators weighing in on the issue this morning are right, and that the long run reputation of the EU’s claim to guarantee such deposits will suffer a big hit as a result of this debacle, no matter what ultimately happens.