習近平(2012年11月15日就職中共總書記談話)：
「我們的人民熱愛生活，期盼有更好的教育、更穩定的工作、更滿意的收入、更可靠的社會保障、更高水平的醫療衛生服務、更舒適的居住條件、更優美的環境，期盼著孩子們能成長得更好、工作得更好、生活得更好。人民對美好生活的向往，就是我們的奮鬥目標。」
Worldwatch: cyprus bailout(This is a really bankrob & eurozone a peaceful disaster )
2013年3月17日 星期日
cyprus bailout(This is a really bankrob & eurozone a peaceful disaster )
The Cyprus Bailout in One Picture:
The picture shows the EURO central holds a
bigger gun aiming at cyprus
The Cyprus bailout means Cypriots are trying to recover their savings. Photograph: Barbara Laborde/AFP/Getty Images
Cyprus bail-out risks UK troops’ savings
Thousands of British savers, including armed forces personnel, are to be hit
by a eurozone tax on Cypriot banks after the island’s £8.7bn bail-out.
British-born Cypriots and their families, some of the UK’s 3,500 service
personnel on the island and holiday home owners with savings locally are
likely to be affected. The tax will raise €5.8bn to refinance the country’s
ailing banks, in addition to the eurozone funds. The Government is
considering reimbursing some of those affected.
In a departure from previous eurozone bail-outs – the Mediterranean country is
the fifth to have turned to the eurozone for financial aid – savers
are being asked to make sacrifices in a move which critics say sets
dangerous precedents.
As well as the levy on savers, the Cypriot government has also agreed to
increase its corporation tax rate by 2.5 percentage points to 12.5pc to
boost revenues.
Further measures include bank restructuring, a “bail-in” of junior bondholders
(where some of their debt will be turned into less valuable equity) and the
increase of the taxes on capital income.
Bank of Cyprus in
Athens. By 2011, Cypriot banks had made loans worth more than eight
times the country’s national output. Photograph: Yorgos
Karahalis/Reuters
It was always a case of when, not if, Cyprus would join the list of eurozone countries requiring a bailout to rescue them from financial crisis.
But the peculiarities of the support package coupled with the economic
weakness across the rest of the 17-nation single currency area suggest
that this could be a game-changing moment.
Cyprus has faced two
big problems. The first is that its banks went on a lending spree during
the good times – by 2011, they had made loans worth more than eight
times the country's national output. Even Britain, the most spectacular
example of a big developed country that allowed an overblown banking
sector to threaten the entire economy, did not go quite that far.
The
second problem was the close links between Cyprus and Greece, a country
gripped by a brutal slump that has seen the size of the economy shrink
by 20% in four years. Cypriot banks had made loans to Greece worth 160%
of GDP and the losses on that high level of exposure have been rising
rapidly.
Greece is also a key trading partner for Cyprus, so there
has also been a direct impact on the Cypriot economy from the austerity
imposed on Athens.
But while there was never a doubt that Cyprus would need help from the so-called troika of the International Monetary Fund, the European Union
and the European Central Bank, the dealannounced at the weekend
differed in one significant way from the ones that have gone before it:
bank deposit holders in Cyprus will have to foot part of the bill
themselves.
The reason for this is simple. There is a lot of
Russian money in Cyprus, much of it from somewhat dubious sources. With
the richer countries of the eurozone suffering from bail-out fatigue,
there was resistance – particularly in Germany – to the idea that
ordinary European taxpayers should be writing blank cheques to Russian
oligarchs who might have been using Cyprus as a money laundering
destination.
As a result, there will be a "stability levy" of
6.75% on all bank deposits of less than €100,000 (£87,000)and 9.9% for
those above €100,000. In addition, there will be the now familiar
strings attached to the financial help: austerity and structural reform.
By
the standards of previous rescues, the €10bn handed to Cyprus is
chickenfeed. But even before the ink was dry on the agreement, financial
markets were fearing that the deal could have wider ramifications than
the troika expects.
One issue is whether the "stability levy" is
unique to Cyprus or will be applied to other – much bigger – eurozone
countries that might require help. Telling Spanish bank depositors, for
example, that they would have to follow the Cypriot precedent would risk
inflaming a country already experiencing widespread social unrest.
The assumption in Brussels, Frankfurt and Washington seems to be that Cyprus is the coda to the eurozone crisis
– a last echo of problems that are now all but resolved. Yet that view
may not be shared in the markets, where many analysts have seen the calm
that has descended on the single currency since last summer as a phoney
peace.
Ever since Greece precipitated the crisis in late 2010,
events in the eurozone have been marked by periods of extreme tension
punctuated by periods of stability. The one since last July when Mario
Draghi, the president of the ECB, said he would do "whatever it takes"
to safeguard the euro has been the longest so far.
Yet,
the economic news from the eurozone has remained grim. In 2012, there
was not a single quarter of positive growth and activity is still
weakening. Italy's political impasse has added to fears that it may
just take the disturbance of one small rock to set off another avalanche
of selling in the bond markets. Cyprus could be it.
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