Cyprus bank levy: UK to compensate troops and government workers

[dipsydoodle]

4. It is partly a graduated tax

with the highest load being born by non residents - mainly Russians. The tax referred to is actually be re-negotiated today with different bands.

Maybe what's insensitive is the way in which it has been expressed regards the population. They seem to need c. €7 billion on top of the €10 billion from the ECB. Roughly €31 billion held in bank accounts is Russian. So - they could've just hit them with say €3 billion and increased general taxation by €4 billion to cover he rest. Across a population of a million that would be €4000 / head. Doing that would be even worse for their own population than the current proposal.

This issue isn't to simply bail banks - its to help them being there at all. As is with no liquidity there must be little or no credit available. Try functioning with no banks as no banks would probably mean no credit cards either. The government could nationalise affected banks and may in fact do so but I'm not sure of the degree to which that would now help.