Saturday 16 March 2013, the day they opened Pandora’s box

Usually around 6.30 in the morning is when the little one wakes up for a feed: she is the daily alarm. The ritual is the same each day, coffee, cigarette and catch up on news on twitter. The morning of Saturday the 16^th was different as the previous night an extraordinary Eurogroup was held for Cyprus, where everyone expected a final solution for a bailout would be agreed upon. Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades, the preferito of European leaders and institutions, unlike the difficult communist Demetris Christofias, was willing to play ball and agree a program with the troika, close the matter and move on until the next bailout.

First it was a tweet from Matina Stevis asking how much of the 5.8 billion euros from deposits would come from Russian oligarchs. I thought since it was so early in the morning, I was not catching things quite right. It was Peter Spiegel’s tweet saying Cyprus will impose a 6.75% levy on deposits below 100,000 euros and 9.99% for those above that brought it home.

Cyprus, capital controls

Here is what a cash economy looks like:

• Restrictions in daily withdrawals
• Ban on premature termination of time savings deposits
• Compulsory renewal of all time savings deposits upon maturity
• Conversion of current accounts to time deposits
• Ban or restrictions on non cash transactions
• Restrictions on use of debit, credit or prepaid debit cards
• Ban or restriction on cashing in checks
• Restrictions on domestic interbank transfers or transfers within the same bank
• Restrictions on the interactions/transactions of the public with credit institutions
• Restrictions on movements of capital, payments, transfers
• Any other measure which the Finance Minister or the Governor of Cyprus Central Bank see necessary for reasons of public order and safety

The bill here in Greek:

Click to access synallages.pdf

Cyprus, current state of play

Here is the current state of play regarding today’s vote, information from various local sources:

Session starts at 4pm local (GMT+2)

Cypriot Parliament: 56 seats

Anastasiades party ΔΗΣΥ (DISI): 20 seats

ΔΗΚΟ (DIKO) (coalition party): 8

ΑΚΕΛ (AKEL): 19

ΕΔΕΚ (EDEK): 5

Greens: 1

ΕΥΡΩΚΟ (EUROKO): 2

Independent: 1