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Eurozone’s bully boys will come to regret penalising tiny Cyprus
Europe’s monetary union was meant to be about solidarity among the many and prosperity for all.
By Jeremy Warner
In practice, it’s turning out to be a doomsday machine for the fringe economies that once so enthusiastically lined up to join.
If even Wolfgang Schaeuble, the German finance minister, is prepared to admit that Monday’s bail-out is a bitter pill for Cypriots to swallow, then it must indeed have been merciless. Nicholas Papadopolous, chairman of the Cypriot parliament’s finance committee, had a rather blunter way of putting it: “We are heading for a deep recession, high unemployment. They wanted to send a message that the Cypriot economy ought to be destroyed, and they’ve succeeded. They’ve destroyed our banking sector."
The terms of this latest bail-out are scarcely any better than the ones so comprehensively rejected by MPs only last week. The offshore banking model on which so much of the island’s recent prosperity has been built is being broken beyond repair. Small wonder the latest package is structured in a way that doesn’t require another parliamentary vote. Democracy is once again being suspended for the supposed sake of the single currency.'
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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comm ... yprus.html