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“My bank account's got robbed by European Commission. Over 700k is lost.”

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131–140 of 174 posts

Re: “My bank account's got robbed by European Commission. Over 700k is lost.”

#132
I don't really see how the EC is robbing when it's actually lending Eur 10bln. Without the loan, all banks would have collapsed and you'd have lost the first 100K as well.

The initial proposal was to only tax a percentage of the saved amount. That was rejected by the cypriotic people/govt.

Re: “My bank account's got robbed by European Commission. Over 700k is lost.”

#133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are all dealing with their own problems, it's just that almost every country is dealing with their issues instead of postponing it. You can picture it as going through therapy or adolescence. And boy what a drama that is...

Growing up doesn't usually involve reducing a person's responsibilities. With the advent of the ECB that's what's happened. Now every little eurozone country has to get used to working with interest rates that are effectively set to suit Germany. In the noughties that meant having cheap money because Germany was in the doldrums. Of course fiscal policies could have been used to dampen down demand in the overheated pe…

>Now every little eurozone country has to get used to working >with interest rates that are effectively set to suit Germany.

Euro interest rates have always set to suit Germany and thus been too low for many of the other Euro countries - cheap money is one of the factor behind the crisis across the Euro

Re: “My bank account's got robbed by European Commission. Over 700k is lost.”

#134
post #107

Background and summary (forgive me if some details need correcting): Cyprus is a tiny country with a GDP not much higher than Tim Hortons. Yet, it had something like 150 billion in private funds stored in two of its banks: the Bank of Cyprus and Lakie. Why? Because the majority of the funds (I am generalizing) belongs/belonged to Russians who took advantage of the people on the conversion out of communism (dirty mone…

> Greek's insolvency impacted Cyprus greatly, because a large portion of the Cyprus population are of Greek descent. Just to add a little context to this. Cyprus is a divided country, as a result of a conflict in 1973 between Turkish Cypriots (and Turkey) and Greek Cypriots (and Greece). The Greek Cypriots favoured unification with Greece (Enosis) whereas the Turkish minority felt threatened by this (due to various t…

>Fast forward to 2004 and a referendum is held on whether Cyprus should unify. The Turkish north votes yes, the Greek south votes no and Cyprus enters the Euro leaving Northern Cyprus out in the cold.

This sounds like a mysterious outcome, given what you said above, but one can add that the "unification plan" was to create an old-style colonial protectorate, which, besides giving foreign powers the power to meddle with the new "state" affairs, gave equal political power to the Turkish minority (the majority of which came post-invasion in order to take control of the Turkish side) and to the Greek majority (instead of using legitimate elections). And of course it didn't address any of the violations of lots of UN rulings by the occupying force.

So mainly it was just perpetuating the occupation and the injecting, and saying "ok, now you both have half-half stakes at a new country".

Re: “My bank account's got robbed by European Commission. Over 700k is lost.”

#135
post #126
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There seems to be some confusion as to what a bank is on this board. Every time you deposit say $1 with a bank, they lend out $.90 of it at interest for mortgages, payrolls, etc. It's these investments the bank makes that can (and do) wreck money. The government of the US and EU recognize this risk for most people is detrimental and offer insurance on the first 100,000 deposited. The phrase "seized account" does not…

"Every time you deposit say $1 with a bank, they lend out $.90 of it at interest for mortgages, payrolls, etc." Actually, when you deposit $1, they loan out about $9 (maybe a bit less nowadays, but still a multiple of the $1 being put in). That's what the 'fractional' in 'fractional reserve banking' comes from.

That doesn't make any sense. You've mixed up macroeconomics and microeconomics. A single bank cannot lend more than it has in deposits. However, in an economy with many lenders and borrowers, a deposit (or really any kind of expenditure) can be reinvested fractionally many times, enlarging the money supply by more than its nominal value. Also, the multiplier "rule" of taking the reciprocal of the reserve rate is more of a rough estimate, since individual borrowers may not spend all of the money they have borrowed.

Re: “My bank account's got robbed by European Commission. Over 700k is lost.”

#136
post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't mention it because the previous poster made a very valid point about ethnic Greeks speaking Greek next to Greece investing in Greek assets. However there was no reason as to why a country with such a small economy should come up with an arbitrary 6 billion euro for a 10 billion euro bailout beyond forcing political will over a small country to send a signal to others. If you need 10 billion euros, you're not…

Unless there are very very big deposits in your banks relative to your GDP... I'm not saying that this solution is ideal or "really fair", but when you deposit your money in a bank that gives very high interests compared to other banks in the same currency, you should know you're assuming higher risks. And it isn't fair that if everything goes well you keep the interests, if it goes bad someone else pays for the risk…

> And it isn't fair that if everything goes well you keep the interests, if it goes bad someone else pays for the risk.

If you sincerely think that Cyprus doesn't set a precedent putting everyone in the Eurozone at stake you're wrong. My issue isn't that Cyprus should or shouldn't receive a bailout, it's the undemocratic way the Troika have gone about it and the punitive requirements foisted on them for a bailout when they knew full well that Cyprus didn't have the money.

I'm bookmarking this in the hope that Italy never gets screwed over the same way.

Re: “My bank account's got robbed by European Commission. Over 700k is lost.”

#137

Background and summary (forgive me if some details need correcting): Cyprus is a tiny country with a GDP not much higher than Tim Hortons. Yet, it had something like 150 billion in private funds stored in two of its banks: the Bank of Cyprus and Lakie. Why? Because the majority of the funds (I am generalizing) belongs/belonged to Russians who took advantage of the people on the conversion out of communism (dirty mone…

> Because the majority of the funds (I am generalizing) belongs/belonged to Russians who took advantage of the people on the conversion out of communism (dirty money).

You are not generalizing, you are just making this up. Only about 20% of the deposits in Cyprus belong to Russians.

> Greek's insolvency impacted Cyprus greatly, because a large portion of the Cyprus population are of Greek descent.

Nope. It impacted Cyprus because it participated in the Greece bailout and lost 4.5 bil to the haircut that followed.

Re: “My bank account's got robbed by European Commission. Over 700k is lost.”

#138

Background and summary (forgive me if some details need correcting): Cyprus is a tiny country with a GDP not much higher than Tim Hortons. Yet, it had something like 150 billion in private funds stored in two of its banks: the Bank of Cyprus and Lakie. Why? Because the majority of the funds (I am generalizing) belongs/belonged to Russians who took advantage of the people on the conversion out of communism (dirty mone…

> In North America, we have money in companies, hedge funds, etc. In Europe, banks are the major depository.

But then, banks put those deposits to work in companies, hedge funds etc., so it amounts to the same, with an intermediate which mitigates risks (not perfectly as illustrated here) and takes a fee.

Re: “My bank account's got robbed by European Commission. Over 700k is lost.”

#139
post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Greek's insolvency impacted Cyprus greatly, because a large portion of the Cyprus population are of Greek descent. Just to add a little context to this. Cyprus is a divided country, as a result of a conflict in 1973 between Turkish Cypriots (and Turkey) and Greek Cypriots (and Greece). The Greek Cypriots favoured unification with Greece (Enosis) whereas the Turkish minority felt threatened by this (due to various t…

> Fast forward to 2004 and a referendum is held on whether Cyprus should unify. The Turkish north votes yes, the Greek south votes no and Cyprus enters the Euro leaving Northern Cyprus out in the cold. This sounds like a mysterious outcome, given what you said above, but one can add that the "unification plan" was to create an old-style colonial protectorate, which, besides giving foreign powers the power to meddle w…

As I said, it's all really complicated and no-one wins. In the end Cyprus loses, Greek Cypriots lose and Turkish Cypriots lose too.

Re: “My bank account's got robbed by European Commission. Over 700k is lost.”

#140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

" deposit guarantee schemes may be required to contribute to the recapitalization of the firm " Saying the deposit guarantee scheme may have to contribute means the bank may not have sufficient assets to cover insured deposits and so deposit insurance funds may have to make up the difference. When your house in Staten Island gets razed by Sandy, the insurance company pays up. Similarly, if an insured bank is unable t…

What's funny is that the FDIC is funded by the banks themselves, the same people who need the bail-outs in the first place. The FDIC insurance fund has about $30 billion, while total US bank deposits are around $5 trillion[1], and outstanding derivatives in the hundreds of trillions with JPMorgan Chase[2] holding $78 trillion worth. Who knows how much of this is toxic? Working backwards, on your second point, if the…

On the contrary, having the taxpayer step in if the FDIC runs out of money is politically feasible. In fact, it would be the kind of bailout that the "common" people ("Main Street," to use the term politicians love to use) are always being portrayed as demanding, in the sense that the money would be bailing out the bank accounts of millions of average, middle-class Americans.
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