The Cypriot deal
By The Economist
From The Economist
Published: April 03, 2013
Mar 30th 2013 |From the print edition
The new plan is better than the first. That isn't saying much.
AFTER a week in which a first, ill-planned Cypriot bail-out unravelled amid consternation at the notion of swiping some of the country's guaranteed deposits, a second rescue deal for the island was reached in the early hours of March 25th. The plan, which "bailed in" creditors of Cyprus's two biggest banks but spared insured deposits, was an improvement on its predecessor. But as The Economist went to press, the banks were still shut, the economy was braced for disaster and capital controls were in place for the first time in the euro zone's history. A triumph it is not.
Initial market relief that Cyprus had not been forced out of the euro quickly turned sour as Jeroen Dijsselbloem, the Dutch head of the Eurogroup of finance ministers, went off-script. Instead of depicting the Cypriot deal as a one-off, the usual trope, he said that the bail-in of bank creditors, including uninsured depositors if necessary, should become a template. Although he hastily retracted the comments as markets took fright—European bank shares fell sharply—Mr Dijsselbloem had merely revealed in public what northern European creditor nations say in private. They are fed up with funnelling cash to peripheral countries (see chart 1); they would like the idea of recapitalising banks directly through the euro area's rescue fund to remain just that, an idea.
The second deal left the loan amount from the euro area and the IMF at €10 billion ($13 billion) but changed the terms of what Cyprus must do to tackle its banking crisis. The new deal abandoned the raid on savings envisaged a week earlier, which had made a mockery of the European deposit-guarantee threshold of €100,000 by levying a swingeing one-off tax on accounts with less than this amount, as well as imposing a steeper levy on uninsured deposits. Instead, the Cypriots agreed to wind up Laiki, the island's second-biggest bank. Its bad loans will be dumped into a "bad bank", which will also get €4.2 billion of uninsured deposits that are unlikely to survive the experience; Laiki's bondholders, senior as well as junior, will be wiped out, too.
What remains, including Laiki's insured depositors, will go to Bank of Cyprus, which will itself be restructured and recapitalised by writing down bonds and turning uninsured deposits into equity. Those deposits, estimated at close to €10 billion, will be frozen pending a haircut to be determined by the bank's recapitalisation needs; losses on them will not be as severe as at Laiki but could still reach 40%.
For the Cypriots this was a package served with humble pie. It was broadly in line with a solution first advocated by the IMF and backed by the Germans before the original bail-out deal was done, but rejected back then by Nicos Anastasiades, the country's president. Frantic attempts to get Russia, the source of many of the banks' big deposits, to help proved fruitless. An ultimatum from the European Central Bank that it would cut off its emergency funding to Cyprus's big lenders after March 25th if no agreement had been reached by then left the Cypriots with little leverage. Thanks to laws passed in Nicosia just before the second meeting in Brussels, Mr Anastasiades did not have to put the revised deal to a parliamentary vote.
The official lenders may see the second deal as a good night's work. They had not had to follow through on their barely veiled threat to eject Cyprus from the euro, with all the damage that might do to the credibility of the single currency. They had charted a new course for the euro area in dealing with tottering banks: bail-in by creditors rather than bail-out by taxpayers. And the outcome was more acceptable to suspicious voters in creditor countries, since none of the rescue money will go to the big banks in Cyprus. That should make it easier for the Germans in particular to get the financing passed by the Bundestag.
But the Cypriot fix may yet come back to haunt its makers. The imposition of capital controls, using wide-ranging powers passed by Cypriot MPs on March 22nd, is a particularly worrying development. Although controls are banned under European Union law, there is a get-out clause for up to six months in exceptional circumstances. Mr Anastasiades insisted that the restrictions would be "very temporary", but history suggests they will stay for longer than expected. They remain in place in Iceland, for example, over four years after being introduced. If capital controls do stay in place for some time, Cyprus will be in the monetary union only in name. A Cypriot euro, trussed within the island's borders, will not be the same as a euro in the rest of the zone.
And, whatever Mr Dijsselbloem may protest he really meant, the Cypriot bail-in serves notice on creditors of weak banks throughout the euro area. Wholesale money will be tempted to move out of them as soon as possible. Although retail deposits are stickier, bank runs are now more likely if a bail-out looms. Cyprus is not the only country stuffed with deposits (see chart 2). European policymakers are underestimating the extent to which events in Cyprus may yet destabilise the rest of the euro area, says Jacques Cailloux of Nomura.
Cypriots have cause to lament that its rescuers have made a desert and called it peace. The tiny economy has suffered a massive blow. Earlier forecasts by the European Commission that its economy would shrink by 5% over the next two years were bad enough; a shrinkage of close to 20% is now plausible. That will render debt-sustainability forecasts null and void. Cyprus's bail-out may have saved the blushes of its rescuers, but they may soon have to deliver another one.
歐元區將繼續帶「賽」？
2013-04-03 天下雜誌 519期 作者：經濟學人
賽普勒斯祭出新紓困計劃，危機暫解。但經濟成爛攤，又將實施資本管制，未來恐怕不樂觀。
賽普勒斯第一輪千瘡百孔的紓困方案，想藉著對存款課稅，取得紓困財源。計劃提出一週後，引發了擠兌與恐慌。
第二輪的紓困方案，終於在三月二十五日凌晨達成共識。這次放過了升斗小民的存款，改為針對賽普勒斯兩個最大銀行的債權人開刀，被視為是比第一輪更優的選擇。
但賽普勒斯經濟搖搖欲墜，並且祭出了歐元區有史以來第一次的資本管制措施。這場戰爭，賽普勒斯沒有勝利可言。
第二輪方案需要從歐元區與國際貨幣基金（ＩＭＦ），借貸一百億歐元（約一三○億美元）的資金，但改變了賽普勒斯解決金融危機的條件。
新方案放棄了一週前對存款課稅的計劃，決定把賽普勒斯第二大的大眾銀行（Laiki）的壞帳，打為不良資產。未受存保保障的四十二億歐元存款，恐將為其買單。而大眾銀行的債券持有人，不管存續期限長短，也將認賠。
剩下的資產，包括大眾的存保存款帳戶在內，都會與第一大銀行賽普勒斯銀行合併。而賽普勒斯銀行將被重整，並把債券減記，把非存保存款轉為證券。
這些存款估計約有一百億歐元，將被凍結起來，已備該銀行增資之需；存戶的損失，可能不會像大眾那麼大，但最高恐怕仍達四成。
讓賽普勒斯最大存款國俄羅斯參與紓困的計劃，終告失敗。
歐洲央行不會考慮，將賽普勒斯逐出歐元區。因為這麼做，反而會衝擊到歐元的公信力。
相反的，歐盟反而擘劃出了一個處理歐元區銀行問題的新方向——讓債權人承擔風險，而不是讓納稅人來買單。
這對債權國的選民來說，是比較能接受的。因為這樣的紓困資金，不會直接拿去救賽普勒斯的大銀行。此方式應該較易獲得德國議會批准。
但賽普勒斯的問題，還是可能有後遺症。三月二十二日，賽普勒斯國會通過的資本管制，特別令人擔心。
雖然歐盟法律禁止管制，但卻有註明得以在特殊情況下，實施管制六個月的但書。賽普勒斯總統堅稱，這只是暫時性的權宜之計，但歷史證明，通常實施期間會比預期還久。
冰島在金融海嘯發生後，實行資本管制，到現在還沒廢止。如果賽普勒斯也是這樣，則留在歐元區也只是名存實亡。（林昭儀譯）
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