The Governing Council of the European Central Bank decided to maintain the current level of Emergency Liquidity Assistance (ELA) until Monday, 25 March 2013.
Thereafter, Emergency Liquidity Assistance (ELA) could only be considered if an EU/IMF programme is in place that would ensure the solvency of the concerned banks.
Cyprus’s banks are currently scheduled to reopen on Tuesday. Tick, tock.
The government has decided to create a “Solidarity Fund” to raise the money they have been unable to raise. If they can manage to scramble together €5.8 billion, and if the EU still agrees to lend the additional €10 billion, then everything can go back to normal and it will be like this whole event never happened. Ha, ha.
Those are big “ifs”. To understand where the EU is coming from, read the Eurogroup chairman’s comments before the European Parliament. The general idea is that the €10 billion loan is conditional on reasonable prospects that it will be repaid, which means reducing the liabilities of Cyprus’s banking system, which probably means a levy on depositors.
Related: Cyprus’s finance minister is in Moscow this week. He looks a little stressed.
The boot print is a nice touch
The Telegraph has pretty good rolling coverage if you want to keep up in real time.
[Update]
Your search phrase of the day is “capital controls”.
Cyprus fin min leaving Russia empty-handed
Looks like the Plan is to annihilate large depositors. Kind of makes sense since that money would be leaving anyway. Although personally, I would not want to be a member of the Cyprus Parliament voting to extract 40% from the Russian mafia.
Cyprus is far more afraid of the Russian Mafia than the ECB. I predict Cyprus will drop out of the eurozone and adopt the ruble as currency. Remember you read it here first.