Why Cyprus Could Happen in the US

Bank of Cyprus

By Tim Price:

The prime minister of Luxembourg, Jean-Claude Juncker, has provided two clear insights into this world of deceit:

“We all know what to do, we just don’t know how to get re-elected after we have done it.”

And,

“When it becomes serious, you have to lie.”

This is what we now have by way of government: a self-serving elite who cannot be trusted, operating to a timetable defined by, and limited to, the electoral cycle.

This liberty deficit is possibly more severely damaging than the supposedly intractable fiscal one that lies beneath it. Yet whatever emerges from the disaster, Cyprus has reminded us of a couple of awkward truths:

Cyprus banks shut until Thursday on Bailout Failure – Rethink Savings Tax

A woman unsuccessfully attempts to withdraw from a Cypriot bank ATM in Greece on Sunday. Bank of Cyprus in Athens. By 2011, Cypriot banks had made loans worth more than eight times the country’s national output. Photograph: Katia Christodoulou / EPA

Two days after the European Union revealed a €10 billion rescue for Cyprus, the tiny island nation said its banks would not reopen at least until Thursday to give it more time to win the backing of parliament for a controversial tax on deposits. The unprecedented tax on bank deposits led to a run on cash machines in