The first proposed haircut on Cypriot deposits, which saw deposits under €100,000 haircut by 6.75%, and those €100,000 and larger (i.e., the "Russian oligarch" pool) trimmed by 9.9% appears to be hours away from renegotiation. The reason is that Europe now is convinced the only reason the bailout proposal would not pass parliament is that the tax on the "common man" deposits is too high, which means it will be revised to 3% or perhaps lower, with the possibility of staggered thresholds, such that deposits under €20,000 remain untouched. This will be decided at a conference call at 6:30 pm GMT when Europe will once again confirm its cluelessness, and inability to make concrete, firm decisions. While none of this will restore confidence in the Cypriot and European banking system, the open question is what will be the Russian impairment - i.e., what is the most that whale deposits can be cut by? We now know the answer, courtesy of this interactive widget from Reuters [4], which allows one to calculate what the haircut on large deposits would be assuming an X% haircut on smaller deposits. It appears that the worst case for Russians will be 15.26% - this is how much of all Cypriot deposits €100K and higher would be taxed by if there is 0% tax on the small deposits.
Readers are welcome to play with their own assumptions of what is considered "fair" for deposit confiscation in a global socialist regime, below:
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