While we are told day after day that not only is Europe 'fixed' but that Cyprus was not a template, it seems the bankers in the peripheral nations are a little less confident (never mind their record amount of reach-around-based domestic bond buying). European "leaders need to moderate their language," warned one bank CEO, and as the FT reports [6], another feared a "Cyprus virus," adding that "you can't keep playing with fire." The comments come in the wake of the depositor haircuts in Cyprus as a rush of clients wanted to move cash from deposit accounts to vaults: "most clients in Portugal don't trust deposit guarantees... they choose vaults instead." Fixed indeed... and why would these bankers worry about the 'precedent' if it were not a 'template' for future bail-ins?
Via The FT, [6]
Portugal’s top bankers have called on Europe’s leaders to stop “playing with fire” and moderate their stance towards the eurozone periphery, or risk instilling alarm among bank depositors in future.
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“Leaders need to moderate their language. This could be very bad,” Ricardo Espírito Santo Salgado, chief executive of BES, told the Financial Times.
Nuno Amado, his opposite number at BCP, talked of a “Cyprus virus”, saying: “If someone had designed a plan to hurt the European market, it would be difficult to think of something better . . . You can’t keep playing with fire.”
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“There was huge nervousness,” Mr Amado said.
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“Most clients in Portugal don’t trust deposit guarantees and they have no means to open accounts abroad,” said one person close to BPI. “They choose vaults instead.”