Cyprus’ alternative to the Eurozone’s demand for 10% of bank deposits is to put together something they’re calling their solidarity fund.
What this is has not been clear the last several days.
Now, Open Europe, an economic/political think tank has delineated, via tweet, what’s in this:
Frankly, this looks like the sort of plan that you put together towards the end of Monopoly game when you’ve just landed on Boardwalk with a hotel.
I’m not sure what they mean by the pension fund is “only solvent due to govt transfers”. Perhaps it is underfunded? Perhaps they are including the scheduled infusions of pension payments that haven’t been made yet? Anyway, it sounds dicey.
The gas reserves are the big item … but remember the Russians already passed on this. How great can it be if the people you’ve screwed over won’t make an offer on the only thing you’ve got?
The other thing about that gas item is the no money until 2018 part. This is where an economics student needs to think about opportunity costs. If the value of the stock of gas is 30B, and you figure it needs to kick off a minimum return of 10% per year, then the opportunity cost of this is $3B per year right now. So, they Cypriot dream of selling their mineral rights is like asking the people that you owe money to pony up $3B per year for 5 years until they might start getting some positive cash flow. To me … this sounds like asking for a loan to pay off a loan.
Via Marginal Revolution.
No comments:
Post a Comment