Cyprus' "Golden Dawn" is quickly rising. Last October, the Greek government imprisoned the entire parliamentary bloc of Golden Dawn, due to their growing electoral success The decision to sentence leader Nikos Micholiakos and multiple others to 13 years in prison just for belonging to the nationalist party was received with applause by "human rights" groups... Read More

The dramatic recent events in Cyprus have highlighted the fundamental weakness in the European banking system and the extreme fragility of fractional reserve banking. Cypriot banks invested heavily in Greek sovereign debt, and last summer's Greek debt restructuring resulted in losses equivalent to more than 25 percent of Cyprus' GDP. These banks then took their... Read More

It was supposed to be a bailout. It turned out to be a death sentence. Given the checkered and unremarkable history of the Brussels bureaucrats, is anyone really surprised? Yes, an agreement was reached between Cypriot government officials and the so-called troika (the European Commission, the European Central Bank, and the International Monetary Fund) in... Read More

Cyprus is a big pain in the neck for one and all. Its banks are bust due to reckless lending to Greece. The sunny island is a beehive of tax evasion, money laundering, dodgy trade and espionage. Now, the threatened bankruptcy of Cyprus has triggered the latest European financial crisis. Russian businessmen and the Russian... Read More

Although the aftershocks created by the botched Cyprus bank bailout are by no means over, the news this morning is on balance reassuring. At least we should be thankful for small mercies: the European banking system is still standing. While the crisis has precipitated bank runs in Cyprus, depositors elsewhere seem to have remained remarkably... Read More

Everyone now agrees that Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson badly botched the Lehman Brothers crisis of 2009. But at least he had an excuse. The pace of events left him little time for second thoughts. By comparison the German-led group of EU officials who engineered this weekend’s Cyprus bank bailout don’t have a leg to stand... Read More