CYPRUS: As Moscow retreats, Berlin advances…by €900 million

The Slog

By John Ward

Zero Hedge is posting that – now Moscow is out of the picture – the EU has moved the goalposts again.

It wants €6.7 billion from Cyprus – not €5.8 billion as previously advertised – because “conditions have worsened”.

I am reminded of what Nye Bevan said of the Conservatives who opposed the NHS: “You are lower than vermin”.

Berlin’s test market continues. Cyprus’s misery increases. It is a series of events we have come to know all too well. Wolfgang Schäuble just said that “the markets see us as far more able to deal with turbulence now”. What a charmer he is. I wonder if he remembers what he told those same markets on 23rd December last year:

“There is no doubt in my mind that 2013 will see far less turbulence than 2012. Things are beginning to turn the corner”.

I remember well how my thesis on the psychopathology of Adolf Hitler began in 1969: ‘The only rule about Adolf Hitler is that there are no rules about Adolf Hitler”.

Without the First I got for it, I probably wouldn’t have got the 2:1 overall degree with which I wound up. I wonder what my reward might be for doing the same for Herr Schäuble.

I’m happy for some who read this to hide behind political correctness in order to write me off as a bigoted old fart: I can only revisit an old adage – those whom the cap fits are condemned to wear it.