Talk to the shovel

The levy on savers in Cyprus banks is a worrying new development in the Eurozone crisis. Supposedly to teach savers not to save with dodgy banks, instead it is punishing ordinary people by relieving them of at least 6.75% of their savings in return for shares in those dodgy banks. The natural result is that they are all rushing to withdraw their money, with the help of a JCB in one case. If the ECB thinks that savers in other Eurozone countries will not be following suit and stuffing money under their mattresses, they are extremely naive. And if the Germans think that their insistence on this measure will not fan already smoldering resentment against them into roaring flames, they are mad. They have picked on Cyprus, rather than the PIGS, because it is small, weak and has reportedly been a sink for laundered money. Now the plug has been well and truly pulled, the dirty money will go elsewhere and honest savers will be the poorer. The Germans seem to think that is a price worth paying in order to send a tough message to feckless economies - their Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble called the levy part of the "fair" distribution of the bailout's burden. Try telling that to the JCB driver.