“If everybody starts to think their money is unsafe, we’ll get a self-fulfilling prophecy, and the banks will go under,” said Thomas Schuster from the Cologne Institute for Economic Research. “So trust is paramount.”
Architects of the deal have been quick to point out that the Cyprus bailout – or bail-in, as many are calling it – will not and cannot become the template for other troubled eurozone nations.
But economics commentator Philip Faigle, writing in Die Zeit, disagreed: “The taboo has been broken. For the first time in the euro crisis, savers have been expropriated.”
… There is anecdotal evidence that some Germans have begun removing their savings from banks, and that others have opened new accounts to spread their savings around and avoid getting caught like Cypriot depositors with more than €100,000. Financial daily Börsen Zeitung commented that while Germans – still collectively haunted by the currency collapses experienced by their forefathers – were not necessarily planning a run on the bank with their feet, “they are already doing it in their heads”.
— Observer
Can you code?
I think the craziest idea I have heard in the last few years is that everyone should learn to code. That is the most bizarre and regressive idea. There are good reasons why we don’t want everyone to learn nuclear physics, medicine or how financial markets work. Our entire modern project has been about delegating power over us to skilled people who want to do the work and be rewarded accordingly. I’m all for making us aware of how various technological infrastructures work. But the idea everyone should learn how to code is as plausible as saying that everyone should learn how to plumb. To me it just makes no sense.
So you don’t agree with the notion what we need to program or risk being programmed?
It’s just an immense shrinking of intellectual imagination to use computing metaphors. I’m just appalled. … there is no way you can learn how to program and be responsible for everything in your life and still have a fulfilling life.
— Evgeny Morozov, Guardian
London
We gather together in these urban nightmares, all these people gather, and the warmth it generates, the ideas, the entertainment, the culture – I’ve benefited from that. And I feel hugely positive about it.
— Danny Boyle, Guardian
