The Botching of the Cyprus Bailout: Worse Than Lehman Brothers

`` the German-led group of EU officials who  engineered this weekend's Cyprus bank bailout don't have a leg to stand on. Although they had years to consider their options (Cyprus's problems are closely related to those of Greece and have long been almost as obvious), they have opted for a "solution" that amounts to probably the single most inexplicably irresponsible decision in banking supervision in the advanced world since the 1930s. As my colleague Tim Worstall has pointed out in a well argued contribution yesterday, they have weakened -- perhaps catastrophically -- the principal pillar supporting modern banking. This pillar is deposit insurance. ''