EU debt and deficit league tables

DervProf

StevieJ wrote: »

It is not just houses, in fact it is not just the UK, business and individuals have maintained assets overseas that have been more than a useful contribution to our invisible earnings. BTW I own my house not the banks, and it means I don't have to pay any rent - yippee.

Yes, but don't the banks have a large say in the value of property ? If the banks are willing to lend, prices will often rise.

I think that you have to be careful when working out a nation's wealth, based on it's debts and assets, when a large part of those assets are houses. I suppose that house prices have to be taken into consideration, but I don't think it's a healthy situation to be sitting back and thinking that we are doing OK because we have relatively expensive houses.

IronWolf

I wonder how many of those assets are government bonds

Generali

Mr_Mumble wrote: »

The Turks may have an issue with that last query! Other than that I'm in complete agreement. Ireland was in a good fiscal position akin to Cyprus before it (arguably forced by Brussels) supported its banks, a heck of a poison pill that is.

I believe 1/3rd of Cypriot bank assets are Greek in origin so they were always in a lot of trouble before the recent power plant explosion and political instability. If Cyprus left the Eurozone and then let its banks fail they'd be in a better position imho.

Since Cyprus is only 0.2% of Eurozone GDP the country is not going to make many headlines when its leading bank warns the country may need a bailout, unfortunately.

UK depositors may start to fret if the Bank of Cyprus collapses given some very competitive interest rates offered by the bank recently. Icesave 2.0?

Bank of Cyprus. Total liabilities in the form of deposits = EUR32,953,000,000 plus non-equity liabilities of EUR2,160,000,000 (I assume that share-holders will be wiped out entirely if Bank of Cyprus goes belly up). LINK

Cypriot GDP = USD23,170,000,000 = approx EUR16,325,000,000 at the current exchange rate. (link).

The Cypriot Government can no more afford to bail out foreign savers than the Icelandic one could. They can say what they like and you can bang on about passporting etc of banks but if the sovereign giving the guarantee hasn't got the money then you won't get yours unless someone else steps in.