Facing Bailout Tax, Cypriots Try to Get Cash Out of Banks

ATHENS — In a move that could set off new fears of contagion across the euro zone, anxious depositors drained cash from automated teller machines in Cyprus on Saturday, hours after European officials in Brussels required that part of a new 10 billion euro bailout be paid for directly from the bank accounts of ordinary savers.

The move — a first in the three-year-old European financial crisis — raised questions about whether bank runs could be set off elsewhere in the euro zone. Jeroen Dijsselbloem, the president of the group of euro area ministers, declined early Saturday to rule out taxes on depositors in countries beyond Cyprus, although he said such a measure was not currently being considered.

Although banks placed withdrawal limits of 400 euros, or about $520, on A.T.M.’s, most had run out of cash by early evening. People around the country reacted with disbelief and anger.

“This is a clear-cut robbery,” said Andreas Moyseos, a former electrician who is now a pensioner in Nicosia, the capital. Iliana Andreadakis, a book critic, added: “This issue doesn’t only affect the people’s deposits, but also the prospect of the Cyprus economy. The E.U. has diminished its credibility.”

In Nicosia, a crowd of around 150 demonstrators gathered in front of the presidential palace late in the afternoon after calls went out on social media to protest the abrupt decision, which came with almost no warning at the beginning of a three-day religious holiday on the island.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/17/business/global/facing-bailout-tax-cypriots-try-to-get-cash-out-of-banks.html?_r=0

Why today’s Cyprus bailout could be the start of the next financial crisis

It is a bad day to have your money deposited in a bank in the Mediterranean island nation of Cyprus. And it may just mean some bad days ahead for the rest of us.

Early Saturday, the nation reached an agreement with international lenders for bailout help. Part of the agreement: Bank depositors with more than 100,000 euros ($131,000) in their accounts will take a 9.9 percent haircut. Even those with less in savings will see their accounts reduced by 6.75 percent. That's right: Anyone with money in a Cypriot bank will have significantly less money when the banks open for business Tuesday than they did on Friday. Cypriots have reacted with this perfectly rational reaction: lining up at ATM machines to try to get as much money out in the form of cash before the money they have in their accounts is reduced.

What makes this important for people who couldn't locate Cyprus on a map is this: It is one of the 17 nations using the euro currency, the fact that it's a lot closer to Beirut than to Paris notwithstanding. European officials have spent the past six years moving heaven and earth to ensure that no depositors with the continent's banks suffer a loss despite the financial strains the banks have been under.

Most dramatically, the Irish government in the fall of 2008 backstopped its banks, putting its public finances through a wringer. Even as the Greek economy has fallen into depression and Spanish bank losses on real estate have reached dangerous levels, the European Central Bank and the continent's government have ensured that bank deposits were safe. They have feared that if depositors in any country were forced to take losses, it would spark a destructive cascade of withdrawals across Europe.

http://m.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/03/16/why-todays-cyprus-bailout-could-be-the-start-of-the-next-financial-crisis/

Cyprus Bank Deposits to Be Taxed in $13 Billion Bailout

Euro-area finance ministers agreed to an unprecedented tax on Cypriot bank deposits as officials unveiled a 10 billion-euro ($13 billion) rescue plan for the country, the fifth since Europe’s debt crisis broke out in 2009.

Cyprus will impose a levy of 6.75 percent on deposits of less than 100,000 euros -- the ceiling for European Union account insurance -- and 9.9 percent above that. The measures will raise 5.8 billion euros, in addition to the emergency loans, Dutch Finance Minister Jeroen Dijsselbloem, who leads the group of euro-area ministers, told reporters early today after 10 hours of talks in Brussels. The International Monetary Fund may contribute to the package and junior bondholders may also be tapped in a so-called bail-in, the ministers' statement said.

Officials have struggled to find an agreement that would rescue Cyprus, which accounts for just half of a percent of the euro region’s economy, without unsettling investors in larger countries and sparking a new round of market contagion. Finance Minister Michael Sarris said the plan was the “least onerous” of the options Cyprus faced to stay afloat.

“This decision should not be compared to the ideal, but to the very real possibility that much more money could have been lost in a bankruptcy of the banking system or indeed of the country,” Sarris said in Brussels.

http://mobile.bloomberg.com/news/2013-03-16/euro-area-takes-aim-at-depositors-in-cyprus-bailout.html

If gun suicides are the main cause of gun deaths why isn't that the main rationale for gun control?

And if that is not a good enough reason for gun control why is that statistic included in the number of deaths that need to be prevented using gun control?

For Adam Lanza, a Debated Diagnosis That Meant “More to be Worried About”

During FRONTLINE’s and The Hartford Courant‘s investigation into the Newtown tragedy, one potentially important clue came in an email from a family member. According to the message, Lanza as a young boy had been diagnosed with sensory integration disorder (SID).

The condition — also known as sensory processing disorder or sensory integration dysfunction — makes it difficult to handle information interpreted by the body’s five senses. Sights and sounds can be overwhelming, as can smells and even the sensation of being touched.

“For these kids, the volume is turned way high,” explained Alice Carter, director of the clinical psychology program at the University of Massachusetts at Boston. “So what seems reasonable to most people is very overwhelming to them.”

On a day-to-day basis, the symptoms can mean any number of complications for young children. Coordination can be a challenge, as can seemingly innocuous activities such as taking a bath or getting a hair cut. Tantrums can become common, as can a low tolerance for crowds.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/social-issues/raising-adam-lanza/for-adam-lanza-a-debated-diagnosis-that-meant-more-to-be-worried-about/

Iraq war cost $2 trillion

@RichardEngel: #iraq war cost 2 trillion dollars, new study says. Could grow in 6 trillion over next 40 years with veterans care to pay

Search engine for 3D printed gun parts launches in a month, promises Defense Distributed

Asians: Too Smart for Their Own Good?

AT the end of this month, high school seniors will submit their college applications and begin waiting to hear where they will spend the next four years of their lives. More than they might realize, the outcome will depend on race. If you are Asian, your chances of getting into the most selective colleges and universities will almost certainly be lower than if you are white.

Asian-Americans constitute 5.6 percent of the nation’s population but 12 to 18 percent of the student body at Ivy League schools. But if judged on their merits — grades, test scores, academic honors and extracurricular activities — Asian-Americans are underrepresented at these schools. Consider that Asians make up anywhere from 40 to 70 percent of the student population at top public high schools like Stuyvesant and Bronx Science in New York City, Lowell in San Francisco and Thomas Jefferson in Alexandria, Va., where admissions are largely based on exams and grades.

In a 2009 study of more than 9,000 students who applied to selective universities, the sociologists Thomas J. Espenshade and Alexandria Walton Radford found that white students were three times more likely to be admitted than Asians with the same academic record.

Sound familiar? In the 1920s, as high-achieving Jews began to compete with WASP prep schoolers, Ivy League schools started asking about family background and sought vague qualities like “character,” “vigor,” “manliness” and “leadership” to cap Jewish enrollment. These unofficial Jewish quotas weren’t lifted until the early 1960s, as the sociologist Jerome Karabel found in his 2005 history of admissions practices at Harvard, Yale and Princeton.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/20/opinion/asians-too-smart-for-their-own-good.html?_r=0

SEC charges state of Illinois with securities fraud

The SEC, which disclosed the charges with a filing Monday, said the fraud occurred between 2005 and 2009 when the state sold $2.2 billion in bonds without disclosing the impact of problems with its pension funding schedule. There were no fines or penalties against the state as part of the settlement.

"Municipal investors are no less entitled to truthful risk disclosures than other investors," said George S. Canellos, acting director of the SEC's Division of Enforcement. "Time after time, Illinois failed to inform its bond investors about the risk to its financial condition posed by the structural underfunding of its pension system."

The agency said Illinois issued corrective disclosures beginning in 2009. The state agreed to settle the SEC's charges without admitting to any wrongdoing. A statement from Illinois said the settlement is in its best interest and that it had cooperated with the probe.

Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn was not governor when the fraud allegedly occurred. Rod Blagojevich, who has since been impeached and sentenced to 14 years in prison on unrelated corruption charges, was governor at the time. But the SEC did not refer to Blagojevich or any other state government official by name in its statement on the charges.

http://money.cnn.com/2013/03/11/news/economy/illinois-fraud-sec/index.html

Man has 75% of skull replaced with 3-D printed implant

Some are fascinated with 3-D printing. One man can't get it out of his head.

An unidentified man had 75% of his skull replaced with a 3-D printed implant made by Oxford Performance Materials, a Connecticut company. The surgery this week was the first time a patient received an implant made specifically for him using 3-D printing technology.

The patient, whose name and injury OPM would not disclose, had his head scanned as part of the procedure.

The operation marks a big step in the advancement of 3-D printing technology, the company said. With 3-D printers, users can produce objects with a molding machine based on computer digital models.

http://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-skull-3dprinted-implant-75-20130308,0,7338719.story