Well it was 15.6% according to that article I posted this morning, but they've still been talking about it as if it's 10% on our radio channels through the day, so I'm wondering why the lack of clarity.

They seem to be all at sea Gilly. Nobody seems to be able to explain what will happen next other than the football has been kicked back to the other side. How this might backlash on to the NZ situation I reported on earlier will also be interesting.
Just another little add on here. There was a chemical attack by the rebels in Syria this am. By this evening Dutch MSM are reporting UN/NATO are on alert to go in. And the Russians who already have a aircraft carrier in the med are on their way with another 5-6 battleships.
It's a tinder box out there.....................who's got the match? Make that a Zippo!

Jane

I didn't even know NZ was in difficulty.

andyh wrote: Neither did I...I just assumed that they would be! Actually, they're positively flush by European standards:

www.nationaldebtclocks.org/debtclock/newzealand

I would imagine they're just a small country that can be more easily targeted than Australia.

Ok, from what I can gather what was actually voted on was an agreement to not touch anything below €20,000 and to 'levy' accounts with between €20,000 &€100,000 and the €100,000+ accounts but I don't know what rates were proposed on each account. Either way, it's immaterial atm.

oioioi wrote:
Where did you hear/see this?

From what I can gather they rejected any tax...regardless of how much it was.

RT news......

Crowds dispersing...

The parliament have voted against the 'Tax'.

Budget grab for inactive bank accounts
PUBLISHED: 26 FEB 2013 00:05:37

Thousands of bank account holders are being advised to make trans­actions of as little as $1 to avoid ­having their accounts transferred to the Australian Securities and Investments Commission to help plug the federal government’s budget deficit.

Under recent changes to the law designed to raise $109 million this financial year, deposits can be deemed unclaimed if a transaction has not been made on an account for three years or more, down from seven years previously.

Accountant Bryan Lukav oversaw an account for a client that contained the bond for a commercial property. He was advised to withdraw or deposit at least $1. If he didn’t, he was told the government could seize the account.

Mr Lukav said the change would make life difficult for people in business who used these kind of accounts. Trusts and long-term savings accounts are also likely to be caught up in the sweep.

“Imagine if I was looking after 200 property accounts and I had to do that for every one,” Mr Lukav said. “It’s just ridiculous. The bond could sit here for the period of the lease, which could be five, 10 or 25 years and there is no need to withdraw or deposit.”

More: www.afr.com/p/national/budget_grab_for_i...FcFwa3pvczK6mmq7PvDP

pheony wrote:
Erm, I was clarifying what was rejected.

pheony wrote:
I think they put it out there, probably hoping it would be a viable idea/option, and then realised otherwise after gauging public opinion, not just in cyprus but everywhere. Its not the first time they test the waters of course.

Even in australia they just changed the rules where deposits in bank accounts will be taken if there is no activity in those accounts for a period of time, i know its not the same thing but i still think it is related to this new line of thinking...

By Michael Birnbaum and Howard Schneider,
Mar 19, 2013 07:50 PM EDT

The Washington Post
BERLIN — Lawmakers in Cyprus on Tuesday rejected a bailout plan that would have rescued the country’s banks but forced savers to chip in for the cost, throwing down a gauntlet to the rest of Europe over the financial fate of the tiny island nation.

The plan to save Cyprus’s collapsing banks but to charge depositors for the service proved so controversial that not one of the 56 members of Cyprus’s parliament voted for it Tuesday evening. The rejection leaves the fate of rescue plans up in the air, with other European leaders so far unwilling to step in to save Cyprus, where bank deposits tower over the rest of the economy.
.Parliamentarians “feel and they think that it’s unjust,” Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades told reporters Tuesday.

The rejection leaves Cyprus, the International Monetary Fund and the rest of Europe in a standoff familiar from previous bailout negotiations, with the country trying to navigate its local politics and possibly get a better deal for itself as the others stand firm on how much they want to commit to yet another troubled euro-zone nation.

The fate of the 17-nation currency union, meanwhile, again hangs in the balance, threatened by a country that constitutes just 0.2 percent of the zone’s collective economy. Throughout the crisis, European policymakers have tried to keep any country from leaving the euro. Losing a member nation would pose uncertain risks to the world financial system and be politically embarrassing to the major powers such as Germany and France that designed the currency union.

Overall, Cyprus needs about $20 billion — an amount equal to its annual economic output and a sum that, if all borrowed, would throw the country’s finances onto unsustainable footing. The IMF’s internal rules do not allow the fund to make loans to the country under those circumstances. Euro-zone countries are hesitant to lend the full amount, as well.

As a consequence, the fund, the euro zone and the European Central Bank want to cap the amount of international loans to Cyprus at about $12.5 billion and leave the country to come up with the rest. The deposit tax was one alternative for raising the money. It had the advantage of grabbing $2.2 billion to $3 billion from foreigners, many of them Russian, who own more than one-third of the money on deposit in Cypriot banks.

In a sign of the severity of the situation, Britain on Tuesday dispatched a military plane loaded with a million euros to Cyprus “as a contingency measure” for soldiers stationed at British bases in the Mediterranean country, in case they are not able not access their savings in Cypriot banks, according to a British Defense Ministry spokesman.

Other options could exact more from local families and businesses through government spending cuts or taxes, even if they avoid the direct hit on savings accounts. Euro-zone countries could also relent and lend more, though that would be politically sticky at home.

The IMF did not have any immediate comment on the Cyprus vote. IMF managing director Christine Lagarde has endorsed the existing proposal as one that “appropriately allocates” the costs of the country’s financial rescue.

pheony wrote:
I think they put it out there, probably hoping it would be a viable idea/option, and then realised otherwise after gauging public opinion, not just in cyprus but everywhere. Its not the first time they test the waters of course.

Even in australia they just changed the rules where deposits in bank accounts will be taken if there is no activity in those accounts for a period of time, i know its not the same thing but i still think it is related to this new line of thinking...