Haircut

"Before I went to Cyprus, before I met Panikos Demetriou, it seemed to me that ordinary people hadn’t done too badly in the rescue of the Cypriot financial system. Ordinary people with up to 100,000 euros in the two biggest banks, Laiki and Bank of Cyprus, got to keep their money; surely only the rich would suffer when the government confiscated the rest? Surely only rich people – and, in the case of those two banks, rather foolish rich people – would have more than €100,000 lying in a bank account? It was bitter medicine to swallow. But given that someone had to pay to save the country, wasn’t it better that it should be those with a lot, rather than those with a little, as in previous bailouts? Once in Cyprus I saw that I hadn’t, in fact, been thinking about ordinary people. I’d been thinking about a mythological individual, the hero of modern democracy, Ordinary Person. Sometimes known as Ordinary Hard-Working Person, he is the opponent to mythological villains like Fat Cat Banker, Workshy Scrounger and Faceless Bureaucrat. He obeys the law, pays taxes, puts money by and raises a family. He’s one of us. The trouble is that in real life you don’t meet ordinary people. Who’s one of us? I know I’m not". (James Meek)