Richard Wolff, welcome back to Democracy Now! Why is Cyprus so significant?<\/p>\n
RICHARD WOLFF: Well, Cyprus is significant for several reasons. First, it marks an escalation in what we call austerity economics. It is an effort to pay for the cost of this now six-year-old global crisis in a new way. It is an effort to fund the bailouts of banks in a new way. And the new way was agreed last week by the European forces that control this\u2014the central bank, the European Union and the IMF\u2014and to impose on Cyprus this new step, which is literally to go into the bank accounts of the citizens of Cyprus, roughly a million people on a small island in the middle of the Mediterranean, and snatch money out of their accounts. See, unlike other austerity, where you levy a tax and you cut back social programs, like we\u2019re doing here in the United States, that money dribbles in over a year or longer period. This way, the government can get the money to bail out the banks quickly and cleanly and neatly. Friday night, the people of Cyprus went to bed with a certain amount of money in their accounts\u2014they thought\u2014and Monday morning, last Monday, they were supposed to awake with X percent less money because the government had taken it. So, that\u2019s an amazing new step of austerity. It suggests that this crisis is far from over and that the authorities are desperate to find the money, other than by taxing corporations, other than by taxing the wealthy, in order to solve their problems.<\/p>\n
The second reason it\u2019s important\u2014and you stressed that\u2014is that the people of Cyprus woke up, took one look at this, and said no\u2014and did it dramatically. And in a matter of hours, they undid everything that the European governments and their own government had agreed to a few nights earlier. So it\u2019s a demonstration of people power in this little corner of the world that\u2019s very impressive, and the basis, I think, for some optimism about opposition.<\/p>\n
AMY GOODMAN: How did they say no?<\/p>\n
RICHARD WOLFF: Basically, by saying, “We\u2019re going to disrupt everything. We\u2019re not going to go to work. We\u2019re not going to consume. We\u2019re just\u2014we\u2019re going to call on our fellow citizens across Europe to recognize that if they can come into our bank account and take our money, then what is exactly going happen in places like Italy, Spain, Portugal, Hungary, Britain, where very similar situations are playing themselves out?” So this call for solidarity around this issue terrified all the other governments of Europe. And suddenly, the firmly committed deal unraveled in the face of popular resentment and opposition.<\/p>\n