© John Thys/Agence France-Presse/GettyDutch finance minister Jeroen Dijsselbloem has rowed back on his statement that future bailouts would follow the Cypriot model, but the true intentions of the Eurogroup are already out of the bag
Credit for the change of mood goes to Jeroen Dijsselbloem, who chairs meetings of eurozone finance ministers and who decided it would be a good idea to go public with the idea that Cyprus was not such a special case after all.
For the past week the message has gone out that there are no comparisons between a country that allowed itself to become the tax haven of choice for high-rolling Russians and other, better-managed, members of the eurozone.
Then, in a couple of interviews, Dijsselbloem said Cyprus would be used as the model for future bailouts.
The comments were an open invitation to any investor with more than €100,000 in a eurozone bank to remove it without delay, which some then did.
By the end of the day shares in Europe were tumbling, the euro was dropping against the dollar and the cost of insuring European banks against default was rising, forcing Dijsselbloem to issue a clarification of his earlier remarks. Confirming that European politicians could not organise a booze-up in a brewery, Cyprus was back to being a special case once again.
Very much business as usual, in other words. Confusion reigns as the eurozone stumbles from crisis to crisis, with the markets already bracing themselves for the next bailout.
In all likelihood, that will be another rescue for Cyprus, which has been left in a near impossible position by the terms of its rescue. The €10bn (£8.5bn) loan from the European Union, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund means Cyprus will have a debt-to-GDP ratio of 140% and an economy that is on course to shrink by at least 20% in the next two or three years. In those circumstances an already unsustainable debt ratio will continue to increase. Ultimately the country's creditors will either write down a good chunk of the debts or Cyprus will leave the euro.
In truth, leaving the single currency looks the better option. Cyprus previously had a flawed economic model; now it has no economic model at all. The financial services industry will be wiped out and membership of the euro means there can be no boost to the only alternative source of revenue - tourism - through a cheaper currency. Cyprus was, in many respects, the eastern Med's version of Iceland, another small island that allowed its banks to balloon in size. But Iceland is not a member of the euro, and its recovery from financial crisis has been aided by devaluation.
For the time being, though, Cyprus remains shackled to the eurozone, which increasingly resembles a zombie economy. There has been no growth for the past 18 months, there is little inclination to address monetary union's structural weaknesses and the sort of cathartic crisis that might occasion change is prevented by the ECB's willingness to pump unlimited amounts of cash into Europe's enfeebled banks.
Dijsselbloem has a point when he says it is unfair that Europe's taxpayers should be continually asked to foot the bill for bank losses, and Cyprus has certainly been used as the laboratory mouse for a different approach.
But the botched rescue and its messy aftermath have done nothing to draw a line in the sand. On the contrary, investors big and small now have the sneaking feeling that their savings could be at risk in the event of a future crisis. Dijsselbloem did little to persuade them otherwise.
The concept that there must always be economic growth is the propaganda put forth by the financial sector. It is a necessity for the Ponzi scheme of fiat debt based currencies. In fact an organic economy needs only the growth that is fostered by increases in the productivity of a growing population. This is not nearly enough to sustain the needs of the banksters for debt creation.