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As an indie developer who had established an online business in cyprus and is now being hardly hit by the bail-in, i agree with a lot of the observations made.
by return0 14y ago
As an indie developer who had established an online business in cyprus and is now being hardly hit by the bail-in, i agree with a lot of the observations made. Cyprus offers high quality financial services for people who do international business transactions. I am not aware how much of this business is from russian mafiosos, but I was certainly not one of them.
Establishing a business in southern europe is risky anyways in the past 5 years with national governments failing left and right. The red tape and the ability of the state to impose arbitrary "urgent taxation" (has happened twice in greece already) hurts all business planning in an already shaky business environment. For me, cyprus was an obvious choice because of its "most lawful" status (the country is in the EU and in the euro for years, which requires a high level of transparency, and it is not in considered a tax heaven by OECD), plus when you don't do business in your home country you have the freedom of choice. Compared to the bailed-out european south, cyprus was actually the safest option. From my experience, i did have to provide adequate documentation for all business transactions and the red tape overhead was much reduced.
The whole handling of the situation until now is a hugely chaotic freak show, a pretense battle between white knights of capitalism and socialism, and a huge display of how ineffective it is to run europe without a central trustable government.
- claudius 14y ago> huge display of how ineffective it is to run europe without a central trustable government. Thank our friends in Westminster who first bullied their way in and then have been blocking further European integration for the last 40 years.
- return0 14y ago> Thank our friends in Westminster who first bullied their way in and then have been blocking further European integration for the last 40 years. I wouldn't assume the spanish, italians, french are very much in favor of it either (given that they will have to accept a de facto german authority)
- claudius 14y agoWith a proper democratic parliament based on population size, Italian, Spanish and French could easily outvote German delegates. I don’t know about Italy and Spain, but the impression of Germany in France and the other way around is one of the best[0]. [0] http://www.germany.info/Vertretung/usa/en/__pr/P__Wash/2013/01/22-Elysee-JointArticle-st.html http://www.germany.info/Vertretung/usa/en/__pr/P__Wash/2013/... > Recent surveys confirm that over 85 percent of citizens in each country have a good or very good image of the other. or http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/23/world/europe/france-and-germany-celebrate-50th-anniversary-of-elysee-treaty.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/23/world/europe/france-and-ge... .
- return0 14y agoYou 're assuming that these nations trust their own leaders / nationals only. If you were an italian having to choose between Berlusconi and Merkel based on their track record what would you choose?
- claudius 14y agoWell, Berlusconi just got back into the Italian parliament together with that other clown, so I prefer not to take guesses at the outcome of Italian votes. My point was that there wouldn’t be such a thing as a ‘German authority’ to accept in a united and democratic Europe and that at least the French don’t appear to be entirely opposed to the idea of working closely with Germany. (Oh, and Merkel isn’t all that popular in Germany – (un)fortunately, her social democract contender is the guy (not necessarily seriously) suggesting to send the cavalry into Switzerland[0] and pirates to Cyprus.) [0] http://www.euractiv.com/elections/outspoken-spd-chancellor-candida-news-515100 http://www.euractiv.com/elections/outspoken-spd-chancellor-c... [1] http://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/spiegel-gespraechsreihe-steinbrueck-droht-zypern-mit-stoertebecker-a-885530.html http://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/spiegel-gespraechsreih...