Cyprus's banks have been tamed – are Malta and Luxembourg next?

Malta has not experienced anything like the problems being faced by the banking system in Cyprus, and yet some in the international media are implicating that small jurisdictions, like Malta and Luxembourg are next in line for a banking revamp. Among them was the Brussels correspondent of The Guardian, who used the above heading in a piece uploaded today. http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2013/mar/25/cyprus-banks-malta-luxembourg He wrote that for the the architects of the Cyprus bailout – the German government and the International Monetary Fund – there was no doubt that the central aim of the shock therapy was to bring down an oversized banking sector that was failing. That applied especially to the Bank of Cyprus, the island's biggest and Laiki, the number two. The latter was essentially insolvent, surviving on a liquidity lifeline from the European Central Bank. Christine Lagarde of the IMF wanted both banks, representing half of the Cypriot banking sector, closed down. In the end Laiki was being closed down with its bond and shareholders facing huge losses and €4.2bn (£3.6bn) in deposits looking lost. Bank of Cyprus will become a shadow of its former self, deposits frozen...