That may be what this whole "crisis" is all about. The bankers at the IMF and ECB want a lock on those off-shore gas reserves. If Cyprus prints bonds insured by future returns on their off shore gas fields, then the holders of those bonds (Deutsches Bank, IMF, ECB) will effectively own the gas.

I said it before: The mega-banks don't do anything which won't make them more money.

Which is exactly why the answer to the global economic problems starts and ends with a sacrifice of the bankers - ALL of them. The facts are the facts - this series of unending crises started with the bankers loaning out money on leveraged bets that were crazy to begin with, but since they knew the game was rigged and they would not pay the price in the end, they did it anyway. Callously. Without remorse or pity for the lives they would impact and destroy.

Well, I say its time for a single new tax - not on the rich or the poor but on the banks and their practices of bleeding everyone dry. I propose a financial transaction tax on ANY financial transaction that does not involve the physical transfer of a good or tangible service. Start with microtrading and interest on loans and credit cards. The tax would be on a sliding scale as well so if the banks attempted to evade the tax by increasing fees anywhere else, the rate would go up by the same amount.

In return, citizens would get balanced national budgets and wildly increased services for places currently without any - such as universal health care in the United States and sovereign currencies around the globe once more. Break the back of the bankers. Destroy the entire model of international banking and return everyone to local banking and regulated financial markets.

There's an occupation. There's been a fairly extensive movement of population to the occupied island. There's a de facto division, with an internationally recognized government for Cyprus on the southern portion and a puppet government recognized primarily by the occupying power on the north. (Notice that this is a bit different from the vast injustice in Palestine--only recently has anybody much started to recognize the PA, and there aren't borders established for the nascent government.)

Now, there's a decent chance that if Turkey explored between the Turkish occupation zone and the coast to the E and NE they'd find natural gas. Instead, they're more interested in what's been found by others elsewhere. Actually, they may have found NG under the north's waters and not bothered to say anything. What belongs to the puppet government belongs to the puppeet government; what belongs to the Greek Cypriot government belongs to the puppet government. Nationalism and jingoism makes for strange asymmetries in values.

Turkey's also interested in overturning the agreement between Israel and the Greek Cypriot side on where to draw the lines for gas exploration and exploitation. They're also interested in overturning agreements with companies for the same.

Turkey's mostly just interested in hurting, as much as possible, those that aren't Turks or clearly pro-Turkish.

Perhaps the bankers are on the same level as the Turks. On the other hand, it's only recently that Cyprus has floated the idea of using th gas reserves as collateral, while the Turkish demands, threats, and obstructionism have been ongoing. The Armenian Genocide we heard of. The Armenians spoke up. The Greek and Kurdish genocide and ethnic cleansing at the same time we hear pretty much nothing of. Oppression of Greeks and Kurds was Turkish policy under the caliph, under Ataturk, and under Erdogan. Unchanged for over 100 years. La plus ca change, la plus c'est la meme chose.