REPORT: Germany Told Cyprus They Could Tax Their Depositors, Or Leave The Eurozone

The drama out of Cyprus Saturday continues to get more interesting.

The country has been ailing for quite some time, and everybody knew that a bailout was coming.

But the big surprise is that depositors in banks will be subject to an instant one-off tax to raise nearly 6 billion euros.

The background is that because Cyprus has an enormous banking system -— and houses a lot of offshore Russian money — there was not much political appetite to bail it out, even though the amount of cash was minimal.

In fact it seems, Germany was comfortable letting Cyprus go completely.

Faisal Islam — who is the crack economics reporter at U.K. network C4 — tweets that Germany basically gave a quid-pro-quo. Take the deal, or leave the Eurozone.