A bitter bail-out - Telegraph The crisis is over, but the tragedy is still unfolding. For other members of the eurozone, the revised bail-out package for Cyprus provided some small measure of comfort, in that the retention of the 100,000-euro guarantee on deposits staved off a wider bank run. But for the island's inhabitants, the future offers nothing but misery. Their banking sector is not being restructured so much as demolished, thanks largely to Berlin's desire to punish what it sees as a haven for Russian funny money. This forced amputation of a major industry will deal a catastrophic blow to Cyprus's economy, even without the increased burden of debt payments. It will be scant consolation to the Cypriots that they must bear a large part of the blame, having followed other island nations such as Iceland, Ireland and even Britain in depending for prosperity on a financial sector whose liabilities came to dwarf the size of the national economy. In the longer term, the implications for the rest of the continent are far from pleasant. The chaos accompanying a sudden ejection of Cyprus from the eurozone has been averted - but as Nigel Farage points out on this page, the episode has once more showcased the willingness of European powerbrokers to inflict brutal pain on ordinary citizens, and subvert national democracy, in order to preserve the euro. What should worry them, however, is that each rescue is far more fraught and far more fractious than the last - and if Brussels, Berlin and the International Monetary Fund find it quite so difficult to agree their strategy over a tiddler like Cyprus, how will they cope when it comes to a larger country such as Portugal, Italy or Spain? As long as Europe is strapped to the rack of an unworkable currency union, the crises will continue. And each time, they are getting harder and harder to fix.