Wrathers,
The High Street banks will then have to pass on those costs to you and I because the money that they will have been charged on will be (our) account holder deposits.
500,
The unfairness of the Cypriot situation is that the depositers have been pinged but corporate bondholders haven't. The retired nurse in Limassol will have placed her money into the Pop (or wherever) for safekeeping but the Goldman Sachs etc bond dept will have been invested in order to speculate on a return. But who got stung again - is that retired nurse the victim of immorality? It is sad too, that savers with smaller amounts weren't protected.
Cyprus didn't want to jeopardise its long-term prospects as an offshore financial centre for Russian and other money. So it taxed everyone up to 10% instead of punishing the launderers 100%; the default course of action these days for lazy and scared regulators. Still, saving wealthy Russians looking for a back door into the EU was always going to be tricky. It'll be interesting to see what happens with money in Latvia now; where do these Russians place their money?
If it wasn't for the Germans running things behind the scenes and raising the stakes, this bailout would have gone largely unnoticed. Evidence (if ever any was still needed!) that we are still in a very fragile condition. But this sort of measure, to para phrase Churchill, is like standing in a bucket of merde and trying to lift it by pushing up on the handle.