"But I can tell you that for people serving in our military, people serving our government out in Cyprus – because we have military bases there – we are going to compensate anyone who is affected by this bank tax. People who are doing their duty for our country in Cyprus will be protected from this Cypriot bank tax."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/mar/17/cyprus-savings-l...
Cyprus banks are short about €16B that the Cyprus government does not have. They went to the EU/IMF and got €10B, leaving a €6B hole. In the normal course of events, the bondholders would lose everything (not significant for Cyprus banks; they're financed by deposits), accounts with over €100k would lose around 30% of the amount over €100k, and all other depositors would lose nothing.
Instead, the bond holders lose nothing, the depositors with over €100k lose only 9.9%, and the retirees and Cypriots with less than €100k in their accounts lose 6.75%.
In other words, ordinary savers are having their life savings confiscated in order to protect bondholders and Russian mobsters.
And, again, these savers are citizens of a EU country and Eurozone member who have been promised deposit insurance by their national government with the implicit promise that this would be backstopped by the EU, IMF, ECB. But their interests, it seems, are less important than the interests of the Russian oligarchs; after all we can't have them losing a significant amount of their uninsured deposits....