"a bail-in, a term first popularised in the pages of The Economist, forces the borrower's creditors to bear some of the burden by having part of the debt they are owed written off. (In the case of Cyprus, the creditors in question were bondholders, and depositors with more than €100,000 in their accounts.) At the height of the financial crisis, governments avoided resorting to bail-ins out of concern that it might cause panic among the creditors of other banks; even the bondholders of Irish banks were initially spared. But as time has passed, and the cost of government bail-outs has risen, the appeal of asking private-sector investors to take a hit has increased. Ironically, it was one such bail-in—the restructuring of Greek government debt—that led to the problems faced by the Cypriot banks, which were big holders of Greek bonds.
