Safe as....??

I have a friend with family in Cyprus who now face losing a significant slice of their hard-earned savings as part of the bail-out "deal" arranged between their government and the EU.  Strictly speaking they won't lose this money - what will happen is that it will be converted into shares in the bank where their money is. Problem is that these shares will be worthless and will probably remain so for the foreseeable future.  So apart from feeling sorry for them, should I be concerned? What does worry me is that a precedent has been created - up until now it seems to have been accepted that any pain caused by a country being in financial difficulties should be shared by everybody - i.e. dealt with by raising taxes and/or cutting services and such-like.  But here for the first time a specific group of people are being hit much harder than everybody else, and it's difficult to see how they could be in any way considered specially responsible for the mess Cyprus finds itself in. So, a worrying precedent.