Cyprus banks aren't reopening on Tuesday. All banks to remain closed until Thursday. Not enough cash?

TWITTER FEEDS

The Associated Press‏@AP4 min

BREAKING: Cyprus Central Bank: Finance minister has ordered all banks to remain closed until Thursday

Cyprus Market‏@russian_market29 s

Not again! Cyprus banks to remain closed through March 27: Central bank

Cyprus Market‏@russian_market49 s

Banks closed in Cyprus till March 27. Then what? Easter holidays? *sigh

zerohedge‏@zerohedge3 min

The Cyprus Central Bank would like to retract its statement that some banks were opening tomorrow.

Matt O’Brien‏@ObsoleteDogma3 min

Cyprus is done as a tax haven. Latvia has been warned to stop if it wants to join the euro. Luxembourg & Malta know they could get Cyprus’d.

THE BIG STORY

Cyprus banks to remain closed until Thursday

Cyprus ordered banks to remain closed for two more days over fears of a run by customers trying to get their money out, after striking a pre-dawn bailout deal Monday that averted the country's imminent bankruptcy.

The sudden midnight postponement of the much anticipated Tuesday bank opening by all but the country's two largest lenders was sure to hammer businesses already reeling from more than a week of no access to their deposits.

ATMs have been dispensing cash but often run out, and an increasing number of stores and other businesses have stopped accepting credit or debit cards. The two largest lenders, the struggling Laiki and Bank of Cyprus, have imposed a daily withdrawal limit of 100 euros ($130).

ZEROHEDGE

Have The Russians Already Quietly Withdrawn All Their Cash From Cyprus?

“The stealth withdrawals by Russians of course means that now the two mega-banks are utterly drained of capital and that the haircuts on those who still have unsecured deposits with the two banks will be so big it will likely mean a complete wipe out of all deposits. As in 0% recovery on your deposits!”

The insured deposits were going to be paid on the assumption that all the Russian money was going to be confiscated. No way to do that, now that the Russian money is gone.

MARKETPLACE

For Cyprus, painful cuts follow ‘heart attack’ to the economy

It wasn't written in stone but, the odds were pretty high some kind of deal on Cyprus was going to get worked out this weekend. And lo and behold, it did. One big bank will be shut down. Big depositors will take in on the chin. And, economic life in Cyprus will likely get worse before it gets better.

Faisal Islam is the economics editor for the U.K.'s Channel 4. We reached him in the capital, Nicosia. After 13 years covering European economies, Islam says he's stunned at the turn in the Cypriot economy over the past eight days.

"Never in my life would I ever have expected to witness the types of things we're seeing in a kind of Western European economy," Islam says. "You're talking a return to a cash economy, but without any cash."