People lined up outside banks on Cyprus to do business for the first time in two weeks.  The government had closed the banks to prevent a run on cash during the island nation’s economic crisis.  The Cypriot government is also ordering an investigation of what might have caused the crisis.

Withdrawals are limited to €300 a day, and that will last for a month.  Officials want to prevent foreign depositors from taking their money a taking off.  Many of these depositors are Russians who were attracted to Cyprus as a place to hide their dough from the taxman.

Those Russia depositors are targets of the Troika bailout deal for Cyprus, which enacts a 30 percent, one-time levy on savings greater than €100,000, only at the two largest banks.  Smaller savers were spared.

Six and a half billion of freshly printed Euro notes from Frankfurt, Germany had been flown in to resuscitate the ailing institutions. 

The banks closed at the end the business day at 6:00PM, local time, without any incidents reported.

Meanwhile, a panel of three former Cypriot Supreme Court judges will investigate the cause of the financial crisis.  The panel will have broad authority to investigate the actions and decisions (or lack thereof) of government and banking officials that led to billions of Euros being transferred to Greece, only to disappear in that morass.