Cyprus' week from hell

Here's the short version of what happened in Cyrpus: Cyprus needs money. About $20 billion. Or rather its banks do. The "troika" – you've heard of it in Greece before – made up of the International Monetary Fund, European Central Bank and European Commission is ok to help but won't do it without a sign of good faith. So it's offering to provide 10 billion euros courtesy of European taxpayers if Cyprus can come up with 5.8 billion euros of its own. And to do that, the troika – under heavy German influence – suggests Cyprus tax bank deposits.

If you had 100k euros or less in a Cypriot bank, you'd lose 6.75% of it. Richer and it's almost 10% you could say goodbye to.  Needless to say, Cypriots didn't like the idea and the Parliament refused the plan. The government turned to Russia, as many wealthy Russians keep their assets in Cyprus banks and would stand to lose too. But Cyprus and Moscow couldn't come to an agreement. So it's back to Europe and it's take-it-or-leave-it.

The island nation faces a Monday morning deadline to make the tough choices or the ECB threatens to cut its current life-saving funding to banks. There is now talk of sparing small depositors – and taxing large deposits at up to 20 percent!
How did all this happen? The Atlantic's Matthew O'Brien explains it brilliantly: Cypriot banks got big, thanks to Russian money. Too big for the Cypriot government to be any help if they failed. And fail they did after investing their money in a neighboring country they thought they knew well: Greece.
Cyprus' bailout raises many questions. Can Europeans still trust their money to banks? If Cyprus doesn't take the deal, will it be the first country to leave the euro? And will it be the only one? Will Europe lose influence to Russia on its Eastern edge? The next week should bring some answers.