Confiscating the customer deposits in Cyprus banks, it seems, was not a one-off, desperate idea of a few eurozone "troika" officials scrambling to salvage their balance sheets. A joint paper by the U.S. Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and the Bank of England dated Dec. 10, 2012, shows that these plans have been long in the making; that they originated with the G20 Financial Stability Board in Basel, Switzerland (discussed earlier here); and that the result will be to deliver clear title to the banks of depositor funds.....

Can They Do That?

Although few depositors realize it, legally the bank owns the depositor's funds as soon as they are put in the bank. Our money becomes the bank's, and we become unsecured creditors holding IOUs or promises to pay (see here and here). But until now the bank has been obligated to pay the money back on demand in the form of cash. Under the FDIC-BOE plan, our IOUs will be converted into "bank equity." The bank will get the money and we will get stock in the bank. With any luck we may be able to sell the stock to someone else, but when and at what price? Most people keep a deposit account so they can have ready cash to pay the bills.

Bipartisan agreement in Washington usually means citizens should hold on to their wallets or get ready for another threat to peace. In today’s politics, the bipartisan center usually applauds when entrenched interests and big money speak. Beneath all the partisan bickering, bipartisan majorities are solid for a trade policy run by and for multinationals, a health-care system serving insurance and drug companies, an energy policy for Big Oil and King Coal, and finance favoring banks that are too big to fail.

Economist James Galbraithcalls this the “predator state,” one in which large corporate interests rig the rules to protect their subsidies, tax dodges and monopolies. This isn’t the free market; it’s a rigged market.....

Corporate welfare is, of course, offensive to progressives. The Nation and other media expose the endless outrages — drug companies getting Congress to ban Medicare negotiating bulk discounts on prices, Big Oil protecting billions in subsidies, multinationals hoarding a couple of trillion dollars abroad to avoid paying taxes, and much more.

But true conservatives are — or should be — offended by corporate welfare as well. Conservative economists Raghuram Rajan and Luigi Zingales argue that it is time to “save capitalism from the capitalists,” urging conservatives to support strong measures to break up monopolies, cartels and the predatory use of political power to distort competition. Here is where left and right meet, not in a bipartisan big-money fix, but in an odd bedfellows campaign to clean out Washington.

On Monday morning, no one was rooting for whomever it was that killed an Irvine basketball coach and her fiancé. But by Thursday morning, things had changed. A lengthy, rambling but shockingly lucid "manifesto" surfaced explaining why the suspected killer and disgraced ex-LAPD cop was going on a killing rampage that has so far claimed three lives. Dorner claims that he was targeting a corrupt and bloodthirsty law enforcement agency—that he said hadn't improved since the days of the Rodney King Riots or the Rampart Scandal—earned him fans.

There are a couple of Facebook pages dedicated to Dorner, including We Are All Chris Dorner, which states: "Christopher John Dorner is the victim of a manhunt and smear campaign. 5 years ago he was fired from the LAPD for seeking to expose corruption within it..." There's the Christopher Dorner Appreciation Society, which posts pictures of police brutality and images from the Rodney King Riots in 1992. It says, "This man's life was ruined for fighting back against a racist culture. We here at C.D.A.S. will always remember his story."