The US government made a 50%+ profit by forcing people to sell their gold in 1933:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_6102#Effect_of_...

>Executive Order 6102 required all persons to deliver [gold] owned by them to the Federal Reserve, in exchange for $20.67 ... The price of gold from the Treasury for international transactions was thereafter raised to $35 ... resulting in an immediate loss for everyone who had been forced to surrender their gold ... The resulting profit that the government realized funded the Exchange Stabilization Fund

But, it would take truly dire straits for Congress to even consider such an obviously unpopular idea. And those dire straits would have a much harder time arriving in the U.S. than the EU.

Cypress (and Greece, and Italy, etc) is in such big trouble because they cannot print their own currency. The U.S. can always bail out its banks because it can create as many dollars as it needs. In fact this is what happened a few years ago, and why the U.S. financial system is currently in better shape than the EU.

The flaws in the EU concept have been laid bare by this financial crisis. When you have financial consolidation without political consolidation, you get unelected bureaucrats deciding to take 10% of the bank accounts in one member nation, and there's nothing that population can do about it. In the U.S., the threat of getting voted out office is a powerful restraint on the governent's eagerness to levy shocking new taxes.

Part of the reason I think they're crazy to do this is that the above is obviously not true.

There may be nothing the population can legally do about it, but we're living in a time when governments are in genuine danger of going bankrupt, funny money isn't worth the paper it's printed on, and people are literally worrying about essentials like putting food on the table and keeping a roof over their kids' heads. Sooner or later, if we continue down this path, something is going to give, spectacularly.

Unfortunately, when that happens, it will probably come with a horrific body count and potentially even civil or all-out international war. That's the really terrifying thing about this whole mess: it is disrupting the basic fabric of society, the implicit trust we all place in our political and legal and financial systems so we can enjoy our modern, civilised lifestyles. We take a lot of things about that civil society for granted that we would miss dearly if they were gone.

We can only hope that whoever thought this blatant cash grab was a good idea will come to their senses in time to contain the fallout if they go through with it.