The Justice Department acknowledged late Friday that Attorney General Eric Holder was on board with a search warrant to obtain the personal emails of a Fox News reporter, as media and civil liberties groups continued to raise concerns about the case.

Following prior reports indicating that Holder had likely signed off on the search warrant, the Justice Department acknowledged Holder's involvement and defended the decision. It insisted the call to seek these files -- in the course of an investigation into a leak allegedly made by State Department contractor Stephen Jin-Woo Kim -- was legal.

"The Department takes seriously the First Amendment right to freedom of the press," the department said in a written statement, provided late Friday at the start of the holiday weekend. "In recognition of this, the Department took great care in deciding that a search warrant was necessary in the Kim matter, vetting the decision at the highest levels of the Department, including discussions with the Attorney General.

This amazing article was posted on the foxnews.com Internet site yesterday evening...and I also note that The Huffington Post has called for Holder's resignation.  That's good advice...and let's hope he doesn't take too long to come to that conclusion himself.  I thank Marshall Angeles for sending today's first story.

Mike O'Rourke of JonesTrading wales on the various Fed Heads and the Bank of Japan for having created a ridiculous situation where the entire market is just obsessed with every utterance from central bank chiefs, sucking away the oxygen from the real issues that should actually be driving markets. He writes in this evening's note that the events of the last two days are damning...

Losing Credibility: Earlier this month we highlighted comments Chairman Bernanke made a decade ago ... “I worry about the effects on the long-run stability and efficiency of our financial system if the Fed attempts to substitute its judgments for those of the market.  Such a regime would only increase the unhealthy tendency of investors to pay more attention to rumors about policymakers' attitudes than to the economic fundamentals that by rights should determine the allocation of capital.”  The events of the past two days (both here and in Japan) confirm this is the environment we are in.  The situation has become so ridiculous that San Francisco Fed President John Williams had to assure the market that the Fed could increase purchases if the economy has weakened once tapering commenced.  This stems from the Bullard application of QE - using QE in the same manner as the Fed Funds rate. Although the FOMC has adopted it, the Fed Chairman has done an awful job of communicating it.  In any event, it is pathetic if the Fed needs to promise the next round of additional easing before the current easing has even slowed.  It gives the impression that markets would simply be happier with a centrally planned economy.  The reason that none of the FOMC members can give any inkling of when tapering will start is because they can’t quantify the benefits of it.  In other words, they don’t know the effects of what they are doing, they just know they need to keep doing it.

Ain't it the truth!  You've just read the entire must read article that was posted on the businessinsider.com Internet site on Thursday evening...and it's a news item that I found in yesterday's edition of the King Report.

Oh what a tangled web central bankers weave when they practice to deceive… Last night's panic in Tokyo, where the Nikkei dropped a stomach churning 7 per cent, demonstrates just how difficult it's going to be for the world's central banks to exit their loose money policies.

It's not even as if Ben Bernanke, chairman of the Fed, said he was planning to exit; in fact, initially he said the reverse in testimony to Congress. It was only in the Q & A, and in minutes to the last meeting of the Fed's Open Markets Committee, that a clear bias emerged to slow the pace of asset purchases "in the next few meetings", so long as the economic data was strong enough.

What the subsequent violent gyrations in markets indicate is that any hint of applying the brakes risks generating a fresh financial crisis, which in turn would render the economic recovery still born. Both financial markets and the real economy have become addicted to "quantitative easing", such that they can't do without it.

This commentary in The Telegraph by Jeremy Warner on Wednesday is also well worth reading...and another article I found in yesterday's King Report.

Kudos to Kyle Bass at Hayman Advisers for warning that the Bank of Japan would lose control of its ¥70 trillion bond buying blitz. The spike in the 10-year yield to 1pc on Thursday was certainly shocking to behold.

His point is that the BoJ faces a “rational investor paradox”. The authorities are trying to drive up the inflation to 2pc and therefore to devalue Japanese government bonds (JGBs), so why on earth would you want to own them?

“If JGB investors begin to believe that Abenomics will be successful, they will ‘rationally’ sell JGBs to buy foreign bonds or equities,” he told Bloomberg.

He says the scramble to sell has “overwhelmed” buying by the BoJ. Governor Kuroda will now have double down with a huge increase in the scale of QE.

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard doesn't stop at just reporting the news in this story posted on The Telegraph's website yesterday...he turns it into an editorial at the end. This must read blog from yesterday is courtesy of Roy Stephens.

It’s no surprise that investors/speculators in U.S. equities are determined to stick with the bullish thesis and disregard more global macro issues (it’s worked to this point!). Yet this unfolding Kuroda Gambit drama could prove too significant to ignore. The perception holds that the Fed’s $85bn will ensure ample bull market liquidity for at least the next several months.

The overall bullish take on marketplace liquidity could prove too complacent if things begin to unwind in Tokyo. And by unwind I mean that Japan bond market fragility forces a change of tack by the Kuroda BOJ. A spike in yields could prove highly destabilizing, with a bond and stock market crash not out of the question. Or perhaps the BOJ will work out an agreement with major Japanese institutions to ensure their support for low yields. The BOJ may need institutions to fall in line and stop selling bonds and the yen. Such an understanding might support a stronger yen, with less liquidity seeking higher yields overseas.

It would appear that there are now viable scenarios that are potentially problematic for the leveraged players - and for the Financial Euphoria that erupted around the globe. Perhaps an overdue bout of de-risking and de-leveraging actually commenced this week. At the minimum, the markets were reminded that there is as well a downside to all this central bank dependency and Bubble-inducing liquidity.

Doug's Friday commentary over at the prudentbear.com Internet site is a must read for me every week...and his tome from yesterday is no exception.  I thank reader U.D. for sending it.

In what may be the most important story of the day, or maybe year, for a world in chains, and by making wanton asset rehypothecation a thing of the past, permitted only with express prior permission, which obviously will never come: who in their right mind would allow a bank to repledge an asset which may be lost as part of the counterparty carnage should said bank pull a Lehman. The result of this, should it be taken to completion, would be pervasive liquidations as countless collateral chain margin calls spread, counterparty risk soars all over again, and as the scramble to obtain the true underlying assets finally begins.

Here's the Bloomberg headline that tells all..."E.U. Weighs Curbs on Banks’ Use of Client Assets as Collateral".

In other words, just as we have been warning for the past four years, Europe may pull the switch on its own electric chair.  Read Kyle Bass' own thoughts on the matter: Presenting Kyle Bass' Analysis On Shortening Collateral Chains; Or The Gradual Evisceration Of Shadow Banking from December of 2012.

This amazing story was posted on the Zero Hedge website yesterday...and it's courtesy of West Virginia reader Elliot Simon.  It's definitely worth your time if you have it.

City firms – most notably the hedge fund, insurance and commodities sectors – are sick of the “unending blizzard” of regulation coming out of Brussels, says Mr Farage, who claims traditional City Conservative supporters are switching allegiance to UKIP.

“Slowly but surely, donors who would have traditionally supported the Tories are now holding talks with us,” Mr Farage told The Daily Telegraph. “We are asking [City leaders] to help in any way we can.”

The most recent business convert to UKIP is Andy Brough, the star fund manager at Schroders, who is understood to have joined Mr Farage’s party after growing weary with the coalition Government and European attacks on the City.

Mr Farage also has the support of the influential hedge fund manager Crispin Odey, whose former father-in-law is News Corp chairman Rupert Murdoch.

No surprises here, as Nigel's is such a straight shooter, that the public is begining to understand that he'll be true to his word.  This article was posted on the telegraph.co.uk Internet site yesterday afternoon BST...and I thank Roy Stephens for his second offering in today's column.

International Monetary Fund Managing Director Christine Lagarde averted being charged by a Paris court investigating her decision to allow arbitration that benefited a supporter of former President Nicolas Sarkozy.

After two days of questioning, the court named Lagarde -- who was French finance minister under Sarkozy -- a material witness in the case. The status, while not precluding charges later, shouldn’t hurt her ability to stay at the IMF helm, said Jacob Kirkegaard, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington.

This news item was posted on the Bloomberg website yesterday afternoon MDT...and I thank U.A.E. reader Laurent-Patrick Gally for sharing it with us.

Unrest in Stockholm’s suburbs continued for a fourth night as rioters showed their anger over a police shooting a week ago by setting fire to cars and buildings and pelting emergency workers with stones.

As many as 30 cars burned in the Swedish capital’s southern suburbs, while 11 were set alight in the Husby area, north of the city centre, where the violence broke out four days ago, police spokesman Kjell Lindgren said by phone today. Police detained one person, a 16-year-old girl suspected of preparing an act of arson.

That followed eight arrests since Tuesday. “While the situation has become better in Husby, where a lot of local people have become engaged to calm things down, the situation has intensified on the southern side of the city,” Mr Lindgren said.

Riots in the middle of socialist utopia?  It's hard to believe, I know...and you can read all about it on the irishtimes.com Internet site.  It's also the third and final story that I stole from yesterday's edition of the King Report.

When ill health and political gridlock forced Shinzo Abe to quit after one dismal year as Japan's prime minister, his pride was dented and his self-confidence battered.

One thing, however, was intact: his commitment to a controversial conservative agenda centered on rewriting Japan's constitution. Conservatives see the 1947 pacifist charter, never once altered, as embodying a liberal social order imposed by the U.S. Occupation after Japan's defeat in World War Two.

"What worries me most now is that because of my resigning, the conservative ideals that the Abe administration raised will fade," Abe wrote in the magazine Bungei Shunju after abruptly quitting in September 2007. "From now on, I want to sacrifice myself as one lawmaker to make true conservatism take root in Japan."

Less than six years after his humiliating departure, Abe, 58, is back in office for a rare second term. He is riding a wave of popularity spurred mainly by voters' hopes that his prescription for fixing the economy will end two decades of stagnation. The policy, known as "Abenomics", is a mix of monetary easing, stimulative spending and growth-inducing steps including deregulation in sectors such as energy.

This longish Reuters report was filed from Tokyo...and posted on their Internet site just before midnight on Thursday EDT.  It's a must read...and it's particularly a must read for all students of the New Great Game.  I thank Elliot Simon for bringing this most excellent essay to my attention...and now to yours.

1. James Grant [#1]: "Monetary System Won't Last...and Gold Bullish".  2. Egon von Greyerz: "Suppliers and Bank Clients Denied Gold as Shortage Intensifies".  3. James Grant [#2]: "Here is What Jim Really Thinks".

As I often remind investors, gold buyers are a diverse group, but generally fall into one of two categories. Most of the attention gets focused on those who purchase out of fear of damaging government policies (i.e., the Fear Trade).

The more important demand for gold, in my opinion, comes from the enduring Love Trade, as countries like China and India buy the precious metal out of love and tradition.

Looking at a breakdown of gold demand from the World Gold Council (WGC) through March 31, 2013, the main source of weakness was the Fear Trade, as demand for gold ETFs and similar gold products plunged in the first quarter. However, the Love Trade scooped up jewelry and bars and coins, with the tonnage in each category growing 12 and 10 percent, respectively, on a year-over-year basis.

You can visually see the strength of the Love Trade below in the year-over-year change in total consumer demand in tons for gold jewelry, bars and coins. Indian demand grew the most, increasing 27 percent compared to the previous year.

Demand for jewelry, bars and coins in the greater China area increased 20 percent, as “seasonal strength in China, related to Chinese New Year purchasing, exceeded all previous peaks, marking a new record quarterly high,” says the WGC. Even U.S. residents had a love for gold, with demand growing 22 percent over the previous year.

This commentary by Frank was posted on his Internet site yesterday...and I thank Elliot Simon for sending it along.

Chile's environmental regulator has stopped construction and imposed sanctions on Barrick Gold Corp.'s $8.5 billion Pascua-Lama project, citing "serious violations" of its environmental permit.

The $16 million fine is the maximum allowable under Chilean law. It was applied Friday because the world's largest gold mining company acknowledged that it failed to keep its promises to build systems for containing contaminated water.

This 2-paragraph AP story was posted on the foxnews.com Internet site...and I thank Casey Research's "Nick G" for passing it along.

After gold trade was liberalised and nominated agencies were allowed to import gold, smuggling of the commodity had declined for about 14 years.

After more than 100 tons of smuggled gold reached India last year, that figure is likely to increase by at least 40 percent this year, according to Thomson Reuters GFMS.

The high import duty on gold, local taxes and restrictions on imports are leading to a rise in smuggling of the commodity into the country, world's largest gold consumer.

This news item was filed from New Delhi...and posted on the bullionstreet.com Internet site late yesterday morning IST.  I thank Marshall Angeles for sending it.

“The more gold a country has, the more sovereignty it will have if there’s a cataclysm with the dollar, the euro, the pound or any other reserve currency.” — Evgeny Fedorov, Russian lawmaker, United Russia Party

Among the countries that still make their gold production available to world markets, four of the top seven are in long-term decline — the United States, South Africa, Australia and Canada, some would say precipitously. Three enjoy rising production — China, Russia and Peru. Among the declining states, South Africa suffered the worst cutbacks, down 52% from production in 2000. U.S. production is down 39% over the same period; Canada is down 38% and Australia, 24%.

Russia’s gold production is an important piece of the overall supply puzzle in terms of both production and reserves. Few people know (or remember) that in 1980, Russia was the second largest global gold producer at 21% of the total global output (258 metric tonnes) South Africa was number one at 55% of the total global output (675 metric tonnes). With respect to future gold production, Russia is a sleeping giant that could leap-frog the United States and Australia soon.

This worthwhile read was posted on the usagold.com Internet site yesterday.

I ran into Jay at the Pan Pacific hotel yesterday...and he mentioned that he'd done this interview with Ted and Jim Cook earlier in the week.  I told him that I would be interested in posting it, so his good wife Teresa was kind enough to e-mail the audio interview...and here it is posted on the voiceamerica.com Internet site.  I've had no chance to listen to it, but I would think that it's a must listen.  The interview begins around the 1:45 minute mark.

A subscriber recently commented that the Oligarchs who rule Russia only wish they got to run things as efficiently as how JPMorgan and the big banks control our financial markets, particularly in the trading of precious metals. Based upon the last few days, it’s hard to argue with that. On Sunday evening shortly after 6 PM, the price of silver was taken down 10% within a few minutes on an insignificant number of contracts (1,600), evoking memories of the infamous 13% ($6) decline on the May 1 Sunday evening of 2011. If the Russian criminals oversaw silver trading and not the CME Group and the CFTC they could not possibly have rigged prices more corruptly.

What makes the silver (and gold) manipulation the perfect crime are a number of elements; short term price control through High Frequency Trading,  compliant regulators and the fact that most victims don’t even realize they are being had, as the sellers are mostly just reacting to the deliberately-set lower prices. It’s hard to end an ongoing crime in progress when so many don’t realize it is in progress. Worse, there are still some who profess that there is no manipulation underway. And for the few who do realize what’s really going on, what can you do about it when the regulators are in bed with the manipulators? Perhaps the options are limited, but that’s not the same as non-existent.

This commentary by Ted falls into the absolute must read category...and it was posted on the silverseek.com Internet site yesterday...and I thank Elliot Simon for pointing it out...and for his last contribution to today's column.

We got a small, if bitter, taste of gold’s “Zero Hour” in the second half of April.

Either that, or the world’s largest banks engineered a take down of gold for the purpose of staving off  Zero Hour… for now.

As you’ll recall from these pages in March, “Zero Hour” is the name we give to the moment when the price of real, physical gold in your hand starts to break away from the quoted price on the commodities exchanges.

This commentary by Addison was posted on The Daily Reckoning website yesterday...and is well worth reading.  I thank Roy Stephens for today's last story...and his final offering in today's column.

Jim calls it like it is when interviewed by Max Keiser on Russia Today yesterday.  The video was posted on the youtube.com Internet site...and is well worth watching.  The interview begins at the 12:00 minute mark.  I thank reader Harold Jacobsen for today's first story.

The stock of capital flowing into emerging markets has doubled from $4 trillion to $8 trillion since the Lehman Crisis, chasing a catch-up growth story that looks tired and has largely sputtered out in Brazil, Russia and South Africa.

Much of the money has gone into debt, with falling economic returns. This is the next shoe to drop in the festering saga of global imbalances. All it will take is a gear-shift by the US Federal Reserve and the inevitable dollar surge that follows. It was the Volcker Fed that set off Latin America's defaults in the early 1980s. It was the mighty dollar that set off Mexico's Tequila crisis, and then the East Asian chain-reaction in the 1990s.

"Every emerging market blow-up that I have seen was preceded by a rise in the dollar," said Albert Edwards for Société Générale .

"Investors overlook how vulnerable these countries are to a dollar shock. The whole process of excess liquidity and foreign reserve build-up goes into reverse. It acts like monetary tightening and turns into a vicious circle. Markets look for the weak link with the worst current account deficit, and then the dominoes start to fall," he said.

This must read Ambrose Evans-Pritchard article was posted on the telegraph.co.uk Internet site late on Wednesday evening BST...and I thank Roy Stephens for bringing it to our attention.

Austerity is out after the euro-area recession extended to a sixth quarter. Stimulus isn’t yet in.That was the something-for-everyone message from European leaders at a summit in Brussels yesterday. All touted a previously announced 6 billion-euro ($7.7 billion), seven-year initiative to fight youth unemployment, now at 24 percent. National governments won’t put up more cash, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said.

“It’s not a matter of money,” Merkel told reporters after the summit. “It’s a matter of looking at how to spend this money most productively.”

The 17-nation euro area’s nonstop contraction since the third quarter of 2011 has left the European Central Bank to try to mitigate the damage by cutting interest rates and exploring unconventional ways of channeling money to needy companies, especially in the south.

This Bloomberg story, filed from Brussels, was posted on their website just before midnight MDT on Wednesday...and it's courtesy of U.A.E. reader Laurent-Patrick Gally.

Large depositors in the EU will from 2016 be in line to suffer losses if a bank gets into serious trouble, but deposits under €100,000 should be fully protected, MEPs in the economic affairs committee voted late on Monday (20 May).

“The bail-in of any creditors should be done according to a clear hierarchy, with depositors with savings over €100,000 last in line, whilst deposits under €100,000 would be fully protected,” said Green economic and finance spokesperson Philippe Lamberts in a statement.

The votes amended the European Commission’s bank recovery and resolution proposal.

The devil is, as they say, in the details...and there is quite a bit in the fine print...which you'll soon discover if you read this euobserver.com story from yesterday...and I thank Roy Stephens for his second story in today's column.

The European Commission has been forced to beat a hasty retreat from a proposed ban on jugs of olive oil in restaurants after the idea met with widespread ridicule.

Barely a week after it was announced for "hygiene" and "consumer protection" purposes, the EU commissioner in charge, Dacian Ciolos, rushed to the same press room on Thursday (23 May) to announce he was withdrawing the measure.

Referring to the "quite strong reactions", Ciolos said he had decided to "not submit it for adoption."

The proposal would have banned jugs and dipping bowls of olive oil in restaurants from next year and was meant to prevent restaurant-goers from being served any old inferior oil.

This is from the top drawer of the "You can't make this stuff up" filing cabinet...and was posted on the euobserver.com Internet site late yesterday afternoon Europe time...and it's Roy Stephens' third offering of the day.

Yields on 10-year Japanese bonds (JGBs) have doubled in a month and spiked dramatically to 1pc on Thursday, triggering a 7.3pc crash in the Nikkei stock index. It was the biggest one-day fall since the tsunami two years ago, comparable with wild moves seen at the height of the Asian crisis in 1998.

The contagion effect set off a retreat from stocks across the world, though Wall Street later pared losses. The iTraxx Crossover or “fear gauge” for corporate bonds jumped 25 points to 392.

The Bank of Japan (BoJ) intervened with $20bn (£13bn) to drive down yields again but the failure to ensure an orderly debt market has started to rattle investors. Banks, pension funds and insurers appear to be dumping JGBs for fear of being caught on the wrong side of a bond rout.

Richard Koo from Nomura, an expert on Japan’s Lost Decade, said the sell-off in recent days has shown that the BoJ may not be able to hold down yields “no matter how many bonds it buys”. This could lead to a “loss of faith in the Japanese government” and the “beginning of the end” for its economy, if handled badly.

This must read commentary by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard was posted on The Telegraph's website yesterday evening BST...and I thank reader Glenn Jeffs for bringing this very important story to our attention.

1. James Turk: "We Are Witnessing Extraordinary Events in Gold and Silver".  2. Rick Rule: "How Investors Can Make a Fortune in These Markets".  3. Jim Grant: "Gold and the Fed's Ungraceful Attempt to Exit QE".  4. The audio interview is with Michael Pento.

In his market letter for May, commodities fund manager John Butler of Amphora Capital in London describes the rationales and mechanisms of surreptitious currency market intervention by central banks, rationales and mechanisms that will be familiar to anyone who follows the gold market with even the slightest skepticism.

Drawing on a long conversation he had years ago with his professor of international economics in graduate school, a professor who was a former high U.S. Treasury Department official, Butler writes that supporting the U.S. dollar amid suppression of interest rates well may involve surreptitious suppression of the price of gold:

"The United States may have little in the way of foreign exchange reserves but it has a huge pile of gold reserves -- the world's largest, in fact. If the U.S. were to set about covertly intervening to support the dollar amid artificially low interest rates, therefore, it would make far more sense to do so through covert intervention in the gold market. Should they follow my former professor's advice, they would sell gold into the market at relatively illiquid times for maximum price effect. They would do so repeatedly until certain technical chart patterns turned in favor of the dollar and against gold, establishing a new trend. And if they succeeded, no one need ever know."

Central bankers, Butler notes, are very skilled tape painters.

With Butler's kind permission, the May edition of his letter, the Amphora Report, is posted at GATA's Internet site.  It's a must read for sure...and I thank Chris Powell for wordsmithing the above introduction.

Gold capped the biggest gain in almost a month on signs that Chinese manufacturing will slow in May for the first time in seven months, sparking a drop in global equities and increased demand for bullion as a protection of wealth.

The preliminary reading for a Chinese purchasing managers’ index missed analysts’ estimates and came in below the level of 50, indicating a contraction. Commodities and stocks retreated, with Japanese equities falling the most since the aftermath of the Fukushima disaster two years ago. Bullion also gained as the dollar declined the most in more than a month against a basket of currencies.

“Nervous investors are turning to gold as everything else looks very bleak today,” Carlos Perez-Santalla, a broker at Marex North America LLC, said in a telephone interview from New York. “The weakness in the dollar is supportive for gold.”

This Bloomberg story was posted on their website during the Denver lunch hour yesterday...and I thank West Virginia reader Elliot Simon for finding it for us.

The yuan rose 0.6 percent this month, the best performance in Asia, as Premier Li Keqiang signaled China will unveil a plan on capital-account convertibility this year. People’s Bank of China Deputy Governor Yi Gang said in April the yuan’s trading band will be widened “in the near future.” The central bank sets a daily reference rate for the currency, which can diverge from the fixing by a maximum 1 percent.

China may double the band within a year, Ma Jun, chief economist for Greater China at Deutsche Bank AG, said at a press conference in Singapore on May 22. The nation has designated Qianhai district of Shenzhen, a city that borders Hong Kong, as a testing ground for freer cross-border yuan usage. The yuan climbed as much as 0.1 percent today to a 19-year high of 6.1279 per dollar in Shanghai after the central bank strengthened its fixing by 0.13 percent to a record 6.1867.

A wider trading range for the currency will spur trading and hedging in gold denominated in it, China Gold & Silver’s Cheung said. The society may seek cooperation with Qianhai Authority in steps to develop yuan-based bullion trading, such as building a vault for the precious metal, he said.

This Bloomberg news item, filed from Hong Kong, was posted on their Internet site yesterday evening MDT...and I thank Marshall Angeles for sending it along.

Goldbroker's Fabrice Drouin Ristori interviewed GATA's secretary/treasurer about gold market manipulation the other day, leading off with the question of how long it can continue.  This interview was posted on the goldbroker.com Internet site yesterday.

This short, but terrific commentary by David Banister from The Market Trend Forecast was posted on the etfdailynew.com Internet site on Tuesday...and is definitely worth reading. I thank reader Ken Hurt for bringing it to our attention.

Bron Suchecki of the Perth Mint reviews U.S. commodity trading regulations and concludes that they're too complicated and full of loopholes to result in any sensible interpretation that might be applied against market manipulation by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

"What the market needs," Suchecki writes, "is straightforward, common-sense rules that everyone knows in advance. ... Or just drop the pretense and go free-for-all law of the jungle. Having interest rates this low doesn't help, as speculators have minimal cost in holding a position for a long time (until it blows up) or taking on large positions. This just adds to the volatility. Time to give up on the CFTC being able to control this."

Suchecki's commentary is headlined "Time to Give Up on the CFTC" and it's posted at the 24hGold.com Internet site.  I found this commentary in a GATA release from yesterday evening Vancouver time.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke defended the central bank’s record stimulus program under questioning from lawmakers, telling them that ending it prematurely would endanger a recovery hampered by high unemployment and government spending cuts.

“A premature tightening of monetary policy could lead interest rates to rise temporarily but would also carry a substantial risk of slowing or ending the economic recovery and causing inflation to fall further,” Bernanke said today in testimony to the Joint Economic Committee of Congress in Washington.

Bernanke lamented the human and economic costs of an unemployment rate at 7.5 percent nearly four years into the recovery from the deepest recession since the Great Depression, and said the Fed’s easing is providing “significant benefits.” His comments echoed remarks by William C. Dudley, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, who said in an interview that it would take three to four months before policy makers will know whether a sustainable recovery is in place.

You have to ask yourself this question.  What recovery is he talking about?  I thank U.A.E. reader Laurent-Patrick Gally for sending me this Bloomberg story yesterday.

Federal Reserve Bank of New York President William C. Dudley said policy makers will know in three to four months whether the economy is healthy enough to overcome federal budget cuts and allow the central bank to begin reducing record stimulus.

“I don’t really understand very well how the tug-of-war between the fiscal drag and the improving economy are going to sort of work their way out,” Dudley said in an interview with Michael McKee airing on Bloomberg Television. “Three or four months from now I think you’re going to have a much better sense of, is the economy healthy enough to overcome the fiscal drag or not.”

Dudley’s remarks underscore that Fed officials have yet to reach consensus on when or how to dial back their $85 billion monthly bond-purchase program designed to spur growth and lower unemployment. Philadelphia Fed President Charles Plosser has called for reducing stimulus at the Fed’s next meeting in June, while St. Louis’s James Bullard said Tuesday the purchases should continue.

Why does anyone pays attention to these guys?  It's print...or die...and a couple of more months ain't going to make any difference, as they're still going to print.  This moneynews.com article from yesterday was sent to me by West Virginia reader Elliot Simon.

This 7:28 minute video with Jim Grant and Maria Bartiromo was posted on the CNBC website yesterday afternoon just after the markets closed.  It's a must watch for sure...as James rips the Fed a new one...and I thank I thank reader Joseph Kahan for sharing it with us.

Applications for U.S. home mortgages dropped for a second week in a row last week as a spike in interest rates stymied demand for refinancing, data from an industry group showed on Wednesday.

The Mortgage Bankers Association said its seasonally adjusted index of mortgage application activity, which includes both refinancing and home purchase demand, tumbled 9.8 percent in the week ended May 17.

The index of refinancing applications slumped 11.7 percent, while the gauge of loan requests for home purchases, a leading indicator of home sales, fell 3 percent.

This very short Thomson/Reuters story appeared on the moneynews.com Internet site very early yesterday morning EDT...and is worth skimming.  I thank Elliot Simon for his second offering in today's column.

A top IRS official in the division that reviews nonprofit groups will invoke the 5th Amendment and refuse to answer questions before a House committee investigating the agency’s improper screening of conservative nonprofit groups.

Lois Lerner, the head of the exempt organizations division of the IRS, won’t answer questions about what she knew about the improper screening — or why she didn’t disclose it to Congress, according to a letter from her defense lawyer, William W. Taylor III. Lerner was scheduled to appear before the House Oversight Committee on Wednesday.

“She has not committed any crime or made any misrepresentation but under the circumstances she has no choice but to take this course,” said a letter by Taylor to committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Vista). The letter, sent Monday, was obtained Tuesday by the Los Angeles Times.

This story appeared on the L.A. Times website early on Tuesday afternoon PDT...and I found it in yesterday's edition of the King Report.

The latest poll of Morgan Stanley's top clients from across the world says it all.

Chief economist Joachim Fels tells us that not a single investor at the bank's Florence forum thought the world economy would rebound with any strength later this year.

Just a quarter expect a return to trend growth. Some 57pc think there will be no escape from the "twilight" conditions afflicting the western world, and 20pc expect an full-blown global recession. That is a remarkably bearish set of views. Yet the same investors are overwhelmingly bullish on stocks and property.

This schizophrenic exuberance seems entirely based on the assumption that QE and central bank largesse will keep the game going, flooding asset markets with liquidity. Indeed, 80pc think the ECB will cut rates again, and half think it will have to swallow its pride and join the QE club in the end.

Great shades of 1929!  Party on, dude!  This must read commentary by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard was posted on the telegraph.co.uk Internet site on Tuesday...and I thank Roy Stephens for bringing it to our attention.

Europe edged closer to lifting banking secrecy on Wednesday after Austria said it was ready to share data on foreign depositors but Vienna's support could fade should efforts to strike a similar deal with Switzerland fail.

Austria's dropping of objections allowed EU leaders to commit to an exchange of bank information between countries by the end of the year, as cash-strapped states seek to stop tax evasion and close loopholes highlighted by Apple Inc's use of a base in Ireland.

"It's a bad day for tax cheats," Austrian Chancellor Werner Faymann told reporters at a meeting of EU leaders to discuss fighting tax fraud by lifting bank secrecy.

"I believe we will manage the exchange of data by the end of the year," he said, adding later that although he was watching negotiations on a similar deal with Switzerland, Austria was in "full agreement".

This Reuters article was filed from Brussels...and posted on their website mid-afternoon on Wednesday...and it's another offering from Laurent-Patrick Gally.

Asian stocks took a beating Thursday as data showing that Chinese manufacturing activity unexpectedly contracted in May exacerbated early losses recorded on worries the Federal Reserve could downscale its bond purchases.

Japanese shares suffered the most, with the Nikkei Stock Average swinging spectacularly to plunge more than 4% in the afternoon session from a 2% rise posted earlier in the day.

The benchmark, which had ended at multiyear highs in each of the previous four sessions, was down 4.1% in highly volatile late-afternoon trade.

The Nikkei Average’s more-than-6-point intraday reversal coincided with a surge in Japanese government bond yields that forced the Bank of Japan to offer 2 trillion yen ($19 billion) in funds to calm investor nerves. The central bank announced the fund-supplying operation after 10-year JGB yields soared to their highest level in more than a year, citing “the unreasonable increase” in volatility.

This marketwatch.com story, filed from Hong Kong, was posted on their website in the wee hours of this morning EDT.  It's worth your time...and I thank reader 'David in California' for finding it for us.

The first interview is with Michael Pento...and it's headlined "Fed Lies and Propaganda Won't Stop Gold and Silver Rise". Next is this commentary by Citi analyst Tom Fitzpatrick "Gold to Advance a Stunning $2,000+ From Current Levels".  Here's a blog with Robert Fitzwilson.  It's entitled "The Fed Destruction and a Cascading Panic Among Investors".  And lastly is this interview with Dan Norcini...and it bears the headline "Incredibly Important Developments in Many Key Markets".

Four silver sets from the United States Mint are slated to be reduced in price according to a memo from the bureau.

According to the U.S. Mint, the 2012 and 2013 US Mint America the Beautiful Quarters Silver Proof Set, the 2013 US Mint Silver Proof Set, and the 2013 US Mint Congratulations Set will all be re-priced. Effective date for the change is not yet known, though it could happen on Wednesday.

This short article was posted on the silvercoinstoday.com Internet site on Tuesday...and I thank Marshall Angeles for sending it.

London-listed gold producer Petropavlovsk has said it will pre-sell 55pc of its future output planned for the second quarter of 2014, at an average price of $1,408 an ounce. This is the first time that a big producer has hedged more than half its future sales.

“We have a huge investment programme and thought a little price protection in the short-term will let us sleep better at night,” said chairman Peter Hambro.

“It was hedging that killed gold prices the 1990s,” said Ross Norman from Sharps Pixley. “Every time there was rally, the producers seized on the chance to sell forward. It was most unhelpful.”

Mr. Norman said it was the unwinding of hedge books a decade ago that unleashed the bull market. This process could now go into reverse if hedging spreads. "We don't think it will. The forces that led to the bull market will prevail," he said.

The forward sale is for only three months...and Ross Norman has it exactly right. Except for project financing, no miner is going to put their head back in that particular lion's mouth ever again.  This Ambrose-Evans Pritchard offering was posted on The Telegraph's website early yesterday evening BST...and it's Roy Stephens second and final offering in today's column.

During the third week of May each year, representatives of the platinum industry gather in London, for an event that has become known as ‘Platinum Week’. Platinum Week centers on an industry dinner sponsored by the London Platinum and Palladium Market (LPPM) which marks the anniversary of the inauguration of the London Platinum Quotation (the forerunner of the present London Fixings) in 1973.

This event is attended by platinum group metals (PGM) producers, refiners, fabricators and traders. The first major event of the week is the publication of Johnson Matthey’s annual review of supply and demand for the PGM markets.

According to Johnson Matthey, the platinum market was in deficit by 375,000 ounces in 2012, close to their forecast made last November. The palladium market was also undersupplied but by a much larger margin of more than 1 million ounces.

This commentary by David Franklin over at Sprott Asset Management is a must read.

Sprott Silver Equities Class Co-Manager Maria Smirnova understands the power of leverage. She has seen the big impact even a slight increase in the silver price can have on silver producers. Every cent is multiplied and goes right to the investor's bottom line, giving the equities more upside than possible in a coin. That is why Eric Sprott increased holdings of silver equities in certain Sprott funds. Smirnova discusses five of these companies in this interview with The Gold Report.

This interview was posted on theaureport.com Internet site yesterday...and is well worth reading.

Premiums for gold bars hit a record high in Asia on Wednesday as lower spot prices lured more buyers, mainly in China, the world's second biggest consumer of the precious metal, amid tight physical supplies.

Premiums for gold bars in Hong Kong touched a new all-time high of $6 an ounce over spot London prices, up from $5 last week. Singapore premiums rose to $5.

Banks in China were quoting up to $7 in premiums, two traders in Singapore said.

This Reuters story, filed from Singapore, was posted on the mineweb.com Internet site...and I thank Manitoba reader Ulrike Marx for sharing it with us.  It's definitely worth reading.

Although the primary purpose of the futures markets is to provide an efficient and effective mechanism for the management of price risks, when it comes to precious metals, and as we have seen in recent weeks, it has become nothing more than a casino run by a group of bullion banks that are acting as agents for the US Federal Reserve which is intent in manipulating these markets as they do all other markets. And, while much of the recent volatility has been caused by the options and futures market, the regulatory authorities of the CFTC who came up with a series of hikes in margins to stop the price of both gold and silver from rising, claiming that the markets were extremely volatile, I see they have done nothing to prevent the recent price drops.

The action or lack thereof by the regulatory authorities is most disturbing and would suggest that they themselves are colluding with the parties involved in this illegal manipulation of the gold and silver market.

Another excellent commentary on the obvious price management scheme by JPMorgan Chase et al.  Author David Levenstein. a South African gold trader and bullion dealer, lets it all hang out in this rather long, but on-the-money commentary filed from Johannesburg on Tuesday.  I thank reader Rudi Staudinger for our last story of the day...and it's certainly worth your time.

U.S. policymakers must address debt loads projected to rise later this decade to avoid a 2013 downgrade, even as the latest budget projections are “credit positive,” according to Moody’s Investors Service.

The U.S. budget deficit will drop to $378 billion in 2015 from a record $1.4 trillion in 2009, according to Congressional Budget Office data. The federal government will post a $642 billion deficit this year, the first time in five years that the shortfall has been less than $1 trillion. Moody’s said Sept. 11 that the U.S.’s top Aaa rating would likely be cut to Aa1 if an agreement on the debt ratio isn’t reached.

“The fact that it showed much lower debt levels going forward, we view as a positive development,” Steven Hess, senior vice-president at Moody’s and based in New York, said in a telephone interview of the CBO forecast. “More needs to be done on the policy front to address this rising debt ratio.”

This moneynews.com article was posted on their website early Monday afternoon..and today's first story is courtesy of West Virginia reader Elliot Simon.

After five years under investigation for insider trading, Steven Cohen is considering proposing a deal to prosecutors that would shut his $15 billion hedge-fund firm to outside investors, according to a person familiar with his thinking.

Cohen has discussed an agreement under which his SAC Capital Advisors LP would admit wrongdoing but wouldn’t be prosecuted unless it broke the law again, said the person, who asked not to be named because the talks are private. As part of the deal, known as a deferred prosecution agreement, Cohen would close the Stamford, Connecticut-based firm to outside investors and make it a family office that manages his personal fortune. SAC Capital probably would also pay a fine.

That Cohen would ponder a deferred prosecution agreement suggests the 56-year-old billionaire sees it as unlikely that he could fight criminal insider-trading charges and continue to run a hedge fund. Prosecutors, who have already linked at least nine current or former employees to insider trading while at SAC Capital, probably wouldn’t accept an agreement that lets Cohen off the hook, said John Coffee a professor at Columbia University School of Law.

"...won't be prosecuted unless it breaks the law again???"  That's saying that you can commit your first murder, bank robbery, or fraud...and get a pass.  You can't make this stuff up.  This story was posted on the Bloomberg website late Monday afternoon...and it's courtesy of U.A.E. reader Laurent-Patrick Gally.

Whether it’s the shape-shifting group of reptilian descendants from the constellation Draco who control humanity, or the shadowy cabal of powerful financiers and politicians who covertly run all governments, conspiracy theorists are once again preparing for their annual jamboree of protest against those who really rule the world, this year in the highly secretive destination of... Watford.

For three days beginning on 6 June, a five-star hotel in Chandler’s Cross  that normally hosts the England football team before Wembley matches, will turn over its 227 luxury rooms and 300-acre estate grounds to the über-secretive Bilderberg Group.

The Grove, once the home of the earls of Clarendon where prime ministers such as Palmerston and Walpole were guests and where a young Queen Victoria started the fashion for “the weekend break”, will turn back the clock when it welcomes around 140 of Europe and America’s most powerful leaders from banking, finance and politics with a scattering of royalty and aristocracy adding to the elite guest list. 

Due to a tradition that stretches back to 1954 and the first conference held at the Hotel de Bilderberg in Oosterbeek in the Netherlands, nothing that is discussed or agreed at a Bilderberg meeting is reported. Until recently even the names of those who  were invited was kept secret.

This news item appeared on the independent.co.uk Internet site on Tuesday...and I thank U.K. reader Tariq Khan for bringing it to our attention.

EU leaders will make another bid to agree rules on tax evasion after UK Prime Minister David Cameron called on 10 British tax havens to "get their house in order" on secret bank accounts.

In a letter released Monday (20 May) to the leaders of the British islands, including the Channel and Cayman islands, Cameron urged them to disclose details of accounts used for company ownership.

The islands should "provide for fully resourced and properly managed centralised registries, that are freely available to law enforcement and tax collectors, and contain full and accurate details on the true ownership and control of every company," he said.

This story appeared on the euobserver.com Internet site early yesterday morning Europe time...and it's Roy Stephens first offering in today's column.

Despite the British government’s desire to soft-pedal the country’s possible EU exit, the referendum to decide UK’s future in the Union must be held before the 2015 general election, believes the leader of the UK Independence Party, Nigel Farage.

With a lot of hard feeling swirling around the EU, one thing many seem agreed on is anger at Brussels. Nine European countries are now in recession and, with no end to austerity in sight, EU membership appears to be more trouble than its worth for some.

The leader of the Euroskeptical UKIP party, Nigel Farage, says recent research show that by participating in the EU, Britain is annually losing more than £100 billion due to membership fees and the Union’s regulations.

This story was posted on the Russia Today website late Monday evening Moscow time...and it's another contribution from Roy Stephens.

With Tim Cook being fried on Capitol Hill, it is perhaps ironic that the issue of taxes is front-and-center in the European parliament today. However, as usual, the always-willing-to-tell-the-truth Nigel Farage points out the gross hypocrisy of a political elite calling for higher taxes (on the wealthy and more broadly in peripheral nations) when the reality is that the higher-ups in the European parliament have their marginal tax rates capped at 12%. Of course, none of that matters because stocks are rising and interest rates are falling; but perhaps the 60% of Greek youth or 57% of Spanish youth might be intrigued at the new normal idea of 'fair share' in Europe.

This 3:56 minute tirade was posted on the Zero Hedge Internet site early yesterday afternoon...and this video clip is courtesy of Marshall Angeles.

A draft European Union law voted on Monday would shield small depositors from losing their savings in bank rescues, but customers with over 100,000 euros in savings when a bank failed could suffer losses.

On Monday, a group of European lawmakers in the house's economics committee voted that, from 2016, large depositors in the European Union might suffer losses if a bank gets into serious trouble, echoing a deal in Cyprus where wealthy depositors were hit hard at two banks to save the country from bankruptcy.

Under the EU proposal, a bank would only dip into large deposits of over 100,000 euros once it had exhausted other avenues such as shareholders and bondholders.

This Reuters story, filed from Brussels, was posted on their website late on Monday evening Europe time...and I thank Manitoba reader Ulrike Marx for sending it along.

Wealthy businesspeople shift millions of euros abroad while profitable companies use accounting tricks to minimize their taxable earnings and assets. The EU finally wants to create effective policies to curb these practices, but faces strong opposition from member states.

BASF, based in Ludwigshafen in southwestern Germany, has a large tax department, whose work consists partly in moving money around between continents. But now the company has discovered a tax haven right at home in Europe

In addition to a large plant, the company operates the BASF Belgium Coordination Center in Antwerp. Some 160 employees at the center spend a portion of their time searching for legal ways to reduce BASF's tax bill. In 2011, the company paid taxes on its many millions in profits at a rate of only 2.6 percent.

BASF is by far not the only company to take advantage of favorable tax conditions in a neighboring EU country to improve its bottom line. Volkswagen, currently the most profitable company in Germany, was even greedier. In 2012, Belgian subsidiary Volkswagen Group Services paid no taxes at all on profits of €153 million, and in the previous year it raked in €141 million in tax-free profits -- and it was all completely legal.

This story was posted on the German website spiegel.de yesterday afternoon Europe time...and I thank Roy Stephens for sharing it with us.

More than 8,000 French households' tax bills topped 100 percent of their income last year, the business newspaper Les Echoes reported on Saturday, citing Finance Ministry data.

The newspaper said that the exceptionally high level of taxation was due to a one-off levy last year on 2011 incomes for households with assets of more than 1.3 million euros ($1.67 million).

President Francois Hollande's Socialist government imposed the tax surcharge last year, shortly after taking office, to offset the impact of a rebate scheme created by its conservative predecessor to cap an individual's overall taxation at 50 percent of income.

This Reuters item, filed from Paris, was posted on their Internet site early Saturday afternoon EDT...and I thank U.K. reader Teresa Tannahill for bringing it to our attention.

The US Senate Foreign Relations Committee voted on Tuesday to pass a bill that will be highly unpopular in Moscow, not to mention Damascus.

The Syrian Transition Support Act would provide arms to Syrian rebels in support of a regime change — a precedent Russia deeply opposes. Moscow has already been overtly sending weapons to Assad (more intensely so as of late), so Washington's move to overtly arm the rebels could easily paint Syria as the battleground of a blossoming proxy war.

Russia won't like that idea, but it also won't like the paragraph in the bill about sanctions on anyone shipping arms or oil to the Syrian regime: Sanctions on arms and oil sales to Assad:  Targeting any person or entity that the President of the United States determines has knowingly participated in or facilitated a transaction related to the sale or transfer of military equipment, arms, petroleum, or petroleum products to the Assad regime.

This very short article appeared on the businessinsider.com Internet site yesterday evening EDT...and it's Roy Stephens' final offering in today's column.

As Japan’s cherry trees bloomed and the stock market soared, Kohetsu Watanabe flew to a blossom-viewing party in Tokyo hosted by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to tell the premier personally how bad things really are.

When the head of machine-parts maker Daikyo Seiki Co. shook hands with Abe at the 12,000-guest event in Shinjuku Gyoen park, he says he begged the premier to help small- and medium-sized companies that make up 70 percent of Japan’s industry.

“Stocks and the yen may have come back, but the state of the real economy is very different,” said Watanabe, 49, who has no plans to raise wages for his 17 employees and hasn’t paid a bonus since 2008. “It’s impossible for me to be optimistic.”

This Bloomberg story appeared on their website in the wee hours of yesterday morning MDT...and I found it in yesterday's edition of the King Report.

1. Dr. Stephen Leeb: "Gold, Silver and 100-Year Inflection Point to Crush the West".  2. Richard Russell: "I Haven't Seen This in 60 Years of Writing".  3. Ron Rosen: "Silver to Soar a Stunning 400% and Gold $1,500 in 10 Months".  4. The audio interview is with Egon von Greyerz.

Ten striking South African miners were taken to hospital on Tuesday after being hit by rubber bullets, police said, as labour strife swells in mines and factories ahead of mid-year pay negotiations.

"If our demands are not met we will have no option but to go to the streets," NUMSA national treasurer Mphumzi Maqungo told Reuters.

The comments underscored the fragility of labour relations in Africa's biggest economy since last year's bloody mining sector unrest, and pushed the rand beyond 9.50 to the dollar for the first time since early 2009.

The currency extended its two-week slide after police confirmed that security guards had fired rubber bullets at stone-throwing wildcat strikers at a chrome mine near the platinum belt town of Rustenburg, 120 km (70 miles) northwest of Johannesburg.

This Reuters story, filed from Capetown, was picked up by the mineweb.com Internet site yesterday...and I thank Ulrike Marx for digging it up for us.

India's Finance Minister P. Chidambaram is back to his favourite topic: curbing gold demand. India appears set to take even more steps to curb gold demand if imports continue to rise at the current pace, Chidambaram has said.

Speaking to the media on the sidelines of a conference, he pointed out, as consumers across the country thronged jewellery outlets this past month given the fall in the precious metal's price, that the government has decided not to distance itself from the financial problems caused by the ever rising demand by curbing gold imports yet again, despite the many measures already taken in the last few months.

Last week, India's central bank the RBI restricted, with immediate effect, the import of gold on consignment basis by banks. Even as the move will limit imports to a large extent, the government has said imports can be brought in only to meet the genuine needs of exporters of gold jewellery. However, retailers say the central bank's move is expected to lead to higher forex outgo on each transaction.

This mineweb.com story was filed from Mumbai yesterday...and is well worth reading.  I thank Ulrike Marx for her third and final contribution to today's column.

Police began probing the Hong Kong Mercantile Exchange Ltd., owner of the failed commodities market set up by a member of the city’s cabinet, after the securities regulator found suspected financial irregularities.

The arrest of three men after the May 18 shuttering of the exchange prompted its Chairman Barry Cheung, who sits on Hong Kong’s Executive Council, to say he is taking a leave of absence from all public positions. Cheung hasn’t been accused of wrongdoing.

HKMEx lost its trading license after failing to attract sufficient volumes as it competed with rivals such as the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and the London Metals Exchange, which was bought by Hong Kong’s stock-exchange operator last year. Cheung, who ran the 2012 election campaign for the city’s Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying, is the latest in a series of prominent Hong Kong government and business figures to be affected by criminal investigations.

This businessweek.com story was posted on their website in the wee hours of this morning...and I thank U.A.E. reader Laurent-Patrick Gally for sending it along just before I hit the 'send' button on today's column.

In the short term, it is pretty much impossible to tell when prices have bottomed until after the fact. Instead of trying to guess the exact day or the specific price that gold and silver will turn back up, I take the long-term perspective that if gold surpasses $5,000 and silver exceeds $150 (which I consider to be questions of “when” not “if”) it won’t really matter whether someone now pays $1,700 or $1,350 for an ounce of gold or $22 or $35 for an ounce of silver. In other words, I consider today’s prices to be a bargain buying opportunity whether or not we are near the absolute market bottoms.

When markets get ready to turn, they often experience extreme volatility. Yesterday, for instance, the price of silver ranged all the way from $20.20 to $23.30, about at 15 percent swing. Almost no one was a buyer right at the moment that silver was at its daily low, as prices quickly soared. As I write this Tuesday morning, the silver price is about 10 percent above yesterday’s low.

So, did those who bought silver over the past several months when prices were higher than $20.20 overpay? Taking the long-term perspective, I don’t think so. Since most potential buyers didn’t jump in at yesterday’s low, does that mean that it is too late to get into silver? I emphatically say no!

This excellent must read commentary by Patrick Heller was posted on the numismaster.com Internet site yesterday...and the first reader through the door with the story yesterday was Elliot Simon.

I believe that the big buyer of the 10 million ounces of gold liquidated in the GLD was JPMorgan, either alone or with other collusive commercial banks.  The same methodology I’ve previously attributed to a potential Mr. Big in SLV (also probably JPMorgan) is at work in GLD.  If one (or 2 or 3) big buyers in GLD had merely purchased the 100 million shares that were sold in GLD, that would have quickly pushed the big buyer(s) over the 5% SEC reporting threshold thereby revealing their identity.  But by having the gold redeemed out of the trust and the metal being purchased (instead of shares), stock reporting requirements are evaded.  A single holder, perhaps working with a few collusive partners, have come to own what is, effectively, almost a quarter of the world’s largest gold stockpile and no one is the wiser.

This absolute must read is only part of what Ted had to say to his paying subscribers in his Weekend Review on Saturday.  I thank Elliot Simon for today's last story.

Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc. had its credit rating cut one notch by Standard & Poor's, which cited a new methodology for evaluating insurers and Berkshire's dependence on its insurance business for dividend income.

The rating was cut to "AA" from "AA-plus," and S&P assigned a "negative" outlook, suggesting another cut could occur within a few years. S&P left its credit and financial strength ratings for Berkshire's insurance operating units at "AA-plus."

"The lower credit rating on Berkshire better reflects our view of Berkshire's dependence on its core insurance operations for most of its dividend income," S&P analyst John Iten wrote.

This moneynews.com story from last Friday was sent to me by West Virginia reader Elliot Simon on Saturday afternoon...and I thank him for today's first story.

America’s ticking debt bomb has been reset. Washington has suspended the debt ceiling, setting a date, and not a concrete dollar sum as a deadline, an unprecedented first in US history.

Citing ‘extraordinary measures’, the US Treasury has further delayed tackling America’s debt, and will wait until Labor Day, September 2nd, to revisit the burgeoning crisis. The ceiling has been lifted, and the Treasury has promised it will keep cash pumping into government spending programs beyond the debt limit through a series of emergency cash tools.  

“It will not be until at least after Labor Day" when Washington will have reached their full borrowing capacity, Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew, told CNBC television on May 10th.

Elliot Simon also sent me this Russia Today story.  It was posted on their website mid-morning Moscow time.

While we have wondered on numerous occasions previously if the collapse in lumber prices is the far more accurate indicator of end demand for housing (as confirmed by the recent collapse in multi-family housing starts), perhaps an even better indicator of trends in housing (and by implication the broader economy) is private sector intermediate end demand, such as Caterpillar North America sales, which unlike government data, are far less subject to political intervention, interpolation, guesswork, seasonal adjustments and otherwise, general manipulation.

And even though we have previously reported on the woes ailing the world's largest seller of bulldozers, excavators and wheel loaders, such focus was primarily targeted in the offshore markets, and especially China (the abysmal European market needs no mention). So maybe the time has come to shift attention to the US, where as Caterpillar just reported, not only are all foreign markets still trending at several impacted levels, but where US machine retail sales just saw the biggest tumble in three years, falling 18% Y/Y: the most since early 2010. What is more disturbing is that CAT equipment is used in far-broader economic activities than merely housing, and likely is a far more accurate indicator of true industrial end-demand than any other number cherry-picked by the government.

This short article was posted on the Zero Hedge website...and I thank 'David in California' for sending it our way.

“We don’t have to worry about a recession — we are in a depression,” says James Rickards.

“If you take the classic definition of a sustained, long-term downturn with economic growth below trend, then we are in the midst of a depression,” says the senior managing director of Tangent Capital and author of “Currency Wars.”

Rickards doesn’t see Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke as having the solution to the economic malaise gripping the county.

“Bernanke’s not a trader, so doesn’t think like a trader; he has no exit plan,” Rickards points out.

“There’s a good possibility I may never see another rate hike in my lifetime,” says Rickards.

This very short item was posted on the New York Post website late on Saturday night...and my thanks go out to Harold Jacobsen for bringing it to our attention.

Three months after hackers working for a cyber-unit of China’s People’s Liberation Army went silent amid evidence that they had stolen data from scores of American companies and government agencies, they appear to have resumed their attacks  using different techniques, according to computer industry security experts and American officials.

It is not clear precisely who has been affected by the latest attacks. Mandiant, a private security company that helps companies and government agencies defend themselves from hackers, said the attacks had resumed but would not identify the targets, citing agreements with its clients. But it did say the victims were many of the same ones the unit had attacked before.

In interviews, Obama administration officials said they were not surprised by the resumption of the hacking activity. One senior official said Friday that “this is something we are going to have to come back at time and again with the Chinese leadership,” who, he said, “have to be convinced there is a real cost to this kind of activity.”

This article was posted in the Sunday edition of The New York Times...and it's Roy Stephens' first offering in today's column.

The once almighty U.S. dollar has lost its luster in some corners of the world.

But there's one outpost where greenbacks have never been stronger: in socialist, anti-imperialist Venezuela, whose government rails against American-style capitalism as the bane of humanity. The dollar is not just holding steady here -- it is flourishing like nowhere else, the byproduct of the fast-wilting economy President Hugo Chavez left behind when he died in March.

Black-market dealers operating on the thriving underground market sell greenbacks at more than four times the official, government-set rate of 6.3 bolivars to the dollar. And the price they're getting these days -- 28 per dollar -- is more than three times what it was just eight months ago.

This very interesting read was filed from Caracas...and showed up on The Washington Post website on Friday.  I found it over at the gata.org Internet site on the weekend.

Rumors that Brazil's social security fund called Bolsa Familia was to be cancelled led thousands of people to rush to withdraw money from a Brazilian bank over the weekend.

Customers lined up at ATMs at dozens of bank branches of Caixa Economica Federal, a government-owned bank, which pays the social security subsidy on Saturday and Sunday.

"The bank branches themselves aren't open on Saturdays. What happened is that once the rumor gained momentum, people flocked down to their local branches to try to withdraw money from the ATMs," Rafael Carregal, a journalist at Brazil's main TV network Globo told CNBC.

Brazilian newspaper Estado de Sao Paulo reported that at five branches in the northeastern city of Sao Luiz and four others in the state of Maranhao, depositors broke into branches. Most of the branches that were affected were in the poorer northeast region of the country.

This short CNBC article was posted on their website early on Monday morning EDT...and I thank U.A.E. reader Laurent-Patrick Gally for sliding this into my in-box in the wee hours of this morning.

Monetarists across the world have warned that the International Monetary Fund and the Bank for International Settlements are making an historic error by calling for a withdrawal of emergency stimulus before the global economy has fully recovered.

The two watchdogs launched broadsides against central bank largess last week. The BIS -- the forum of central banks -- was particularly blunt, seeming to imply that quantitative easing "does not work".

Critics say this risks undermining the credibility of radical measures when more may yet be needed. They fear central banks could repeat the mistake made in 1937 when the Federal Reserve lost its nerve and tightened too soon, tipping America back into depression.

"The BIS and the IMF are deeply misguided and risk doing the world a grave disservice. The biggest threat right now is irrational fear of bubbles among central banks," said Lars Christensen, a monetary theorist at Danske Bank.

This longish piece by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard was posted on the telegraph.co.uk Internet site on Sunday afternoon BST...and it's Roy Stephens' second offering of the day.

Conservative activists have begun defecting to the UK Independence Party in protest at the Tory leadership’s “arrogant and insulting” attitude towards grassroots members.

Local Conservative party campaigners, including the chairman of one constituency association, will this week pledge their support for Nigel Farage after one of David Cameron’s allies described grassroots Tories as “mad, swivel-eyed loons”.

Mr Farage uses an advertisement in Monday's Telegraph to urge Conservative voters to back Ukip. The “loons” description, he says, is “the ultimate insult” from a party leadership that has betrayed the trust of its own supporters.

He writes in the advertisement: “Only an administration run by a bunch of college kids, none of whom have ever had a proper job in their lives, could so arrogantly write off their own supporters.”

This short article appeared on The Telegraph's website late on Sunday evening...and is also courtesy of Roy Stephens.

1. Dan Norcini: "Incredibly Important Developments in Gold and Silver Markets".  2. Egon von Greyerz [#1]: "The Big Upside Move in Gold and Silver is Now in Front of Us".  3. Hong Kong fund manager William Kaye: "Gold and Silver Smash and What Soros and Major Players are Doing".  4. Robert Fitzwilson: "Gold, Silver, Massive Leverage and Super Wealthy Panicking".  5. Andrew Maguire: "This Key Level to Trigger Huge Central Bank Buying".  6. Egon von Greyerz [#2]: "Clients Denied Gold at Major Banks as Shortage Intensifies".  7. The first audio interview is with Art Cashin...and the second audio interview is with Andrew Maguire.

Stocks are for lovers and gold is for haters. That's how one especially supercilious strategist (is there another kind?) sizes up the two markets, and it's clear he's been feeling the love lately. Stocks are at new highs in the U.S. and many other venues, while Japan's market is strapped to a rocket ship, all propelled by money fresh off the printing presses of the world's central banks.

Fans of the yellow metal, meanwhile, are feeling rather battered and bruised these days from the beating they've taken over the past month or so and, indeed, for more than a year and a half. Given all the quantitative easing -- which is how money printing is referred to in polite company these days, one would think gold would be getting a little love (or a facsimile of the same that cash can sometimes provide.)

I thank Ken Hurt for finding this Barron's article from Saturday for us...and I thank Chris Powell for providing the 'new and revised' headline.  The actual headline reads "This Time Gold Bugs May Have a Point".

In his new commentary former Assistant U.S. Treasury Secretary Paul Craig Roberts squarely accuses the Federal Reserve of using the futures markets to suppress gold and silver prices to protect the U.S. dollar and the Fed's "quantative easing" policy.

"What," Roberts asks, "does this illegal manipulation of markets by the Federal Reserve tell us? It tells us that the Federal Reserve sees no way out of printing money in order to support the federal deficit and the insolvent banks. If the dollar came under attack and the Federal Reserve had to stop printing dollars, interest rates would rise. The bond and stock markets would collapse. The dollar would be abandoned as reserve currency. Washington would no longer be able to pay its bills and would lose its hegemony. The world of hubristic Washington would collapse."

Roberts' commentary is headlined "Washington Signals Dollar Deep Concerns" and it was posted on his Internet site on Saturday.  I thank Chris Powell for the above introductory paragraph...and the headline...but the first reader through the door with this story was Rob Bentley.

The Hong Kong Mercantile Exchange will go ahead with a planned US$100 million rights issue and be ready within months to reapply for the trading licence it handed back to regulators at the weekend after it became clear the struggling commodity trader could no longer meet crucial financial criteria.

HKMEx chairman Barry Cheung Chun-yuen told the Sunday Morning Post that the decision to surrender the trading licence and not reopen for business tomorrow would have no impact on investors and that client contracts would be honoured.

"There is no question of not getting your money back or anything like that," Cheung said. "People absolutely do not have to worry about that and I don't think they are. The only thing they will want to know is what settlement price will be used."

This story, filed from Hong Kong, was picked up by the South China Morning Post on Sunday...and I found it in a GATA release.

India needs to bring down its gold demand from about 1,000 tonnes a year to 700 tonnes, which prevailed only a few years ago, a top policymaker has said.

This is necessary as increased gold imports are worsening the current account deficit, C. Rangarajan, chairman to the Prime Minister's Economic Advisory Council, said.

The demand for gold can be reduced by taming inflation and enhancing the real rate of return on financial products, Rangarajan said in his inaugural address at the 6th International Gold Summit, organised by Assocham here on Wednesday.

In the last two fiscal years -- 2011-12 and 2012-13 -- the country's gold imports in quantitative terms stood at 1,079 tonnes and 1,017 tonnes respectively.

This story was posted on thehindubusinessline.com Internet site last Wednesday...and I found it in a GATA release on Saturday.  The actual headline reads "Need to Bring Down Gold Deman, Says Rangarajan".

The sudden vulnerability of bank deposits to confiscation for bank rescues is sending money out of banks and into equities, bonds, and gold, GoldMoney's Alasdair Macleod writes on Sunday.  But for the time being, bullion banks are coping with increased demand for gold delivery by rationing metal to customers. Macleod's commentary is headlined "Bank Balances and Gold" and it's posted at the goldmoney.com Internet site.

I found this commentary in a GATA release on Sunday.

While we have become used to the almost daily trading-halts in Japanese government bonds, when the CME reports that Silver trading was halted four times overnight, it is increasingly clear that this market is anything but 'normal'.

This very short piece was posted on the Zero Hedge website yesterday morning...and I thank Elliot Simon for sending it along.

Gold prices continue to take a beating with futures at $1,354 an ounce.

Marc Faber, publisher of The Gloom, Boom and Doom Report, told Talking Numbers that he is buying physical gold and will buy more if it hits the $1,300 mark.

But, he said that he isn't keeping it in the U.S. "I bought gold at $1,400, I buy every month some gold, and I have an order to buy more at $1,300 because I want to keep an allocation towards gold – physical gold – and not stored in the United States at all times."

This short commentary also has the entire CNBC video interview embedded as well...and it was posted on the businessinsider.com Internet site yesterday morning EDT.

Changi Airport, Southeast Asia’s largest freight airfield, plans to attract more gold bars, tuna and vaccines to Singapore as it seeks to increase handling of high-value cargo to make up for slowing trade.

“An underlying demand for these things is growing with the rise of the Asian middle class,” Fong said in a May 15 interview. “People want higher-value, higher-quality food. Demand in North Asia is growing fast.”

The airport is offering 50 percent rebates on landing fees since the start of the year to help cargo airlines struggling with lower demand amid sluggish economies in the U.S. and Europe. Changi is enticing carriers of high-yield cargo with a tax-free maximum-security vault to store valuable art, gold and gems, as well as Southeast Asia’s biggest refrigerated facilities for perishable goods.

This story, filed from Singapore, was posted on the Bloomberg Internet site early yesterday morning Mountain Daylight Time.

The prospect of fresh strikes in South Africa's already embattled mining sector resurfaced on Sunday after representatives of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) said it would seek pay rises of up to 60% from gold and coal producers.

This comes as mining companies battle higher costs and falling prices in an already heated labour climate, and as the country is hoping to avoid the 2012 wildcat strike action at platinum and gold mines that claimed the lives of 50 people and cost the industry and economy billions in lost revenue and production.

Mineworkers are mobilising to assert themselves, with the NUM fighting a challenge to its once near monopoly in the shafts from the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (Amcu), which has poached tens of thousands of platinum miners from it in a violent struggle for members.

NUM said it was seeking an entry-level minimum monthly wage of R7 000 for gold and coal surface workers and R8 000 for those underground in a submission to the Chamber of Mines.

This Reuters piece was picked up by the fin24.com Internet site on Sunday evening...and I thank Matthew Nel for digging it up for us.

Platinum is a precious metal, as is palladium, though to a lesser degree. However, like silver, both are also industrial metals. Unlike silver, it's their industrial use that is the primary price driver for both platinum and palladium – and that use is undergoing a fundamental shift.

The largest source of demand for platinum and palladium is the automotive industry, for use in auto catalysts. In turn, the fortunes of the auto industry are sensitive to the health of the world's major economies. We've been bearish on platinum-group metals for years, primarily because we weren't convinced a healthy – much less roaring – world economy could be sustained when so many governments continue spending beyond their means.

We reconsidered the market last year, when strikes in South Africa – home to 75% of global platinum production and 95% of known reserves – threatened supplies. But as we wrote last December, the strikes ended without great impact on long-term supply.

Since then, however, the fundamentals of this market have changed. Others may disagree with our economic outlook, which is still bearish, but it's due to supply issues – not demand – that our interest is now drawn to these metals, and particularly to palladium.

This commentary by Jeff Clark was contained in yesterday's edition of the Casey Daily Dispatch...and it's definitely worth reading.

Daily Bell: Why did the price of gold plummet?

Doug Casey: Once again, I see it as just the normal, albeit large, fluctuation. It's not like you shouldn't expect a market that's risen steeply for a dozen consecutive years to come off at some point. Especially since not only does everything look rosy in the stock and bond markets, but even real estate spears to be recovering. A lot of conventional – and foolish, in my view – people think that printing trillions of new currency units has solved the crisis, and obviated the need for owning gold. So there's selling. Perhaps a big trader sold a bunch of contracts to set off a lot of stop losses and panic the market. If so, it was a smart trade, and it worked.

Now, I know that that's not a very sexy explanation. But I'm a believer in Occam's Razor, which hold that the simplest explanation of something is usually the correct one. However, I'm afraid it leads me to a pet subject of mine, one that will both take a while to explain, and will, regrettably, antagonize some of your readers. Many gold bugs (but not all, because I too am a gold bug) seem to think that a coterie of malefactors of great wealth sit around a huge boardroom table, perhaps chaired by Dr. Evil cradling his white cat, and send forth their minions, "Da Boyz," to "smack down" the depressed and struggling gold and silver markets. A large number of gold bugs are also conspiracy bugs. They have all of these standard catchphrases for describing what's happening. I've read their stuff for years and, frankly, it impresses me as little more than accusations, name-calling and conjecture.

"...I don't want the GATA guys and their supporters to take this personally. I simply think they're wrong..."

Doug explains why he feels that the gold market is free and fair...and why all us price management believers are out to lunch.  Doug holds nothing back...and whether you believe him or not...it's worth reading.  I thank Doug for sending it to me.

Interviewed yesterday by The Daily Bell, Casey Research Chairman Doug Casey once again dismissed complaints of gold market manipulation.

"I don't doubt that the powers-that-be would prefer to have the price of gold lower," Casey says, "just like they would prefer to have the price of wheat and copper and lumber and everything else lower. But there's no evidence that I've ever been shown other than, frankly, just assertions."

This is distressing but maybe, to get Clintonistic, it depends on the meaning of "shown." Though GATA has sent to Casey -- and once even handed to him face to face -- all sorts of documentation of gold market manipulation, if he has not looked at it, has he ever been "shown"? But then the question becomes whether he wants to look at it, though one might hope that anyone might want to look at the evidence before commenting on an issue.

In his interview with The Daily Bell, Casey acknowledges the likely motive of central banks in wanting gold and commodity prices lower. But he refuses to acknowledge their opportunity along with the evidence lest faith in markets be shaken.

GATA believes in markets as much as anyone could. Indeed, gold price suppression is a catastrophe for the world precisely because it is the prerequisite for the destruction of all markets, the mechanism by which a few unelected grandees strive to control the price of all capital, labor, goods, and services in the world, resulting in their worldwide misallocation.

This commentary [with multiple links] by GATA's secretary treasurer Chris Powell, was posted on the gata.org Internet site yesterday evening and...along with Doug's interview at The Daily Bell...it, too, is worth reading.

The last time that Doug got up and spoke against the price management scheme by JPMorgan and a small handful of bullion banks, was back in April of 2012.  GATA's Chris Powell had a lengthy response then as well...but has updated in his comments above, so it would serve no purposed to link that older article.

But James Turk had something to say about Doug's comments back then...and Mr. Turk's commentary, although rather long, are still as relevant today as they were back then...so I've decided to include it in today's column.

As I said, it's a long read, so top up your coffee before you get started.

Here's another item I've posted before.  This is an audio interview with silver analyst Ted Butler by Jim Puplava over at financialsense.com that was recorded on March 17, 2012.  In it, Ted describes in minute detail how the silver [and gold] price management scheme is orchestrated on the Comex/Globex futures market.

It explains exactly how every waterfall decline in silver [and gold] happens...and the sequence of events that precede it...and follow it.  It's been the same pattern for over twenty years.  Ted has been following the goings-on in silver on the Comex futures market for about 30 years...and is a world authority on it.

So if you want to know what happened on April 12/15th...and yesterday in the thinly-traded Far East market...Ted has the answers.

Because of his work, the Commitment of Traders Report is now widely followed just about everywhere, even if some of the commentators using it don't interpret the data correctly.  The other report that Ted uncovered was the Bank Participation Report...and as Ted put it in a commentary for paying subscribers within the last week...if JPMorgan could kill these two reports, they would...as it exposes their movements [and others] to the naked light of day.

If you've listened to this before, it's time for a refresher...and if you haven't, it's a must listen.

You know that gold bear market that the financial press keeps touting? The one George Soros keeps proclaiming? Well, it is not there. The gold bear market is disinformation that is helping elites acquire the gold.

Certainly, Soros himself doesn’t believe it, as the 13-F release issued by the Securities and Exchange Commission on May 15 proves. George Soros has significantly increased his gold holding by purchasing $25.2 million of call options on the GDXJ Junior Gold Miners Index.

In addition the Soros Fund maintains a $32 million stake in individual mines; added 1.1 million shares of GDX (a gold miners ETF) to its holdings which now stand at 2,666,000 shares valued at $70,400,000; has 1,100,000 shares in GDXJ valued at $11,506,000; and 530,000 shares in the GLD gold fund valued at $69,467,000. [values as of May 17]

The 13-F release shows the Soros Fund with $239,200,000 in gold investments. If this is bearish sentiment, what would it take to be bullish?

This commentary by Paul was posted on this website yesterday...and I thank reader Ken Hurt for bringing this to our attention.

The past week or three have been, to say the least, disappointing for precious metals investors.  Gold and silver have continued to step downwards towards new interim lows as money continues to move from bullion (or at least from paper variations of it) to the general stock markets which have been continuing to perform well.  All this despite, so we hear, continuing high demand for physical gold and silver from Asian markets in particular.  But this physical metal demand growth seems to be being more than countered by some strange precious metals sales patterns – the latest of which saw silver plunge 10% in 4 minutes on a big computer sell order – from a single client according to a major Japanese bank – at a light trading time.

If anything out there demonstrates how the dice are loaded against the individual investor in today’s markets, then the recent goings on in gold and silver prices surely do.  This is not a natural market.  Sure, prices can move up and down and people can get their fingers burnt but when we come across sales of the kind of magnitude seen recently they have to be a hugely concerted attempt to move the market to the perpetrator’s advantage.

This article by mineweb.com's Lawrie Williams was posted on their website early this morning in London...and it's definitely worth reading.

The push to restore the Glass-Steagall banking act has returned to the U.S. Senate. 

Sen. Tom Harkin on Thursday introduced S. 985, which would rebuild the wall that had once separated commercial banking from brokerage and investment speculation. The Iowa Democrat’s bill came on the 80th anniversary of the original 1933 Glass Steagall Act.

The text of S.985 was not posted on the Senate website as of Friday afternoon, but it is believed to resemble HR 129, introduced by Reps. Marcy Kaptur, D-Ohio, and Walter Jones, R-N.C. Their measure has 62 bipartisan sponsors in the House.

Meantime, 20 state legislatures are considering resolutions urging Congress to reinstate Glass-Steagall. Lawmakers in four states -- South Dakota, Maine, Indiana and Alabama – have passed such measures.

This news item was posted on the examiner.com Internet site yesterday...and I thank Bill Gebhardt for today's first story.

We are in the midst of the worst Washington scandal since Watergate. The reputation of the Obama White House has, among conservatives, gone from sketchy to sinister, and, among liberals, from unsatisfying to dangerous. No one likes what they're seeing. The Justice Department assault on the Associated Press and the ugly politicization of the Internal Revenue Service have left the administration's credibility deeply, probably irretrievably damaged. They don't look jerky now, they look dirty. The patina of high-mindedness the president enjoyed is gone.

Something big has shifted. The standing of the administration has changed.

As always it comes down to trust. Do you trust the president's answers when he's pressed on an uncomfortable story? Do you trust his people to be sober and fair-minded as they go about their work? Do you trust the IRS and the Justice Department? You do not.

This op-ed piece by Peggy Noonan showed up in The Wall Street Journal on Thursday...and I found it in yesterday's edition of the King Report.

The leading economies of the industrialized nations may not have a lot in common, but they are all afflicted by this: Inflation is too low.

That was the astoundingly consistent theme out of a range of data released Thursday. Prices rose 1.1 percent over the 12 months that ended in April in Germany, 0.8 percent in France and 1.3 percent in Italy. In the United States, the consumer price index rose 1.1 percent over the last year. Japan reported surprisingly strong first-quarter growth this week as its aggressive new stimulus policies took effect, but that came against a backdrop of continued falling prices; its consumer price index fell 0.9 percent in the year that ended in March.

The below-trend inflation is partly attributable to falling commodities prices, and just as policy shouldn’t overreact when a short-term commodity blip causes inflation, it shouldn’t make the same mistake in reverse. But even excluding food and energy, U.S. CPI was up only 1.7 percent, still below the level of inflation the Federal Reserve is aiming for. And the situation in Europe is particularly worrisome; if the euro zone is going to have any hope of rebalancing its economy without a prolonged depression, it will need higher inflation in core European countries like Germany and France, offset by lower inflation in countries like Greece and Spain. Instead, prices are rising too slowly even in the core, and there is deflation, or falling prices, in Greece.

The biggest conclusion to draw from all of this is that warnings that massive quantitative easing efforts would spark explosive inflation are turning out to be as wrongheaded as can be. In the United States and Japan, central banks now have open-ended policies of printing money to buy assets. But while the money seems to be finding its way into asset markets, such as for stocks and corporate debt, it isn’t being circulated so widely as to drive up prices for consumers.

This article, along with some excellent charts, appeared in The Washington Post on Thursday...and it's courtesy of West Virginia reader Elliot Simon.

From my perspective, the global nature of excesses and fragilities is the most worrying aspect to the current Financial Euphoria. Essentially, the entire world faces acute financial and economic instability. The entire world suffers from a widening gulf between inflating asset prices and mounting economic vulnerabilities. Seemingly the entire world suffers from an increasingly protracted period of near-zero rates, aggressive central bank monetary stimulus and a desperate search for market returns. The entire global financial “system” is an over-liquefied speculative Bubble – stoked by central bankers responding desperately to acute financial and economic fragilities.

As noted above, find a speculative Bubble and there will be an underlying source of monetary disorder. From my perspective, Bubbles are at their core about a self-reinforcing over-issuance of mispriced finance. Major market misperceptions are integral to fueling Bubbles – and these misperceptions are often associated with some form of government support/backing of the underlying Credit financing the boom.

These days, the dynamic of over-issued, mispriced finance is a global phenomenon – the U.S., Europe, Japan, China, Asia and the “developing” economies. The perception that central bankers will ensure ongoing asset inflation is an unprecedented global phenomenon. The collapse in yields and risk premiums in debt markets across the globe is unlike anything I’ve ever witnessed or studied historically. These days, asset inflation, speculation and Bubbles prevail virtually everywhere. Moreover, the gulfs between inflating assets and weakening economic fundamentals seemingly widen everywhere, as Financial Euphoria engulfs debt and equity securities markets around the world. As noted this week by the great market watcher and historian Art Cashin: This market is unlike anything we’ve ever experienced.

Doug's Credit Bubble Bulletin, posted on the prudentbear.com Internet site every Friday, is always a must read...and yesterday evening's edition is no exception.  I thank reader U.D. for sending it along.

The "driving boom is over," or so says a new study of American attitudes toward the automobile.

After decades of adding more cars to their household fleet while moving further and further out into the suburbs, Americans are waiting longer to get licensed, driving less and increasingly turning to alternatives such as mass transit or car-sharing programs, according to a new study by the U.S. Public Research Interest Group, or PIRG.

Declaring the boom in automotive transportation "over," the study stresses that, "the time has come for America to hit the reset button on transportation policy—replacing the policy infrastructure of the driving boom years with a more efficient, flexible and nimble system that is better able to meet the transportation needs of the 21st century."

This very interesting CNBC article appeared on their website early in the afternoon on Wednesday...and I've been saving it for today's column.  I thank Elliot Simon for bringing it to our attention.

What can be said of Doug Casey? His life and career are the stuff of legend among investors and speculators, especially in the junior resource space.

Doug is a friend and mentor to Chris and I. For over 25 years I've read his monthly missives, devoured his books and attended his   workshops. I credit Doug with leading me to my first big score, and imparting enough wisdom to make me see the sense of holding onto that winner as long as it made sense to. The value of that lesson was something that can never be repaid.

Doug was one of the key people, along with my friend "Dave" with whom I credit for arming me with the confidence to leave my comfortable life in the States, family, friends and business partners to experience the broader world and invest and speculate in the frontier markets.

Although he isn't always right, and has been early on many of his calls, his viewpoints are always enlightening and entertaining!

This interview with Doug was posted on the zerohedge.com Internet site on Thursday...and is definitely worth reading.

Late last Tuesday, after months of intense lobbying, and campaigning visits to 47 countries, Roberto Azevedo was confirmed as the next director general of the World Trade Organisation.

Amidst the Queen’s Speech and the resignation of a certain football manager, Azevedo’s appointment barely flickered on the U.K. news radar. Yet it was an event of some significance that could have major implications for the future shape of the global economy.

While less well-known than the International Monetary Fund, the WTO is the most important economic multilateral on earth. With 159 member states, this Geneva-based organisation can be likened to a vast and highly specialised international court, designed to arbitrate on complex trade disputes between governments that come into conflict, so as to keep protectionism in check.

If a nation feels another is unfairly blocking its exports, it complains to the WTO. Ranks of in-house lawyers then interpret international trade rules and issue an independent judgment. If countries found guilty don’t comply, then all members are meant to stop trading with them and close ranks — although it very rarely comes to that.

This story appeared on the telegraph.co.uk Internet site last Saturday...and it's been sitting in my in-box since then, awaiting a spot in today's column.  I thank Roy Stephens for his first offering of the day.

Martin Weale, a member of the rate-setting Monetary Policy Committee, warned that more stimulus risked a damaging surge in inflation because price rises have already been higher than the Bank's 2pc target for most of the past four years. The persistent overshoot, he said, “is a constraint on my freedom of action”.

“Failure to damp sufficiently any new shock pushing up on inflation would result in inflation expectations becoming more entrenched. That, in my view, limits the scope we have to support demand at the current juncture,” he told the British-American Business Council Transatlantic Conference in Birmingham.

George Osborne appointed Mr Carney on a ticket of “monetary activism” to help boost growth. The Chancellor has also asked the MPC to investigate how it might use “forward guidance” as an additional tool. But Mr Weale, who has been sceptical about the policy, suggested there is little it can achieve.

This Roy Stephens offering showed up on The Telegraph's website early yesterday afternoon BST.

On May 6, I wrote Europe was in danger of falling into a permanent recession -- a depression.

Now, the European statistical agencies report France joined Italy and Spain's recessions during the first quarter and economic activity across the entire eurozone continued to contract.

The straightjacket imposed by euro-think -- allegiance to a failed experiment in a common currency, ill-conceived and overzealous austerity measures and halting and inadequate labor market reforms -- caused continued economic contraction across the entire eurozone.

This commentary was posted on the upi.com Internet site yesterday...and it's definitely worth your time.  I thank Roy Stephens again.

The dismantling of Germany's nuclear power plants will be one of the greatest tasks of the century as the country moves to phase out atomic energy. It will take at least until 2080 to complete the job. But what happens if energy utility companies who own the facilities go bust before the work is done?

When politicians put far too much pathos into their speeches, people should be on their guard -- with a notable exception. There is one issue where no comparison is overinflated and no superlative appears exaggerated: Winfried Kretschmann, for instance -- the governor of the southern German state of Baden-Württemberg and a member of Germany's Green Party -- spoke of "theological timeframes" that now need to be decided upon.

The issue is nuclear waste and its safe disposal. Germany will have to build a storage facility deep underground that can survive the ravages of wars, revolutions and even another ice age. Indeed, the remains of the nuclear age will have to be kept in a final repository for 1 million years -- longer than the human race has existed.

This very interesting and very profound 2-page essay was posted on the German website spiegel.de on Thursday, May 10th.  Marshall Angeles sent it to me on the Tuesday...and it's been waiting for a place in today's column.

The Obama administration denounced Russia on Friday for providing Syrian President Bashar Assad's regime with anti-ship missiles, saying the weapons would only worsen a war that Washington and Moscow have been promising to work together on stopping.

Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, criticized what he called an "unfortunate decision that will embolden the regime and prolong the suffering." He spoke at a news conference after the New York Times reported that Russia recently delivered an advanced version of Yakhont anti-ship cruise missiles to Syria.

"It's ill-timed and very unfortunate," Dempsey said.

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel also urged Russia to rethink its military aid, saying that the U.S. and Russia both wanted to stabilize Syria after more than two years of civil war but that the Kremlin's military support makes the situation even more dangerous.

If this isn't a clear-cut case of the pot calling the kettle black, then I don't know what is.  This AP story, posted on the foxnews.com Internet site yesterday, is a must read for all students of the "New Great Game"...as are the next two stories. I thank Marshall Angeles for his second offering in a row.

Earlier this week, the CIA's Russian outpost was deeply humiliated when (in a calculated move following accusations that the U.S. had not gotten appropriate Russian information on the two Boston bombers, and following the visit of John Kerry whose primary objective was to, unsuccessfully, get Russia to relent on Syria) Russia's FSB exposed and broadcast on live TV the arrest of its agents caught while attempting to recruit a Russian spy.

Back then we suggested to "expect a prompt retaliation by the US" however it turns out Russia was not nearly done with embarrassing the US in what is becoming an obvious campaign to humiliate the US intelligence service, this time by going where very few clandestine operations go, at least during peacetime detente: by publicly exposing the head counterparty US spy.

As The Telegraph reports, "Russia's Federal Security Service has publicly revealed the identity of a man it calls the CIA station chief in Moscow, in what experts say is a serious breach of intelligence protocol."

This Zero Hedge article was posted on their website early yesterday afternoon Eastern Daylight Time...and it's a must read...as is The Telegraph story to which it is linked.  I thank 'David in California' for finding it for us.

The CIA has crossed a certain ‘red line’ in professional ethics of intelligence as American spy Ryan Fogle attempted to recruit a Russian agent, an FSB operative told Russia Today.

“In case with Fogle, the CIA crossed the red line and we had no choice but to react observing official procedures,” a representative of the Russian Security Service, the FSB, said in an interview with RT. 

The spy story broke earlier this week after it was made public that Fogle – who had worked under the guise of a third secretary at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow – was detained after being caught red-handed trying to recruit a Russian intelligence officer for the CIA. Following the incident he was expelled from Russia.

As early as by autumn 2011, the FSB was aware that the CIA was pursuing a goal to get an informer within the Russian special services, the agent told RT.

This story was posted on the Russia Today website in the early afternoon Moscow time...and it's another offering from Roy Stephens.

Sixty-six percent of Pakistan's 185 million people are under the age of 30 and almost all of them say they are worse off today than when they were 21.

They also say they would rather have a "strong leader" or one with a "strong hand" than a democracy.

Now they have what they wish -- Nawaz Sharif, 63, a former prime minister who was ousted in 1999 in Pakistan's fourth military coup since independence in 1947.

Thus, Pakistan has been ruled by the military for 33 years, or half of its life as an independent nation.

This is upi.com news item is definitely worth your time...and is an absolute must read for all "New Great Game" students.  Roy Stephens sent it to me on Wednesday...and I've been saving it for today as well.

This week the Navy will launch an entirely autonomous combat drone — without a pilot on a joystick anywhere — off the deck of an aircraft carrier, the George H. W. Bush. The drone will then try to land aboard the same ship, a feat only a relatively few human pilots in the world can accomplish.

This exercise is the beginning of a new chapter in military history: autonomous drone warfare. But it is also an ominous turn in a potentially dangerous military rivalry now building between the United States and China.

The X-47B, a stealth plane nicknamed “the Robot” by Navy crews, is a big bird — 38 feet long, with a 62-foot wingspan — that flies at high subsonic speeds with a range of over 2,000 miles. But it is the technology inside the Robot that makes it a game-changer in East Asia. Its entirely computerized takeoff, flight and landing raise the possibility of dozens or hundreds of its successors engaged in combat at once.

It is also capable of withstanding radiation levels that would kill a human pilot and destroy a regular jet’s electronics: in addition to conventional bombs, successors to this test plane could be equipped to carry a high-power microwave, a device that emits a burst of radiation that would fry a tech-savvy enemy’s power grids, knocking out everything connected to it, including computer networks that connect satellites, ships and precision-guided missiles.

This op-ed piece showed up on The New York Times website last Sunday...and is another story that had to wait until today's column.  It's also had a change in headline...and now reads "Pilotless Planes, Pacific Tensions".  It sounds almost benign now...but it's an eye-opener...and a must read.  I thank Roy Stephens for sending it.

Defense Against the Psychopath is a documentary excerpted from chapter one of my book; The Art of Urban Survival. It teaches people how to recognize and defend against our society's most dangerous predators, psychopaths. 

The first line of defense against these people is acknowledging their existence.

This very disturbing 39-minute video falls into the absolute must watch category.  Ever since I was aware of their presence, I run everyone I have medium to long-term dealings with, through this "sociopathic filter"...and, dear reader, you should do precisely the same thing.  I thank reader "Steve in Las Vegas" for bringing this first rate educational video to my attention...and now to yours.

1. Andrew Maguire [#1]: "Physical Demand Shows Gold in Massive Bull Market".  2. Egon von Greyerz:  "Coming Collapse, Massive Global Debt and the Bernanke Fed".  3. Art Cashin [#1]: "Shorts Being Squeezed and Market May Go Parabolic". 4.  Andrew Maguire: [#2]: "Bullion Banks Are About to Exploit Gold and Silver".  5. Art Cashin [#2]: "Money Supply Going Parabolic, Gold and Inflation".

A box containing $625,000 in gold arrived at Miami International Airport early Tuesday but disappeared about an hour and a half later, Miami-Dade police say.

An American Airlines plane arrived at Miami International Airport from Guayaquil, Ecuador, and docked at Gate D3 at 4:42 a.m. Tuesday, according to a Miami-Dade Police Department incident report. A group of employees unloaded the plane -- including the box containing the gold -- and moved it to the other side of the plane about 5:15 a.m.

A tug arrived at the plane from Gate D6, according to the report. It then drove away with the cart holding the plane's cargo at 5:22 a.m. Surveillance video showed the tug continue to D37 before it entered an alley and disappeared from the video.

This story is a couple of days old, but I didn't have space for it until now...and I thank Marshall Angeles for sending it along.

Gold, down 17 percent since January, is poised to lose 20 percent in a year as inflation fails to accelerate and with the worst risks to the global economy waning, Credit Suisse Group AG said.

Gold will trade at $1,100 an ounce in a year and below $1,000 in five years, according to Ric Deverell, head of commodities research at the bank. Lower prices are unlikely to lure more central-bank buying, said Deverell, who worked at the Reserve Bank of Australia for 10 years before joining Credit Suisse in 2010.

“Gold is going to get crushed,” Deverell told reporters in London today. “The need to buy gold for wealth preservation fell down and the probability of inflation on a one- to three-year horizon is significantly diminished.”

This Bloomberg article was posted on their website late Thursday morning MST...and if you believe this 'analyst'...then I have a bridge I'd like to sell you.  I thank Ken Hurt for sharing it with us.

Gold bears are dominant again after prices resumed their slump and billionaire George Soros joined investors selling holdings in exchange-traded products that have retreated to a two-year low.

Seventeen analysts surveyed by Bloomberg expect prices to fall next week, with eight bullish and three neutral, the highest proportion of bears in two weeks. The analysts were divided a week ago after gold rebounded as much as 13 percent from the two-year low of $1,321.95 an ounce on April 16. ETP holdings slid 16 percent to 2,207.1 metric tons this year, the lowest since July 2011, data compiled by Bloomberg show. 

“The momentum has slowed significantly,” said Jeremy Baker, a senior commodities strategist who oversees about $800 million of assets at Harcourt Investment Consulting AG in Zurich and who forecasts prices may drop as low as $1,200 in six months. “The safe haven has definitely lost its gleam. We are in a declining phase here.”

This Bloomberg story is from yesterday...and another offering from reader Ken Hurt.  Along with that bridge, I have some swamp land in Florida for sale as well.

We have tried to balance supply and demand figures in the gold market to answer a 15 year old question - “where is the supply of gold coming from?” In 1998, Frank Veneroso first suggested that it was the Western Central Banks that were supplying the market and we’ve been looking for a smoking gun ever since.

We have published our research several times, but none has got more attention amongst gold-watchers than our two pieces on the activities of Western Central Banks. In the Markets at a Glance entitled “Do Western Central Banks Have Any Gold Left Part II” we surmised that more than 4,500 tonnes of gold was exported by the United States between 1991 and 2012. Further, we postulated that it must have come from the US Government as they would be the only viable provider of metal in this quantity.  There is no other seller in the market that could explain the discrepancy in these import/export figures. Let’s review the updated figures and then examine some expert opinions.

This short commentary by Eric Sprott and David Franklin was posted on the sprottgroup.com Internet site yesterday...and is definitely worth reading.

Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has arrived in Washington, D.C. for a much-anticipated summit with President Barack Obama. The timing of the visit -- amid reports of chemical weapons usage in Syria and an attack against a Turkish border town by alleged Syrian agents -- will make it hard to talk about anything other than the civil war in Syria.

But some members of Congress want to draw attention to a less-obvious issue. Last month, a bipartisan group of 47 members of Congress penned a letter to Secretaries John Kerry and Jack Lew calling for clarification on Turkey's financial dealings with Iran. Under the initiative of South Carolina Republican Representative Jeff Duncan, the letter expressed deep concerns over Turkey's gold dealings that have helped Iran skirt Western sanctions designed to curtail Tehran's illicit nuclear program.

This short essay was posted in The Atlantic early yesterday morning EDT...and I thank Manitoba reader Ulrike Marx for her first of three stories in a row in today's column.

The leader of South Africa's biggest platinum mining union threatened on Friday to bring Africa's No. 1 economy "to a standstill" and demanded a meeting with President Jacob Zuma, ramping up the rhetoric in an 18-month labor crisis.

The rand, which tumbled to a four-year low against the dollar on Thursday on fears of a strike at Anglo American Platinum (Amplats), extended its slide on concerns about further disruptions to an already struggling economy.

The currency fell as low as 9.4334, its lowest since April 2009 when emerging markets were still reeling from the effects of the global financial crisis.

A protest strike called for Friday by at least two AMCU officials failed to materialize as all workers reported for the morning shift as normal.

This Reuters story was filed from Rustenburg, South Africa...and posted on their Internet site early yesterday morning EDT.

It could have posed as a model scheme to curtail gold imports. In order to stifle India’s appetite for gold, the government has introduced inflation index bonds. The first tranche amounting to around $364 million (R20 billion) is to be introduced on June 4.

Inflation Indexed Bonds (IIBs) are a new category of debt instruments to be introduced in India, where the coupon and principal amount would be linked to the rate of wholesale price inflation with a lag of four months. The authorities have said the objective of introducing such bonds is to channelise savings into productive sources of instruments from unproductive ones like gold.

Slowly but surely, there seems to be an anti-gold campaign that is at play in India. The concerted effort by the Indian government to discredit gold by imposing several curbs, and channelise consumers away from the precious metal, indicates a desperation that has not gone unnoticed by savvy investors.

This very interesting article was filed from Mumbai...and posted on the mineweb.com Internet site yesterday.  It's Ulrike's third and final offering in today's column.

Alasdair Macleod chatted with John Butler, author of The Golden Revolution and the Amphora Report investment newsletter.

John briefly details his motives for writing his book, before the discussion moves onto the latest knockdown in gold against the current news stories regarding global demand.

From weak hands to strong, from West to East, from paper to physical, once a floor is found and the physical supply becomes tight, both Alasdair and John agree that the market will then start to clear at higher prices.

This 27-minute podcast, posted on the goldmoney.com Internet site on Thursday, is certainly worth your time.  I thank Elliot Simon for digging it up for us.

Fund manager John Butler, interviewed by Max Keiser on "The Keiser Report" on the Russia Today network, remarks that it's "naive," amid all the acknowledged manipulation of markets going on today, to think that the gold market is not being manipulated too. Keiser's interview with Butler begins at the 14:25 mark in the video posted at the youtube.com Internet site...and I thank Chris Powell for wordsmithing the above preamble.

The long-lasting imprint from FDR’s famous “Hundred Days” did not stem from the bank holiday, national industrial recovery act, the farm adjustment act, the Tennessee Valley Authority, or the public works administration.

Instead, it is lodged in the footnotes of standard histories; namely, FDR’s April 1933 order confiscating every ounce of gold held by private citizens and businesses throughout the United States. Shortly thereafter he also embraced the Thomas Amendment, giving him open-ended authority to drastically reduce the gold content of the dollar; that is, to trash the nation’s currency.

These actions did not constitute merely a belated burial of the “barbarous relic.” In the larger scheme of monetary history, they marked a crucial tipping point. They initiated a process of monetary deformation that led straight to Nixon’s abomination at Camp David, Greenspan’s panic at the time of the 1998 Long-Term Capital Management crisis, and the final destruction of monetary integrity and financial discipline during the BlackBerry Panic of 2008.

This longish absolute must read is an excerpt from David Stockman's book "The Great Deformation: The Corruption of Capitalism in America".  It was posted on the mises.org Internet site on Thursday...and I thank Elliot Simon for today's last story.

Under pressure from Wall Street lobbyists, federal regulators have agreed to soften a rule intended to rein in the banking industry’s domination of a risky market.

The changes to the rule, which will be announced on Thursday, could effectively empower a few big banks to continue controlling the derivatives market, a main culprit in the financial crisis.

But critics worry that the banks gained enough flexibility under the plan that it hews too closely to the “pre-crisis status.”

“The rule is really on the edge of returning to the old, opaque way of doing business,” said Marcus Stanley, the policy director of Americans for Financial Reform, a group that supports new rules for Wall Street.

The Dodd-Frank Act now exists in name only, as it's basic tenets have been gutted.  This is just another, if not the last, brick in the wall for what the bill stood for originally.  This article was posted on The New York Times website late on Wednesday afternoon...and I thank reader Clive Sutherland for today's first story.

By the Federal Reserve's own logic about breaking up banks that are too big to fail, it's time to break the Fed apart for the same reasons, according to a blistering analysis by Alex Pollock of the American Enterprise Institute.

Pollock, in a note to American Banker, said St. Louis Fed President Jim Bullard recently laid out four simple ways to determine when a bank is too big and needs to be split up — namely, if its assets are too voluminous, if it's too leveraged, if it has too much short-term funding of longer term assets and if it creates too much systemic risk.

Pollock said the Fed's current operating status could be accurately characterized by the following: It's too big, with over $3.3 trillion in assets, it's too leveraged at 60 to 1, it's extremely short-funded and it's "a frequent contributor through its interest rate and money-printing action of gigantic systemic risk."

"Therefore, it follows pretty clearly from the same logic that we should break up the Fed," said Pollock, former CEO of the Federal Home Loan Bank of Chicago.

All in favour say aye!  This story was posted on the moneynews.com Internet site during the East Coast lunch hour yesterday...and it's courtesy of Elliot Simon.

Central banks, including the Bank of England, strayed into “unchartered waters” by cutting interest rates to near-zero and launching billions of pounds of quantitative easing, and they will find the exit “difficult to control”, the IMF said. “The market response [to a rise in interest rates] will be less predictable ... possibly for several months or even years.”

Long-term interest rates could spike as investors dump over-priced bonds and banks could face a fresh round of losses on both their gilt portfolios and loan books as borrowers struggle to meet higher monthly payments, it added.

For the economy more broadly, though, the IMF said the risks were considerable. “The risk is interest rate volatility and overshooting in the adjustment of long-term rates. The potential sharp rise in long-term interest rates could prove difficult to control, and might undermine the recovery (including through effects on financial stability and investment),” it wrote in a policy paper.

It also argued that there was clear evidence of “diminishing returns” in continuing with existing policies like QE. The most effective policy now, it suggested, was “conditional guidance” of the sort used by the US Federal Reserve and under review by the Bank. It has also been championed by incoming Governor Mark Carney.

This news item appeared on the telegraph.co.uk Internet site at 4:00 p.m. BST yesterday...and it's Roy Stephens' first offering in today's column.

First milk, butter, coffee and cornmeal ran short. Now Venezuela is running out of the most basic of necessities , toilet paper.

Blaming political opponents for the shortfall, as it does for other shortages, the embattled socialist government says it will import 50 million rolls to boost supplies.

That was little comfort to consumers struggling to find toilet paper on Wednesday.

"This is the last straw," said Manuel Fagundes, a shopper hunting for tissue in downtown Caracas. "I'm 71 years old and this is the first time I've seen this."

This AP story showed up on the philly.com Internet site yesterday...and I thank Phil Barlett for bringing us the first story of any real importance in today's column.... )

Perhaps for the first time in his political career, Nigel Farage, the scourge of British politics, found himself in retreat on Thursday evening as dozens of protesters hounded him out of central Edinburgh.

The Ukip leader was finally whisked away in a police riot van under a tirade of abuse from a crowd of about 50 young demonstrators – students, anti-racist campaigners and activists in the radical left pro-Scottish independence movement – after being forced to retreat not once, twice or three times, but four times.

Farage was first forced out of the Canon's Gait pub on the Royal Mile after the landlord took fright as the demonstrators disrupted his casual press conference with shouts of "racist", "scum" and "homophobe". Out on the street, as the fingers pointed and taunts escalated, he was rejected by one taxi and turfed out of a second.

This story appeared on the guardian.co.uk Internet site early yesterday evening BST...and I thank reader Bob Visser for sending it along.

The Telegraph has been accused by Spanish newspapers of launching a "brutal attack", succumbing to "Hispanophobia", leading an Anglo-Saxon assault, and otherwise trying to divert attention away from Britain's own lamentable condition. Spanish readers might be comforted to know that we are even more brutal with our own leaders.

Since I was in Madrid last week as a guest of the Spanish government, let me add my half-penny to the debate. Spain has already done all that can reasonably be expected of any nation, enduring its "calvario" with dignity and fortitude. It has slashed internal consumption by 16 percentage points of GDP without triggering a social explosion - "no mean feat", said one minister.

Whether the country proves to be solvent or insolvent by mid-decade depends almost entirely on the future actions of the European Central Bank and the northern creditor powers. Nothing is pre-determined.

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard is on the defence here...and the article from yesterday's edition of The Telegraph falls into the must read category.  I thank Roy Stephens for his second offering in today's column.

The European common currency zone has now been in recession for six straight quarters, with three of the bloc's four largest economies now suffering persistent negative growth. Could the Continent's pursuit of austerity be backfiring? German commentators believe the answer is yes.

The European Union statistics office on Wednesday noted that nine of 17 euro-zone member states are now in recession, with France being the newest significant member of that club. Furthermore, the common currency zone, with bloc-wide declines in economic output for six straight quarters, is now struggling through its longest recession ever, worse even than the downturn in the immediate wake of the 2008 financial crisis.

The contraction was not huge; the euro-zone economy shrank by just 0.2 percent in the first three months of this year. And the German economy narrowly avoided recession, posting growth of 0.1 percent. But the situation in large economies such as Italy and Spain, both of which saw contractions of 0.5 percent in the first quarter of this year, is worrisome.

The currency area's persistent stagnation has raised concerns that Europe could be facing a "lost decade" like the one Japan recently lived through. Klaas Knot, head of the Dutch central bank and member of the European Central Bank board, is just one of many significant voices sounding the warning.

This article appeared on the German website spiegel.de early yesterday afternoon Europe time...and once again I thank Roy Stephens for bringing it to our attention.

In a clear warning to Syria to stop the transfer of advanced weapons to Islamic militants in the region, a senior Israeli official signaled on Wednesday that Israel was considering additional military strikes to prevent that from happening and that the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, would face crippling consequences if he retaliated.

“Israel is determined to continue to prevent the transfer of advanced weapons to Hezbollah,” the Israeli official said. “The transfer of such weapons to Hezbollah will destabilize and endanger the entire region.”

“If Syrian President Assad reacts by attacking Israel, or tries to strike Israel through his terrorist proxies,” the official said, “he will risk forfeiting his regime, for Israel will retaliate.”

This news item was posted on The New York Times website on Wednesday sometime...and I thank Marshall Angeles for bringing it to my attention...and now to yours.

Warships from Russia’s Pacific Fleet have entered the Mediterranean for the first time in decades. Russia’s Navy Chief says the task force may be reinforced with nuclear submarines, as the country starts building up a permanent fleet in the region.

“The task force has successfully passed through the Suez Channel and entered the Mediterranean. It is the first time in decades that Pacific Fleet warships enter this region,” the Pacific Fleet spokesman, Capt. First Rank Roman Martov told RIA.

The vessels are now heading to Cyprus and will make a port call in the city of Limassol, he added.

The group includes destroyer “Admiral Panteleyev,” two amphibious warfare ships “Peresvet” and “Admiral Nevelskoi,” as well as a tanker and a tugboat.

This article was posted on the Russia Today website early yesterday evening Moscow time...and it's another story from Roy Stephens.

China has limited room to use government spending and policy stimulus to boost its economy, China Premier Li Keqiang was quoted as saying on Wednesday, dashing hopes among some investors that Beijing may take steps to foster growth.

Li was quoted in the state-owned China Securities Journal as saying that though the economy faces considerable headwinds and uncertainty, China should allow market forces to do their work.

"If there in an over-reliance on government-led and policy driven measures to stimulate growth, not only is this unsustainable, it would even create new problems and risks," Li was quoted by the paper as saying indirectly.

His remarks were made at a meeting of the state council, or China's cabinet, on Monday after a series of data showed a recovery in the world's No. 2 economy faltered in April.

This Reuters story, filed from Beijing, was posted on their website in the wee hours of Wednesday morning EDT...and it's a little something I found in yesterday's edition of the King Report.  It's definitely worth reading.

Japan’s economy has roared back to life as the radical reflation policies of premier Shinzo Abe drive a surge of consumer spending, but fears are growing that the tumbling yen could set off a broader Asian crisis.

Growth jumped to a 3.5pc rate in the first quarter, vindicating the government’s efforts to break Japan’s deflation psychology and lift the country out of its 20-year ice age. “Abe’s kick start appears to have succeeded,” said Flemming Nielsen from Danske Bank.

Retail sales are soaring as a “wealth shock” electrifies the economy. The Nikkei index has risen has 70pc since November, with foreign hedge funds among the first to jump on the bandwagon.

The weaker yen is already delivering a powerful punch, accounting for almost half the growth. The currency has dropped 30pc against the dollar and China’s yuan since August, and 37pc against the euro.

This Ambrose Evans-Pritchard commentary was posted on the telegraph.co.uk Internet site early yesterday evening BST...and I thank Manitoba reader Ulrike Marx for sharing it with us.

The first interview is with Rick Rule...and it's headlined "This Is What I am Doing With My Own Money Right Now".  Next is this commentary by Keith Barron. It's entitled "Premiums Soaring as Massive Run on Gold and Silver Continues".  And last is this interview with Citi analyst Tom Fitzpatrick...and it bears the title "Five Incredibly Important Gold and U.S. Dollar Charts".

The seizure of funds of the largest bitcoin exchange, Mt. Gox, was triggered by an alleged failure of the company to comply with U.S. financial regulations, according to a federal court document.

The U.S. District Court in Maryland on Tuesday ordered the seizure of Mt. Gox's funds, which were in an account with Dwolla, a payments company that transferred money from U.S. citizens to Mt. Gox for buying and selling the virtual currency bitcoin.

A copy of the seizure order was provided on Wednesday by a spokeswoman for the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the investigative arm of the Department of Homeland Security.

This article was posted on the pcworld.com Internet site on Wednesday...and I found it in a GATA release yesterday.

Billionaire investor George Soros joined Northern Trust Corp. and BlackRock Inc. in cutting holdings of exchange-traded products backed by gold before a bear market in prices last month, while John Paulson maintained a stake that lost about $165 million in the first quarter.

Soros Fund Management LLC lowered its investment in the SPDR Gold Trust, the biggest such fund, by 12 percent to 530,900 shares as of March 31, compared with three months earlier, a Securities and Exchange Commission filing showed yesterday. Funds run by Northern Trust and BlackRock showed reductions of more than half, according to earlier filings. Paulson & Co., the largest investor in SPDR, held 21.8 million shares, while Schroder Investment Management Group bought 2.1 million.

This Bloomberg story was posted on their website early yesterday afternoon MDT...and it's courtesy of reader Ken Hurt.

In a 13-F release issued by the SEC after market close yesterday, it was reported that Soros Fund Management LLC, founded and chaired by billionaire financier George Soros, significantly increased its gold related holdings, most notably, through the purchase of over $25 million dollars worth of call options on the GDXJ Junior Gold Miners index.

This stunning move by one of the world’s top performing hedge funds, suggests a powerful surge ahead for gold equities. It should be noted, that in the forty years prior to 2010, the Soros Fund averaged a 20% annual rate of return.

This very short posting over at the bullmarketthinking.com Internet site yesterday, is definitely worth reading...and I thank Phil Barlett for pointing it out.

A new report from the World Gold Council shows that central banks bout 109 tonnes of gold in the first quarter.

This was the seventh straight quarter in which they purchased over 100 tonnes of gold.

Central banks held 31,735.4 tonnes of gold as of May 2013. This was up from 31,694.8 tonnes as of April 2013.

According to the WGC, Russia and South Korea were among the biggest buyers of gold.

This businessinsider.com story from yesterday was posted on their Internet site late yesterday morning...and I thank Roy Stephens for sharing it with us.

The US is moving to broaden its 'blockade' efforts of Iran to the movement of pure gold into the Islamic Republic. The US-led embargo of Iranian crude succeeded in slowing the flow of petrodollars into the nation but as Foreign Affairs committee chairman Edward Cohen remarked, there is "no question that there is gold going from Turkey to Iran."

While the official line from US elite such as Bernanke remains that 'gold is not money' it appears that increasingly other nations would disagree, as Cohen admitted, "in large measure what we're seeing is private Iranian citizens buying gold as a protection against the falling value of Iran's currency."

It would seem somewhat self-evident that the US is admitting, by attempting to embargo this gold flow, that outside the US, the Dollar is becoming increasingly irrelevant (see China's gold demand); and that for many countries the petrodollar no longer exists, having been replaced by 'Petrogold'.

This Zero Hedge posting from yesterday was sent to me by Marshall Angeles...and it's worth reading.

China's demand for gold jumped 20% to 294 tonnes in the first quarter of 2013, while global gold demand overall slid 13% thanks to the dramatic rotation of demand from paper to physical. Chinese demand in gold bars and coins grew to 109.5 tonnes - more than double the five-year quarterly average of 43.8 tonnes.

Central banks added 109.2 tonnes of gold to their reserves in Q1 2013, the ninth consecutive quarter of net purchases. But it was the Q1 ETF outflows of 176.9 tonnes, equating to a 7% decline in total gold ETF holdings that obscured the strong rise in investment for gold bars and coins at the retail level. In the face of the huge 'paper' gold ETF outflows, 'physical' gold demand surged to its highest in 18 months...

The charts are incredible...and this Zero Hedge story is a must read...and it's the second story in a row from Marshall Angeles.

The World Gold Council would more properly be called the World Paper Council, Jeff Nielson of Bullion Bulls Canada writes today, since the council facilitates ownership of paper promises of gold rather than ownership of gold itself. In doing so, Nielson says, the council is just a tool of major banks. His commentary is headlined "The World Paper Council" and it's posted at the Bullion Bulls Canada Internet site.

Jeff has it exactly right, of course.  As Chris Powell has said on many occasions over the years...the real reason that the World Gold Council exists in its present form, is to ensure that a real World Gold Council never comes to be.  I found this story posted on the gata.org Internet site yesterday...and it's worth reading.

Today’s gold market is being defined by two trends: aggressive selling by investors in North America through exchange-traded funds, and aggressive buying by consumers in Asia.

“When the hedge funds and other investment funds turn negative, it just overwhelms the physical demand,” said George Topping, an analyst at Stifel Nicolaus.

Given that April was the most volatile month for gold since 2008, investment demand could wind up being even worse in the current quarter.

The ETF sell-off masked the fact that underlying physical gold demand has been strong. And in the case of China and India, it has been remarkably strong.

This news item showed up on Canada's financialpost.com Internet site late yesterday afternoon...and I thank Roy Stephens for his final offering in today's column.

Gold consumption reflected a strong revival over last year as Indian households flocked retail outlets to purchase gold jewellery owing to a fall in price of the yellow metal. As against a decline of 13% in global demand for gold, India reported a 27% increase in Q1 2013, surpassing China's demand growth of 20%.

While demand for jewellery increased by 15% to 159.5 tonnes as compared to Q1 2012, investment demand witnessed a significant rise of 52% at 97 tonnes in the January to March period this year, said a recent report released by the World Gold Council (WGC). The government on Thursday also slashed the import tariff value of gold to $466 per 10 grams from $472 per 10 grams.

"Demand growth was largely driven by rural households whose incomes benefited from a good late harvest," the report said. A 4% decline in local gold prices over the quarter further prompted jewellery purchase during the wedding season. Gold prices fell by Rs 500 to a one-month low of Rs 26,800 per 10 grams in the capital on Thursday. While domestic prices fell by over 3% during Q1, in April alone, gold prices fell by nearly 18% due to global factors.

This story showed up on The Times of India website early Friday morning IST...and it's definitely worth reading.  I thank Ulrike Marx for digging this story up for us.

Market analyst John Rubino remarks on the futility of technical analysis in a manipulated market like gold.

Rubino writes: "When big players with regulatory immunity can move an asset's price -- and can see resistance/support levels and moving averages just as clearly as anyone else -- smaller traders don't stand a chance."

"Fundamentals always win eventually," he adds, and maybe they do, but the question lately on the minds of gold investors may be whether fundamentals always win within the course of a normal human lifespan. As long as many gold investors -- including some very big ones -- buy paper gold, which can be created to infinity, instead of real metal; as long as the gold mining industry is so oblivious to the rigging of the price of its product and does nothing to defend itself; and as long as mainstream financial news organizations have no interest in committing actual journalism, central banks won't have to worry about any threat to their totalitarian power.

Those are the variables on which GATA continues to work.

Rubino's commentary is headlined "The Golden Bull's Eye" and it's posted at the 24hGold.com Internet site.

No surprises here, dear reader, as I've been saying this for years...and Chris Powell's opening preamble above is definitely worth reading more than once.  As you have probably already figured out, I found this very short must read essay in a GATA release yesterday.

Amsterdam...March 1637 (Ruyters): The latest Dutch tulip harvest is in, and experts confidently predict another bumper year for tulip growers and tulip investors alike. Billionaire hedge farmer Jon Paulsen is rumoured to have added hyacinths to his multi-strategy offering and has just launched a fund denominated in daffodils. Tulip stocks climbed by a few millimetres, as they are prone to every day if they grow at their normal organic rate; Couleren bulbs rallied another 2 guilders in heavy Antwerp trading; Rosen and Violetten bulbs ended the trading session more or less unchanged, albeit a bit squashed, and at record highs. The market has been further buoyed in recent weeks by a tide of manure issued by the leading tulip advocate Pol Kruygman from his op-ed column in the New Amsterdam Times, ‘Witterings of a Tulip Fanatic’. Kruygman promised to keep the manure coming, whether anybody wanted it or not.

The popularity and rising value of this colourful perennial plant evidently know no bounds and this is surely a golden age that is never likely to end. Future generations will evidently marvel at the effortless wealth on offer to investors committing their capital unreservedly to tulips today. Dutch housewives bedecked in tulip hats, tulip scarves, tulip dresses and tulip shoes danced gaily in the streets of Tuliptown (formerly Amsterdam) whilst smoking tulip cigarettes, slurping tulip soup, and drinking tulip beer from tulip beer glasses with tulip straws. Given that the anthocyanin Tulipanin is toxic to horses, cats and dogs, the inhabitants of Amsterdam have long since stopped rearing horses, cats and dogs; they have chosen to rear tulips as pets instead.

Many Dutch households have also abandoned the traditional export trades in herring, gin and cheese in order to concentrate their energies where the action is: tulips.

That just about sums up the state of economic, financial and monetary affairs of the entire world today.  Just add 376 years.  This excellent 3-page commentary is from PFP Wealth Management in the U.K...and certainly falls into the must read category...and I thank London, U.K. reader Jonathan Lavy for today's first 'story'.

The Dow Jones Industrial average closed Tuesday at a new all-time high with a triple-digit surge of 123 points.

And it’s fitting that the Dow hit a new high of 15,215 on a Tuesday because it’s the 18th straight Tuesday that the industrials have finished the day higher than where they began.  This 18 for 18 streak started all the way back on January 15.  The Dow since then is up more than 1700 points. And according to the statistical gurus at Bespoke Investment Group over 1400 of the 1700 plus points gained since then on the Dow have come on, you guessed it, Tuesday. That’s 83 percent of all the gains in stocks since then coming on this one day of the week.

This story was posted on the abcnews.com Internet site shortly after the markets closed on Tuesday...and I found it in yesterday's edition of the King Report.

President Obama announced Wednesday night that the acting commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service had been ousted after disclosures that the agency gave special scrutiny to conservative groups. Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., meanwhile, warned top I.R.S. officials that a Justice Department inquiry would examine any false statements to see if they constituted a crime.

Speaking in the White House’s formal East Room, Mr. Obama said Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew had asked for and accepted the resignation of the acting commissioner, Steven Miller, who as deputy commissioner was aware of the agency’s efforts to demand more information from conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status in early 2012.

“Americans have a right to be angry about it, and I’m angry about it,” Mr. Obama said. “It should not matter what political stripe you’re from. The fact of the matter is the I.R.S. has to operate with absolute integrity.”

Integrity?  What would the president know about that?  Just asking.  Well, they didn't waste any time picking a fall guy.  One wonders what else will develop going forward.  This story was posted on The New York Times website last night...and I thank Roy Stephens for his first offering of the day.

Elizabeth Warren is one of the few Senators out there pushing to understand why the federal government has created an untouchable class of criminals in America that can do whatever they want whenever they want and, not only get away with it, but also get bailed out when they make mistakes.  Now she has written a letter to Ben Bernanke, Eric Holder and Mary Jo White.  My favorite line is: “If large financial institutions can break the law and accumulate millions in profits and, if they get caught, settle by paying out of those profits, they do not have much incentive to follow the law.”

This Zero Hedge piece is short...as is the Elizabeth Warren letter...and I thank Marshall Angeles for sharing it with us.

The economics world has been having a lot of fun with hedge fund managers.

After several such managers at a recent conference denounced the aggressive money-printing policies of Ben S. Bernanke, the Federal Reserve chairman, the economic blogosphere rose up to mock them.

Many hedge fund managers have been predicting that high inflation and fleeing creditors would send interest rates skyrocketing. Stanley Druckenmiller, Paul Singer, J. Kyle Bass and David Einhorn — all big names in the investing world — have warned against the supposedly runaway central banker. Mr. Druckenmiller said that Mr. Bernanke was “running the most inappropriate monetary policy in history.”

This essay appeared on The New York Times website during the New York lunch hour yesterday...and I thank Phil Barlett for sending it.

The Treasury Department on Friday will suspend sales of state and local government Treasury securities until further notice, the first action to avoid hitting the U.S. debt ceiling. The debt ceiling is expected to be reached on May 18, but the Treasury had been expected to take steps like this one in order to keep paying bills. Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew said last week that the U.S. will be able to avoid the debt limit until Labor Day. The Congressional Budget Office said Tuesday that the deadline could be as late as November.

This 1-paragraph story showed up on the marketwatch.com Internet site late yesterday afternoon EDT...and I thank reader "David in California" for bringing it to our attention.

The British Conservative Party has tabled legislation that would guarantee an EU in/out referendum before the end of 2017.

The bill, released on Tuesday (14 May), is expected to be sponsored as a private member's bill by a backbench Conservative MP.

It has the support of Prime Minister David Cameron but will not be tabled as a government bill because of the coalition agreement with the pro-European Liberal Democrats.

The question to appear on the ballot papers is “Do you think that the United Kingdom should remain a member of the European Union?"

This news item, filed from Brussels, was filed on the euobserver.com Internet site yesterday morning Europe time...and I thank Roy Stephens for his second offering in today's column.

Motorists may have paid thousands of pounds too much for their petrol over the last decade, after two of Britain’s biggest companies were raided on suspicion of manipulating oil prices.

MPs and energy experts have raised fears motorists have been “taken for a very expensive ride”, after officials searched the offices of BP and Shell for evidence of price-rigging.

The companies are suspected of distorting the oil price since 2002, meaning drivers have potentially been ripped off for more than 10 years.

European investigators, who raided the London offices of BP and Shell, said the alleged price-rigging could have had a “huge impact” on the cost of oil, including the price of fuel for consumers.

This story was posted on the telegraph.co.uk Internet site late Wednesday evening BST...and it's courtesy of reader "David in California".

José Briá finds it hard to sleep these days. Sometimes when he wakes up in the middle of the night, he drives out to his farmland a few miles from the center of this tiny village just to make sure everything is all right.

He has been robbed three times already this year: Once, chickens were taken. Then, some tools vanished. The last time, eight rabbits disappeared.

The farmers in Albelda have gotten so worried about thieves that they have taken to patrolling their fields at night, their cars bumping along between rows of peach and pear trees. They have found strategic spots that overlook the fertile valley here in northeastern Spain, and from there they peer into the dark, watching for headlights or flashlights, or any signs of intruders.

Such vigilance has helped, they think. But for many, it is a sorry state of affairs. For a long time, many of Spain’s small, isolated farming communities seemed all but immune from the economic crisis. The fields still needed to be plowed and the animals tended. Prices were not that great, but no one was really out of work. Now, however, many of the farmers believe the problem is at their doorstep.

This article was posted on The New York Times website on Tuesday...and it's another story courtesy of Phil Barlett.

The eurozone economy continues to shrink as Germany's economy grew by a meager 0.1 percent in the past three months, while France slid back into recession, according to data from the EU statistics office Eurostat published on Wednesday (15 May).

Shrinking by 0.2 percent in the first three months of 2013, the eurozone economy has now been in recession for the past one and a half years, the longest period since 1995, when Eurostat started collecting the data.

The worst off are Greece - whose economy shrunk by 5.3 percent - and Portugal (-3.9%) compared to the same period last year.

France is also officially back in recession, after its economy shrank by 0.2 percent over the past six months, amid unemployment rates of over 10 percent and low business and consumer confidence.

This news item showed up on the euobserver.com Internet site very late in the afternoon Europe time...and is courtesy of Roy Stephens.

European leaders had hoped to quickly finalize plans for an EU banking union to regulate bank bailouts and provide a roadmap for unwinding insolvent financial institutions. But with the German election looming, Berlin is wary of moving forward. The result could be a lengthy delay.

The pledge was made almost a year ago. European leaders announced in the summer of 2012 that they were working on a plan to break the vicious cycle between the need to prevent banks from collapse and the surge in sovereign debt such efforts caused. In the future, they said, insolvent banks would not be saved by last-second, taxpayer-funded bailouts. Rather, troubled financial institutions would be propped up by a European banking union or they would be unwound in an orderly fashion.

Since then, leaders have been discussing what, exactly, such a banking union should look like. On Tuesday, European Union finance ministers met in Brussels for fresh talks in an attempt to reach agreement on the degree to which bank shareholders, creditors and savers should be involved in bailouts.

This article appeared on the German website spiegel.de yesterday...and it's courtesy of Roy Stephens, of course.

The first one is with Hong Kong hedge fund manager William Kaye...and it's headlined "Gold to Soar as West Enters a Frightening Economic Ice Age".  Next is John Embry.  It's entitled "This Catastrophic Situation is Entering the Terminal Phase".  The third interview is with Dan Norcini...and it's titled "Incredibly Important Developments in Many Key Markets".

Positions held by Commodity Futures Trading Commission Chairman Gary Gensler and CFTC Commissioner Bart Chilton are up for renewal, but so far neither official has had their position renewed, which suggests new blood may come into the agency, said an futures industry official on Wednesday.

In addition to Gensler’s and Chilton’s positions being up for renewal, CFTC Commissioner Jill Sommers is leaving soon, said Walter Lukken, chairman of the Futures Industry Association on Wednesday in Chicago. Sommers has said in interviews she would not leave until the last set of Dodd-Frank financial regulatory rules are in place.

“We may be faced with a set of new commissioners who will oversee a complex set of rules,” Lukken said, regarding the implementation of the Dodd-Frank rules. Lukken spoke to members of the futures industry at a luncheon to discuss the view from Washington.

No loss as far as I'm concerned.  If they did have good intentions at the beginning, they just didn't have the gonads to do what was right...or someone told them to toe the line, or else.  They, like the organization they work for, are controlled by the CME Group and JPMorgan.  This article appeared on the kitco.com Internet site yesterday...and I thank reader "Rocky R" for sending it along.

Europe, says James Turk, founder and chairman of GoldMoney, is in the midst of two crises—one in the banking sector, the other related to economic activity, and capital is needed to solve both. As to the allegedly strong dollar, Turk, in this interview with The Gold Report, suggests comparing it to the price of gold rather than other fiat currencies for a better picture. And the world's newest currency—Bitcoin—has a lot in common with one of the oldest—gold.

This interview with James was posted on theaureport.com Internet site yesterday.

A two-day wildcat strike at Lonmin's South African platinum mines ended on Thursday, but a union official said workers might walk out at larger rival Anglo American Platinum (Amplats) to protest company plans to axe thousands of jobs.

Lonmin shares jumped more than 3 percent after the world's third-largest platinum producer said 86 percent of its workers had reported for duty, easing fears of prolonged unrest at the mine, the epicentre of months of industry turmoil last year that hit growth in Africa's largest economy.

This Reuters story was posted on the mineweb.com Internet site in the wee hours of this morning.

Gold premiums in India, the world's biggest buyer, more than doubled on speculation that government restrictions on bullion imports by banks to rein in a record current-account deficit would reduce supplies.

The fees jewelers pay dealers for bars jumped as high as $40 an ounce today from $17 to $18 yesterday, Bachhraj Bamalwa, a director at the All India Gems & Jewellery Trade Federation, said by phone from Kolkata. The Reserve Bank of India on May 13 limited imports by banks on a consignment basis to only those required to meet the genuine needs of exporters.

The biggest slump in prices in three decades last month led to shoppers crowding retail outlets across India to buy jewelry and coins, deepening concern that the nation's current-account deficit, the broadest measure of trade, would widen from an all-time high. The rush to buy bullion caused a shortage of physical supplies, prompting importers to charge a hefty premium over London prices, according to Bamalwa.

This Bloomberg news item, filed from Mumbai, was posted on their Internet site in the wee hours of yesterday morning Mountain Daylight Time...and I found it a GATA release.

New images of a possible lost city hidden by Honduran rain forests show what might be the building foundations and mounds of Ciudad Blanca, a never-confirmed legendary metropolis.

Archaeologists and filmmakers Steven Elkins and Bill Benenson announced last year that they had discovered possible ruins in Honduras' Mosquitia region using lidar, or light detection and ranging. Essentially, slow-flying planes send constant laser pulses toward the ground as they pass over the rain forest, imaging the topography below the thick forest canopy.

What the archaeologists found and what the new images reveal are features that could be ancient ruins, including canals, roads, building foundations and terraced agricultural land. The University of Houston archaeologists who led the expedition will reveal their new images and discuss them Wednesday at the American Geophysical Union Meeting of the Americas in Cancun.

This interesting item was posted on the foxnews.com Internet site yesterday...and I thank Marshall Angeles for bringing it to my attention...and now to yours.

To commemorate its 40th anniversary last month, Charles Schwab Corp. created an interactive exhibit that is traveling to its major employment centers, including San Francisco, its headquarters and home to 2,300 of its 14,000 workers.

Here's part of the Q&A that appeared in the article...

Q: How do you feel about the robo-traders who have come to dominate stock trading?

A: They add nothing to the marketplace. They are scalpers. In times of crisis they suck out liquidity. They would argue they add liquidity. I don't think so.

Q: What should be done?

A: If I was czar, you would have the real marketplace here and let them go there and play in their dark pools like it's a video game or a lottery. There is no leadership in the SEC to do that. There is no leadership in government to do that. So consequently we have these unbridled frontiers.

This very interesting 2-page story was posted on the San Francisco Chronicle website early on Monday evening...and I found it tucked away in a GATA release yesterday.

High-frequency trading firms increased their campaign contributions to federal lawmakers by 673 percent from the 2008 to the 2012 election cycle, according to a report that sheds light on their political connections in Washington and efforts to impact policymaking.

The report by the Washington-based nonprofit watchdog Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) comes as U.S. financial market regulators mull whether new rules should be adopted to rein in high-speed traders, whom some critics accuse of harming smaller investors.

This Reuters story, filed from Washington, was posted on their website early Monday afternoon...and I found it in yesterday's edition of the King Report.  It's definitely worth reading.

Attorney General Eric Holder said on Tuesday that he recused himself from a case involving a Department of Justice decision to subpoena phone records from Associated Press reporters and editors.

Holder also said that the Justice Department has ordered a criminal investigation into the IRS' targeting of different conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status. Holder called it "outrageous and unacceptable." He said the Justice Department and FBI were coordinating to determine if any laws were broken.

On the AP phone probe, Holder said that the leak being investigated was one of the "top two or three" leaks he has ever seen, claiming it put the American people at risk.

Well, he's talking the talk...now let's see if he actually walks the walk.  This businessinsider.com news item was posted on their website early yesterday afternoon...and I thank Roy Stephens for sending it our way.

This 6:21 youtube.com video clip is "X" rated for language...however, all the naughty bits have been bleeped out...but I'm sure you're quite good at reading lips by now.  It's definitely worth watching...and if you're interested, I'd watch it right away before it gets pulled for copyright reasons.  Watch it to the very end.  Roy Stephens was kind enough to send it our way.

The impact of the Marketplace Fairness Act (the so-called Internet Sales Tax Bill) which passed the Senate on May 6 received limited coverage in a May 10 Numismaster column. However, it deserves a much more detailed discussion. The negative effect it will have on numismatic and precious metals transactions will be dwarfed by the potentially disastrous economic fallout throughout the U.S. economy.

As former Congressman Jimmy Hayes explained at the American Numismatic Association’s National Money Show in New Orleans last week, the label of “Internet Sales Tax” is completely inaccurate. The bill applies to all forms of remote selling, including by mail, telephone, television, radio and Internet. Nowhere in the bill does the word “Internet” appear.

Here are some of the potential financial pitfalls that lurk if the bill is enacted: The bill enables every jurisdiction that charges sales tax to audit sellers. That includes 45 states, the District of Columbia, 740 American Indian tribes, and thousands of local governments across the country. Maybe a business can absorb the costs of an audit by one or two governments, but what if 20 entities came to audit? Although these audits would be conducted by the state government where the seller lives, the overhead costs of audits could put some smaller sellers out of business.

This essay was posted on the numismaster.com Internet site.  West Virginia reader Elliot Simon, who sent me this article and has some expertise in this matter, says it's a must read for all Americans...so, being Canadian, who am I to argue.

Europe's ongoing economic crisis and lasting currency woes are beginning to rapidly erode faith among Europeans in the EU project. That is the result of a new survey undertaken by the renowned Pew Research Center in Washington D.C. and released on Monday evening.

The institute polled 8,000 people in eight European Union member states in March and arrived at some disturbing results. In just one year, the share of Europeans who view the European Union project favorably plummeted from 60 percent in 2012 to just 45 percent this year. Furthermore, only in Germany does a majority continue to support granting more power to Brussels in an effort to combat the ongoing crisis.

"The European Union is the new sick man of Europe," read the survey's opening lines. "The effort over the past half century to create a more united Europe is now the principal casualty of the euro crisis. The European project now stands in disrepute across much of Europe."

This spiegel.de story, filed from Washington yesterday, is worth reading as well...and my thanks go out to Roy Stephens for his third contribution to today's column.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel wanted to ignore the Alternative for Germany. But with the anti-euro party gaining ground, many among her conservatives say it is time to change strategy. They are concerned that the currency heretics could cost Merkel her re-election.

Germany's center-right has long been in a luxurious position. Whereas conservatives across Europe have been struggling in recent years with the rise of right-wing populist parties eating into their base, Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats have had little to worry about. Though the German left is splintered among three, or even four, parties, the right is a monolith. There is the CDU, its Bavarian wing known as the Christian Social Union, and its favorite coalition partner, the Free Democrats (FDP).

But this election year is different. With the birth of the anti-euro party Alternative for Germany (AfD), Merkel is facing competition from within her own clientele. Furthermore, though her preferred strategy has been that of maintaining complete silence about the AfD so as not to lend it credibility, there are many in Merkel's party who disagree with that approach. And they are increasingly giving voice to their displeasure.

This is another story from the German website spiegel.de.  This one was posted on their website mid-afternoon Europe time...and it's another offering from Roy Stephens.

Luxembourg, one of the EU's smallest but richest countries, has said No to a new law against tax evasion.

Its finance minister, Luc Frieden, told press in Brussels on Monday (13 May): "We won't agree tomorrow to the savings tax directive with an extended use because there's still some need for clarification."

He added: "At the moment we lack precision about a number of questions that need answers … We don't know how this will be written into European law and we're not sure that all the loopholes have been closed, in particular a number of trusts don't seem to be covered."

It also contains a big hole on Austria and Luxembourg.

The two financial centres are exempt from automatic exchange until such time as five non-EU tax havens - Andorra, Liechtenstein, Monaco, San Marino and Switzerland - agree to it as well.

Luxembourg, home to just half a million people, has a GDP per capita which is almost three times the size of the EU average. Its wealth comes mainly from financial services. Its banking sector is worth 22 times the size of its economy.

And you though Cyprus was bad.  Luxembourg is far worse.  No wonder they're opposed to this new tax.  This must read story, filed from Brussels, was posted on the euobserver.com Internet site early yesterday morning Europe time...and my thanks go out to Roy Stephens once again.

The E.U. on Monday (13 May) said many Cypriot banks do not know who their customers really are, but wired Nicosia €2 billion anyway.

Commenting on a recent study on money laundering in the Mediterranean island, eurozone finance ministers said in a joint communiqué that it must do better on "customer due diligence by banks" and must fix "the functioning of [its] company registry."

Dutch finance chief Jeroen Dijsselbloem, who chairs the ministers' meetings, added: "This report shows that while the legal [anti-money-laundering] framework is OK, the implementation is really lacking."

This is another story from the euobserver.com Internet site.  This one was filed minutes after midnight Europe time yesterday.  It's definitely worth the read...and my thanks to Roy Stephens for his final offering in today's column.

This CNBC Asia video clip with Jim runs for 4:49 minutes...and was conducted on Monday evening in North America...Tuesday morning in Hong Kong.  It's definitely worth watching...and I thank reader Harold Jacobsen for sharing it with us.

1. Ron Rosen: "This Key Chart Tells You All You Need to Know About Gold".  2. Egon von Greyerz: "The Move to Global Hyperinflation is Now Accelerating".   3. Richard Russell: "We Are Witnessing Unprecedented Events".  4. William Kaye: "How a Criminal Syndicate of Banks is Raping the Gold Market".  5. William Kaye audio interview Part One...and Part Two.  6. James Turk audio interview.  7.  Andrew Maguire audio interview.

Today’s Sprott’s Thoughts relate comments made by Sprott USA Chairman Rick Rule in the May 2013 issue of Bonner & Partner’s Family Office Strategic Review .

“Natural resource speculators know that past uranium bull markets offered some ’explosive’ (pun intended) upside. I have been fortunate enough to experience two uranium bull markets: the 1970s bull market, which saw a tenfold increase in the uranium price and a hundredfold increase in some uranium equities, and the bull market of the last decade, which saw a repeat of the earlier performance. If past is prologue, the stage may be set for a third uranium bull run.

“Conditions have changed so completely since the 1970s that a thorough examination of that market teaches us little that is relevant today. But one thing about the 1970s bull market is instructive -the market collapse was partially caused by two catastrophic plant failures: at Chernobyl and Three Mile Island.

The bull market of the 2000s, he says, gives fodder to the case for higher uranium, because the bear market that preceded it is similar to conditions we experience today.

This commentary was posted on the sprottgroup.com Internet site yesterday...and it's worth your time, if you have some.

The Indian consumer — that’s us — is currently public enemy No. 1. We are apparently responsible for leaving the nation’s balance sheet in a shambles with our insatiable lust for gold.

If [the] government and the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) had their way, anyone spotted buying gold would be flayed. Luckily, we are still not that sort of country.

But both are doing everything possible to punish us. We can’t wear our own jewellery above Rs 1 lakh on an overseas holiday. We can’t buy coins easily. The paperwork at a jewellery store is designed to turn away everyone except the most determined. The higher customs duty intends to make gold prohibitively expensive.

Plus, jewellers are being bludgeoned out of business. They can’t import gold. Gold will be rationed through government-owned banks, which will cater only to “genuine” demand. And they are being threatened with draconian laws.

This must read commentary was posted in The Economic Times of India early this morning IST...and I thank Mumbai reader Avi Raheja for finding it for us.

Accelerating gold imports contribute to the current account deficit, which analysts say is one of the biggest concerns for the Indian economy. The government has tried to curb India's appetite for gold with import duties while the central bank has imposed restrictions on the import of the metal, but buyers don't care. They are actually rushing to buy before the authorities clamp down on gold.

 On Monday's Akshaya Trithiya festival, the demand was so high that some jewellers opened their shops at 7 am. People stood in queues for hours to buy coins, bars, and ornaments, hoisting sales to the brisk pace last seen in 2008 when gold prices were half of the current level.

The sudden surge in demand has prompted the World Gold Council to say India's imports this year will exceed earlier estimates of 865-965 tonnes, said the council's managing director, Somasundaram PR.

"Consumers are buying both coins and jewellery. Since coins can be bought on the spot, they are flying off the shelves quickly. Orders for jewellery are being placed which may be delivered at a later date," he said.

This is another story from The Economic Times of India.  This one was posted on their website on Tuesday...and I found it in a GATA release.

South African workers of world No. 3 platinum producer Lonmin launched a wildcat strike on Tuesday, halting all of the company's mine operations and reigniting fears of deadly unrest that rocked the industry last year.

The platinum belt towns of Rustenburg and Marikana, which saw a bloody Lonmin strike last year, are a volatile flashpoint of labour strife and tensions are running high with job cuts and wage talks looming.

The share price of Lonmin slid over 6 percent and the rand currency hit 3-week lows, underscoring investor jitters over a potential repeat of the 2012 mines turmoil, which hammered platinum and gold production and triggered credit downgrades for Africa's largest economy.

This Reuters story, filed from Johannesburg yesterday, was posted on the mineweb.com Internet site...and I thank Manitoba reader Ulrike Marx for her first story in today's column.  It's worth reading.

Examining U.S. trade data, we were surprised to see that South Africa’s $402 million trade surplus with the United States in January had turned into a $689 million deficit by March. Why? 

It turns out the $1.1 billion swing is entirely due to unusual shipments of gold from the US to South Africa in February and March. So far this year, 20,013 kg of unwrought gold, worth $982 million, has left John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK), in New York, for somewhere in South Africa, according to the US Census Bureau’s foreign trade division. (Unwrought gold includes bars created from scrap as well as cast bars, but not bullion, jewelry, powder, or currency.)

The shipments from JFK were the only unwrought gold to leave the US for South Africa in 2013; another large shipment occurred in September 2012.

This story was sent to me on Monday by reader Federico Schiavio...and I really didn't know what to make of it.  But it spread like wildfire on the Internet yesterday...and this is what James Turk had to say about it...

"The Rand Refinery is one of the largest in the world. South Africa used to mine 1,000 tones per year, all of which was refined at Rand Refinery. South Africa now mines less than 1/3rd of that weight. So there is a lot of unused fabricating capacity at the Rand Refinery. Given that the Swiss refiners are working 24/7 and backlogged, it is not surprising to me that someone would send gold to the Rand Refinery for fabricating, whether Krugerrands, kilobars, tael bars or whatever."

"That exports from JFK are rising is not surprising either. The US economy continues to do poorly, so a lot of old jewellery and stuff is being sold for cash, to help make ends meet. So these growing shipments from JFK is just part of the now well-established trend that gold is being shipped from west to east."

This very interesting essay, with some excellent charts, was posted on the qz.com Internet site yesterday...and I thank reader Federico Schiavio for bringing it to our attention.

The Perth Mint of Australia achieved record breaking sales for gold bullion products in April, as lower precious metals prices spurred a huge leap in demand. Silver bullion sales also jumped to the highest level in six months.

The Perth Mint began publicly reporting its monthly gold and silver bullion sales in March 2012, providing a window of insight into demand for physical precious metals. Sales spikes have occurred in September 2012 to coincide with the release of the new designs and last month to coincide with the decline in metals prices.

For the month of April 2013, sales of gold as coins and minted products reached 111,505.06 troy ounces. This amount was more than double the previous month and up by an astounding 534.43% from the year ago period when 17,575.64 troy ounces were sold.

This article is well worth your time and was posted on the coinupdate.com Internet site yesterday...and I thank Elliot Simon for bringing it to our attention.

Portugal will not replicate a deal that allowed Cyprus to sell its gold reserves under its bailout, Bank of Portugal Governor Carlos Costa said on Tuesday, adding that its reserves were unchanged at 382.5 tonnes.

"It is not applicable in Portugal," he told reporters. "What happened in Cyprus (on gold reserves), just like a lot of other things there, cannot be replicated in Portugal."

"If we can say today that the Bank of Portugal is among a small group of central banks with adequate risk provisioning ... is mostly because we have significant gold reserves," Costa said. The value of Portugal's reserves rose 3.6 percent last year to 15.51 billion euros due to gold price fluctuations, but Costa said the actual quantity remained the same.

This Reuters news item was posted on their website early yesterday morning EDT...and I thank Ulrike Marx for digging it up on our behalf.

Consumers will sell the least used gold in five years after prices tumbled into a bear market, curbing a source of metal that typically accounts for about one in every three ounces of global supply.

Refiners will handle about 1,550 metric tons of old jewelry and other discarded metal this year, 4 percent less than in 2012 and the least since 2008, Toronto-based TD Securities Inc. estimates. The amount is valued now at $71.4 billion, from $84.5 billion at this year’s peak. Recycling more than doubled in the decade through 2011 as prices rose to a record. A majority of the 38 analysts surveyed by Bloomberg last month said gold’s streak of 12 consecutive annual gains is over.

“April was the worst month in memory,” said Arthur Abramov, the owner of Manhattan Buyers Inc., a cash-for-gold operator in New York that saw volumes drop to 300 ounces a month from 500 ounces. “A lot of people were shocked, and a lot of people were standoffish about selling.”

This Bloomberg story, filed from New York, was posted on their website late yesterday morning Mountain Daylight Time...and I thank Ulrike Marx for her third and final offering in today's column.

Whenever the Federal Reserve wants to tweak the dials of the economy -- or pretend that it can -- it turns first to its sock puppet at The Wall Street Journal, John Hilsenrath, and "leaks" a rumor of policy change. They like to do this late on Fridays when financial markets are about to close, so that market players will have a whole weekend to ponder the Fed's actions like medieval viziers reading goat entrails.

Last Friday's puddle of steaming guts was a supposed preview of the Fed's "exit strategy" from its reckless policy of "quantitative easing" or "money" creation (or "liquidity," if you like). In other words, they supposedly intend to stop juicing the financial markets with fake wealth, i.e. capital not accumulated from real productive activity, but just fictively created on computer hard drives. For the past year they have been doing this to the tune of $85 billion a month, "buying" US Treasury bonds and bills and an assortment of miscellaneous securities (mostly trash that can't be pawned off on anyone else) through their so-called "primary dealer" bank cohorts, the too-big-to-fail usual suspects, who "earn" hefty transaction fees in the process of conveying all these pixels from Point A to Point B. These interventions are called Permanent Open Market Operations, or PoMo.

The theory all along has been that this $85 billion a month would seep down to Main Street to provoke spending (increasing the "velocity of money) and therefore "jump start" the economy. The theory has proven itself to be complete horseshit, of course. All it has done is suppress interest rates on bonds, depriving old people of income off their savings by so doing. It also artificially jacked up reckless lending on loans for houses, cars, and college degrees, juiced the share price of stocks, and boosted food prices. Meanwhile, an increasingly former middle class languishes in a purgatory of foreclosure, penury, and desperation. The Fed can't really do anything to help them. It can only burden them with more easy-credit debt, especially their college-age children. But ours is a financialized economy and finance is too abstruse for most ordinary people to understand, so they just muddle along in a fog of dashed hopes and repossession.

Wow!  Mr. Kunstler lets it all hang out...no shades of grey at all...and a Matt Taibbi-style 'pithy prose' warning is in effect here.  I hate to start out with a must read, but that's what it is...and I thank reader Richard Sypher for today's first story.

“Before the era of computer-dominated trading, it was slightly easier to identify winning advisers in advance, because you could more easily understand and evaluate what they were doing,” says Lawrence G. Tint, chairman of Quantal, a risk-management firm for institutional investors, and former U.S. CEO of Barclays Global Investors. reason why machines are winning is our inability to process lots of financial data, which is getting more complex and voluminous every year.

Terrance Odean, a finance professor at the University of California, Berkeley, has extensively studied the behavior and performance of individual traders. He points out that there used to be another human being on the other side of the trade when an individual bought or sold a stock. “Now it’s a supercomputer you’re competing with,” says Odean.

“Individuals are no longer playing against Grandmasters; they’re playing against Deep Blue,” he says, referring to the famous battle in the 1990s between chess’s Grandmasters and International Business Machines’ supercomputer Deep Blue. Individual investors “will almost certainly lose.”

This commentary by Mark Hulbert was posted on the marketwatch.com Internet site on Friday afternoon EDT...and I thank reader U.D. for sending it along.

The IRS conservative targeting scandal is going from bad to worse.

Following the Friday revelations that despite all prior appeals to the contrary, the IRS did in fact apply political bias and prejudice in targeting conservative groups who had applied for exempt status (and who knows what other prejudice when targeting non-liberals entities - perhaps it is time to do an analysis of what the ratio of conservatives to liberals audited each year is?), culminating with the farcical response by an IRS official during the Friday press meeting...

... this may be just the beginning of a major political scandal which in addition to tangential fallout crushing the alleged "impartiality" of the Obama administration, additionally validates many of the heretofore right-wing "conspiracy theories." And as Zero Hedge has shown time and again, it is not a conspiracy theory if it is a conspiracy fact.

What makes things worse for the IRS, the US Treasury, its then-head Tim Geithner, and of course, Barack Obama, is that according to a draft report prepared by the Treasury Department's inspector general for tax administration, expected to be released this week, and seen by AP, is that senior IRS officials knew agents were targeting tea party groups as early as the spring/summer of 2011, well before the 2012 election as we announced before. What makes matters worse, is that it was not only "low-level" employees as the IRS tried to justify its prejudice on Friday, but high level personnel, among which at least one head of division that oversees tax-exempt organizations, and likely  all the way to the very top, that were well aware of the witch hunt.

This news item was posted on the Zero Hedge website on Saturday evening...and it's courtesy of Marshall Angeles.

As reported on Friday, the most recent example of a breach in informational Chinese walls was confirmed at Bloomberg, where it was discovered that reporters have the same degree of client surveillance as workers on the API/terminal side. The reason why this is problematic is that since Bloomberg is a monopolist in the financial terminal industry, with such competitor attempts as Reuters' Eikon being massive failures, virtually every finance professional needs a terminal (even if the rate of sale of such terminals is slowing down as a result of the ongoing financial margin headaches). Which means that Bloomberg journos, an increasingly competitive service to the likes of Dow Jones, Reuters and AP, may have had an unfair advantage when it comes to tracking their "pray" - Bloomberg's own clients.

According to Reuters, such client surveillance may have been what tipped of Bloomberg about Bruno Iksil's behavioral patterns while at JPM: "At JPMorgan, the bank's public relations staffers also fumed to one another last year that reporters called repeatedly to inquire whether Bruno Iskil, the "London Whale" trader who was part of a team that lost more than $6 billion in losses, had left the bank because he had not logged onto his terminal in several days, a source with direct knowledge of these discussions said. JPMorgan did not formally bring the matter to Bloomberg's attention, the source said. Bloomberg said it had no record of a complaint."

And now, following the original Goldman complaint which Bloomberg said ended such informational commingling, it is the turn of the Treasury and the Fed to complain.

Wow...the rot goes right to the core.  This is simply unbelievable.  You have to know that the whole system is compromised when you see must read articles like this one.  This is another posting from Zero Hedge...this one from late Sunday morning...and is the second offering in a row from Marshall Angeles.

And so the final curtain falls on the myth of what was supposed to be, in its own words, the "most transparent administration" in history.

As it turns out, the big Friday story of Bloomberg journalists snooping on clients was just amateur hour compared to what the AP was about to serve. In fact, the Watergate affair may soon appear like a walk in the park compared to the First Amendment shitstorm that is about to be unleashed following the just reported news that the US Department of Justice had "secretly obtained two months of telephone records of reporters and editors for The Associated Press in what the news cooperative's top executive called a "massive and unprecedented intrusion" into how news organizations gather the news."

First amendment? Freedom of speech and press? Surely not when it comes to the Nobel-peace prize winning President and those who dare to expose his secret ways.

And what's worst, is that the AP breach has all the makings of a spiteful hack driven by personal vengeance against one of America's premier news outlets.

Wow!  The rot continues...and these are only the things that we know about.  Rest assured, dear reader, that it's probably far worse than this, as one can only imagine the stuff that's going on that we don't know about.  This news item is another from Zero Hedge...this one from late yesterday afternoon...and the third article in a row from Marshall Angeles.

A top US financial regulator has launched a broad inquiry into the legitimacy of more than 1 million energy and metals transactions by the biggest traders in commodities markets over the past two years.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission has issued a "special call" asking Wall Street banks and other traders to provide documents that would prove recent derivatives transactions known as "exchanges of futures for swaps" were legal. Lawyers at the CFTC enforcement division are also scrutinising the trades for possible violations.

"They are looking at a huge amount of trading," an industry lawyer said.

The CFTC push shows how authorities are clamping down on previously unregulated derivatives dealing in markets from commodities to interest rates after the financial crisis. The CFTC this week is set to impose new trading rules for over-the-counter markets, even as the Group of 20 industrial countries seeks to shift more derivatives to electronic platforms.

Another meaningless investigation, as the CFTC's fifth anniversary of the silver price fixing investigation approaches. This article appeared in the Financial Times of London yesterday...and it's posted in the clear in this GATA release.

Legendary investor says stock market is in state of "euphoria," while economy is still in the dumps.

At least one notable investor thinks we may be in bubble trouble again.

Sam Zell on Thursday at the SALT hedge fund conference in Las Vegas said stocks are due for a fall. The legendary real estate investor thinks the market is out of touch with what is really going on in the economy.

"Right now you are buying at an all-time high," says Zell. "And there are times when stocks hit a high, and then go higher, but that's when you have a good economy."

This must read commentary was posted on the finance.fortune.cnn.com Internet site early on Friday morning...and is an article I found in yesterday's edition of the King Report.

President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner wants tax evaders hiding about $160 billion in dollars to help finance Argentina’s oil-producing ambitions. Her offer: Buy a 4 percent bond or face the prospect of jail time.

The tax authority announced the plan May 7, highlighting its information-sharing agreements with 40 nations and warning Argentines who don’t use the three-month amnesty window that they risk fines or arrest. Evaders have two options for their cash and the only one paying interest will be a dollar bond due in 2016 to finance YPF SA, the state oil company. The 4 percent rate is a third the average 13.85 yield on Argentine debt and less than the 4.6 percent in emerging markets.

A year after seizing YPF, Fernandez is funneling more money into the nation’s energy industry as the government struggles to boost production from the world’s third-biggest shale oil reserves. With Argentina already committed to pumping $2 billion of central bank reserves into a fund for energy investments and the highest borrowing costs in emerging markets keeping it from issuing debt abroad, the government is eyeing the billions of undeclared dollars that Argentines hold to help shore up reserves that have dwindled to a six-year low.

Such a deal...!  Why would anyone refuse?  This story showed up on the Bloomberg website early Friday morning Mountain Daylight Time...and I thank Marshall Angeles for his last offering in today's column.

The European Commission wants to tighten tax loopholes on savings of EU citizens who hold accounts in member states and in Switzerland, Andorra, San Marino, Monaco and Lichtenstein.

"We are looking for an ambitious approach by member states. In our view, a strong and united approach from the European Union against tax havens is very important," European Commission spokeswoman Emer Traynor, told reporters in Brussels on Monday (13 May).

Current EU legislation under the 2005 savings tax directive aims to tackle cross-border tax evasion through an information exchange system for tax authorities among member states. The system helps authorities identify people that receive a savings income but in a member state where they do not live.

This story, filed from Brussels, was posted on the euobserver.com Internet site late yesterday afternoon Europe time...and I thank Roy Stephens for his second contribution to today's column.

The Catholic Primate of Spain has called for a profound shift in Europe's debt crisis policy to avert social collapse, warning that soaring unemployment in Spain and across southern Europe has become "very dangerous".

"We have to change direction, otherwise this is going to bring down whole political systems," said Braulio Rodriguez, the Archbishop of Toledo.

"It is very dangerous. Unemployment has reached tremendous levels and austerity cuts don't seem to be producing results," he told The Telegraph.

"There is deep unease across the whole society, and it is not just in Spain. We have to give people some hope or this is going to foment conflict and mutual hatred."

Europe's Catholic bishops have been careful not to stray into the political debate or criticise EU economic strategy but the Archbishop said the current course is untenable.

This Ambrose Evans-Pritchard offering was posted on the telegraph.co.uk Internet site on Sunday afternoon...and I thank Roy Stephens for bringing this article to our attention.

policies driving down the value of its currency, while keeping up pressure on Germany to help lift growth in Europe.

At the end of two days of talks among the Group of 7 finance ministers outside London, other nations appeared to accept — at least for now — Japan’s explanation that its new monetary efforts were meant to stimulate its domestic economy, rather than to drive down the yen on international currency markets.

The chancellor of the Exchequer in Britain, George Osborne, said on Saturday that ministers from the G-7, made up of the United States, Germany, Japan, Britain, Italy, France and Canada, had reaffirmed earlier commitments on exchange rates and agreed to make sure policies are “oriented towards achieving domestic objectives.” Other officials described the talks as in-depth and positive. Last week, the dollar breached the 100-yen mark for the first time in over four years.

This article was posted on The New York Times website on Saturday...and I thank Phil Barlett for bringing it to our attention.

Not much to add here. If there still is any confusion why China is desperately manipulating its economic data, so blatantly in fact that virtually everyone has now noticed, this chart should put all doubt to rest. According to CLSA's Chris Wood using NEA data, China's monthly power consumption (the most accurate proxy for underlying economic strength according to the current premier) growth slowed from 5.5% YoY in Jan-Feb 2013 to 1.9% YoY in March, the slowest growth rate since May 2009.

This Zero Hedge news item was posted on their website late yesterday morning EDT...and my thanks go out to reader 'David in California'.

Outspoken Hong Kong hedge fund manager William Kaye spoke with King World News about disappearing gold inventories, financial destruction and the Fed.  Kaye, who 25 years ago worked for Goldman Sachs in mergers and acquisitions and who is the founder of Pacific Group, had this to say in Part I of an extraordinary written interview series which will be released today.  Part 2 is linked here.

A strong stomach and a tremendous amount of patience are required for gold stock investors these days, as miners have been exhibiting their typical volatility pattern.

That’s why I often say to anticipate before you participate, because gold stocks are historically twice as volatile as U.S. stocks. As of March 31, 2013, using 10-year data, the NYSE Arca Gold BUGS Index (HUI) had a rolling one-year standard deviation of nearly 35 percent. The S&P 500’s was just under 15 percent.
 
I believe the drivers for the yellow metal remain intact, so for investors who can tolerate the ups and downs, gold stocks are a compelling buy. Here are three reasons...

This commentary by Frank was posted on the usfunds.com Internet site on Friday...and I thank West Virginia reader Elliot Simon for sending it.

Gold and silver market manipulation is a topic of Korelin Economics Report, wherein Al Korelin interviews Sprott Asset Management's John Embry. The interview is 10 minutes long and can be heard at the Segment 3 section of the Korelin Internet site.

I found this interview embedded in a GATA release on Saturday...and it's posted on the kereport.com Internet site.

April's abrupt plunge in the gold price was an operation of the Federal Reserve and major banks to protect the Fed's "quantitative easing" and paper gold shorts that can't deliver the metal they have sold, Pacific Group founder and fund manager William S. Kaye writes in the May market letter of Pacific Group's Greater Asian Hedge Fund.

Kaye, who in January announced his fund's commitment to a major purchase of gold, adds that gold exchange-traded funds are being used to manipulate the gold price and essentially are being looted by the banks that are short the metal. He expects paper gold to default this year and the gold price to be reset upward.

By Pacific Group's kind permission, Kaye's letter is posted at gata.org Internet site on Saturday...and it falls into the absolute must read category.  I thank Chris Powell for wordsmithing the preamble.

Mine production won't be doing much to meet gold demand for many years, Mike Kosares of Centennial Precious Metals writes on Saturday. The sudden interruption of Barrick Gold's giant Pascua-Lama mine project on the border of Chile and Argentina is a case in point, Kosares observes. His commentary is headlined "The Hidden Crisis in the Gold Business" and it's posted on the Centennial's Internet site.  Once again I thank Chris Powell for writing this paragraph of introduction.

GoldMoney research director Alasdair Macleod writes about how his inquiry to the United Kingdom's Financial Services Authority produced an acknowledgment that the custodianship of the metal nominally held by the gold and silver exchange-traded funds GLD and SLV is not regulated by government.

As a result, Macleod concludes, there is enormous counterparty risk for GLD and SLV investors, in a financial crisis central banks more easily can seize metal held by bullion banks, and the two ETFs should not be considered havens against such a crisis. His commentary is headlined "The Role of GLD and SLV" and it's posted at GoldMoney's Internet site.

A limited edition Sachin Tendulkar gold coins, with the senior cricketer’s face and signature embossed on them, were launched today on the auspicious day of ‘Akshaya Tritiya’.

Valuemart Gold and Jewels launched one lakh Sachin Tendulkar gold coins, each weighing 10 grams, in the senior cricketer’s presence here.

The 24 karat gold coin is priced at Rs 34,000 and will be available on valuemartgold.com and leading jewellery stores across the country. The company had signed up Tendulkar as its brand ambassador for a three-year period in February this year.

Indian cricket star Sachin Tendulkar would be the equivalent of Tiger Woods to golf enthusiasts in the United States.  My guess is that they'll sell a lot of these 10 gram coins.  This story, filed from Mumbai, was posted on the firstpost.com Internet site on Monday IST...and I thank Mumbai reader Avinash Raheja for sending it along.

India's economic boogeyman, the monthly trade deficit, continues to rear its ugly head, this and every time, driven be the country's insatiable desire for gold which is so powerful, the country took full advantage of the plunge in gold prices, and saw business imports of gold soar by 138% y/y in April, forcing the trade deficit to hit a 3 month high of $17.8 billion as more fiat left the country in return for bringing in more of the "barbarous relic." Gold imports more than doubled on both a Y/Y and sequential basis, with gold accounting for $7.5 billion, or 18% of total imports, compared to $3.1 billion in March.

As long as the price suppression of paper gold prices continues, don't expect any notable changes to both of the above trends.

This Zero Hedge posting from early yesterday morning is courtesy of Phil Barlett...and is definitely worth reading.

Hedge funds increased bets on lower gold prices after investors pulled a record $20.8 billion from bullion funds this year while BlackRock Inc., the world’s biggest money manager, said it’s still bullish.

Gold is having its worst start to a year since 1982 after dropping 14 percent and sliding into a bear market in April. Holdings in exchange-traded funds backed by bullion tumbled to the lowest since July 2011 even as central banks print money on an unprecedented scale to boost growth. BlackRock’s President Robert Kapito said May 9 he would still buy the metal, echoing billionaire John Paulson, who’s sticking with a bullish view even after losing 27 percent in his Gold Fund last month.

This Bloomberg article was posted on their website early yesterday afternoon MDT...and I thank reader Ken Hurt for bringing it to our attention.

Many junior mining investors have run off with their tails between their legs. And who can blame them when even the portfolios of market veterans like Peter Grandich, publisher and editor of The Grandich Letter, have taken a beating? But before you cash in, you might want to read why Grandich still has hope for $2,000/oz gold, and which companies he believes have the mojo to make it through this trough in this interview with The Gold Report.

Rick Rule is the founder and chairman of Sprott Global Resource Investments Ltd. As many readers know, he's one of the most successful resource investors in the world, so our own Jeff Clark interviewed him to get his take on the recent crash in gold. In the process, he found out why Rick thinks the capitulation process may not be over, what catalysts he believes could turn the industry around, and why he's thrilled about this market.

Read on to learn why Rick thinks a lifetime buying opportunity is shaping up in the junior resource sector…

This commentary by Rick was posted in the Monday edition of The Casey Daily Dispatch...and the above introduction was written by Casey Research's Senior Metals Investment Strategist, Louis James.

Top global platinum producer South Africa lost at least 750,000 ounces of output last year to strikes, shaft closures and government-ordered safety stoppages, metals refiner Johnson Matthey said in a report on Monday.

The estimate is higher than other forecasts and highlights the gravity of a wave of illegal strikes, rooted in a union turf war, that hit the sector last year and triggered violence which killed over 50 people.

A government safety drive that saw several mine stoppages early in the year also curtailed output.

This Reuters story, filed from Johannesburg, found a home on the mineweb.com Internet site yesterday...and I thank Manitoba reader Ulrike Marx for bringing it to my attention...and now to yours.

Yesterday, former Assistant U.S. Treasury Secretary Paul Craig Roberts condemned the rigging of the gold and silver markets by the Federal Reserve as emblematic of a gangster state protecting banks at the expense of the public. Roberts' commentary is headlined "Gangster State America" and it's posted at his Internet site.  This is a must read for sure...and I found it posted over at the gata.org Internet site.