Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of the best-selling book “The Black Swan,” said the current global market turmoil is worse than it was in 2008 because countries such as the U.S. have larger sovereign-debt loads.

“Definitely, we face a bigger problem now and we will pay a higher price,” Taleb, who is also a professor at New York University, said today at a news conference in Kiev, referring to the turmoil during the last global financial crisis. “The structure of the problem has still not been understood. We haven’t done anything constructive in three and a half years. Nobody wants to do anything drastic now.”

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke signaled yesterday he’ll push forward with further expansion of monetary stimulus if needed.

In a fiat currency regime, there is no other way out. It's either "print or die" until it becomes "print and die". This Bloomberg story was sent to me by Roy Stephens...and the link is here.

Employers announced plans to shed 115,730 workers from their payrolls in September, making it the worst job cut month in over two years. Heavy reductions planned by the military accounted for a large portion of September job cuts, signaling what may lie ahead as the federal government seeks across-the-board cuts in spending.

September job cuts were 126 percent higher than the 51,114 announced in August, according to the latest report on monthly job cuts released Wednesday by global outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, Inc. They were 212 percent higher than September 2010, when employers announced just 37,151 job cuts. Last month’s total is the highest since April 2009, when 132,590 job cuts were announced.

Casey Research's own Bud Conrad sent around this official press release yesterday...and the link is here.

Amidst all the bad news coming out of Wall Street and the economy, here’s something good: California has backed out of the talks for the long-awaited foreclosure settlement, now making it far from likely that the so-called “Attorneys General” deal will happen anytime soon.

California Attorney General Kamala Harris sent a letter to state and federal regulators explaining that she pulled out because the proposed settlement amount for banks guilty of bad securitization practices leading up to the mortgage crisis – said to be in the $20 billion range – was too small. From Business Week: "Harris says in a letter to state and federal negotiators that the pending settlement is "inadequate" and gives bank officials too much immunity."

This is a Matt Taibbi blog that was posted over at Rolling Stone magazine on Wednesday. It will take about five minutes out of your life to read, but it's well worth it. Once again I thank Roy Stephens...and the link is here.

“Bank of New York is going to go down, Eric. Between Bank of New York Mellon and State Street, these two institutions have stolen between $6 to $10 billion from tens of millions of Americans retirement savings accounts. It’s been a hell of a crime spree for the bank, but now they are being brought to justice.”

Harry Markopolos has lead the team that spearheaded this investigation from the beginning. Harry and his team were the first to expose this fraud. Markopolos also told KWN, “The New York Attorney General filed suit on Tuesday (against Bank of New York Mellon) for stealing money from pension funds on currency transactions. This theft has been from tens of millions of Americans, policemen, firemen, librarians, municipal workers, judges and the list goes on and on and they’ve been doing it for decades.

This is an amazing read but, once again, what the banks are doing to their clients is no surprise to me. The link to the King World News blog is here.

American militants like Anwar al-Awlaki are placed on a kill or capture list by a secretive panel of senior government officials, which then informs the president of its decisions, according to officials.

There is no public record of the operations or decisions of the panel, which is a subset of the White House's National Security Council, several current and former officials said. Neither is there any law establishing its existence or setting out the rules by which it is supposed to operate.

The role of the president in ordering or ratifying a decision to target a citizen is fuzzy. White House spokesman Tommy Vietor declined to discuss anything about the process.

This is no surprise to me. Washington state reader S.A. sent me this Reuters story yesterday...and the link is here.

Who was it who said that QE – printing money by another name – is the last resort of desperate governments, when all other options have failed?

As Labour's Ed Balls gleefully points out, it was indeed George Osborne, the current Chancellor of the Exchequer. It's the sort of thing politicians say in opposition...and then bitterly regret when they get into government and have to take the decisions.

Yet, in a sense, his words are even truer today than they were then. You wouldn't choose further to expand the Bank of England's purchases of government debt unless you were desperate, and all other options had been exhausted. The Chancellor condemned it then; now he welcomes it...and by the time this new bout of asset purchases is over, the Bank of England will own nearly half of the market in three to 25-year gilts.

The Bank of England may have to inject as much as £500bn into the economy to rescue Britain's faltering recovery, economists warned after the central bank shocked markets by restarting its money printing programme.

It's "print or die" time in England as well. Roy Stephens sent me this story filed late last night in The Telegraph...and the link is here.

It's a buying opportunity, says Frank Holmes of San Antonio-based U.S. Global Investors.

Holmes thinks two ongoing factors will drive gold prices to double again over the next few years: The "fear trade," in which traders seek to hedge their exposure to fiat-currencies while governments continue to spend way more than they take in, and the "love trade," in which millions of newly wealthy consumers in India and China load up on jewelry.

Holmes is not bothered by the fact that no one seems to know how to value gold [i.e., that there's no "inherent" net worth to it, the way there is with assets that deliver predictable dividend streams]. If you look at gold prices relative to other assets, Holmes says, you can get a sense of fair value--and it's much higher than today's level.

Frank is interviewed by Henry Blodget of the Daily Ticker...and the video [which runs 4:48] is posted over at finance.yahoo.com. I thank reader Randall Reinwasser for sharing it with us...and the link is here.

Venezuela's central bank says almost all of its $11 billion in gold reserves held abroad will start making its way to the country in mid-November; analysts say it will be a slow and expensive process.

Venezuela will begin repatriating its gold reserves from Western nations by mid-November, the central bank head said on Wednesday.
"We're in the final phase of the logistics ... Soon the Venezuelan people will know when the first boat is coming," Nelson Merentes said, according to state news agency AVN.

This Reuters story from yesterday was posted over at mineweb.com...and, once again, I thank Casey Research's own Bud Conrad for passing this story around. The link is here.

Vietnam's central bank has allowed five banks and Saigon Jewelry Co (SJC), the country's top gold trader, to reopen offshore gold trading accounts to help narrow the gap between domestic and international prices, state-run media said on Thursday.

The six institutions will sell up to six tonnes of gold from their stock to increase supply in the domestic market.

In March 2010 the central bank ordered Vietnamese gold traders to close offshore trading accounts in a move to restrict gold transactions to help stabilise the domestic currency, the dong.

Well, dear reader, it appears that domestic demand is now so strong that it has driven up prices to a point where if the government doesn't allow legal imports, gold smuggling [which probably has never stopped] will run rampant again.

It's a lose/lose situation for the dong...but a win/win for the citizens, as they are buying all the precious metals they can afford before the dong becomes worthless on international currency markets. This short Reuters story is a must read...and I stole it from a GATA release yesterday. The link is here.

If you’re looking for a safe place to put your investments, Chad Venzke has a suggestion: Dig a hole in the ground four feet deep, pack gold and silver in a piece of plastic PVC pipe, seal it, and bury it.

The 30-year-old central Wisconsin resident trusts no one but himself to store and protect his gold and silver—not banks, not investment funds, and certainly not the government. It’s precisely because of this suspicion of institutions that he invests in those metals to begin with. In case of emergency, "you always want to have your precious metals within arm’s reach," he says.

This Bloomberg story from yesterday was sent to me by Washington state reader S.A...and it's well worth your time. The link is here.

Here's a John Hathaway blog that Eric King sent me yesterday afternoon. I've actually found the time to read it...and it's a must read...as is everything that John has to say. The link to the King World News blog is here.

Here's another story I stole from a GATA release yesterday.

GATA secretary treasurer Chris Powell, is the senior editor at the Journal Enquirer in Manchester, Connecticut. Here is his preamble to this History Channel TV program that he was directly involved with. All four of us at GATA have been sitting on this story, wondering if the program was ever going to get made...and if made, actually allowed to air. But here it is at last...and I'll leave the rest to Chris.

"GATA and your secretary/treasurer figure heavily in a new edition of the television program "Brad Meltzer's Decoded," which examines the question of whether the U.S. government really still has any gold in the vault at Fort Knox, Kentucky. The program, to be broadcast on the History Channel, stresses the secrecy and unaccountability of the government in regard to anything related to gold.

It's an absolute must watch, of course...and absolute dynamite as well. The program has been posted on the History Channel's Internet site. I get the impression from what's written on their website, that there are two full episodes of this. If that's the case, then this first one runs for 45 minutes...and the link is here.