Here's a CNBC video clip where Larry Kudlow and Jim Rogers have at it.

The clip is from Monday...and it was posted on Tuesday over at the economicpolicyjournal.com website on Tuesday. It only runs for 3 minutes, but is definitely worth your time.

I thank Nitin Agrawal for sending this to me early yesterday morning...and the link is here.

Yesterday in this column I was bitching and moaning about the fact that the resurrected Volcker Rule still allowed the banks to trade commodities and rig the gold and silver markets.

Well, over at zerohedge.com, they were apoplectic..."The Final Draft of the Volcker Rule was published for comment at the end of September. Even skipping our traditional rant about government bureaucracy, it is a document over 200 pages long, in which the word “exemption” occurs on no less than 100 pages (it is used 426 times in total). At a quick glance, each section starts with a fairly draconian statement. Then each subsection waters down the bold initial statement with exemption after exemption. As we began the daunting task of trying to make sense of these rules and what they might mean in practice, it became clear there was little point in rushing to do the work."

I consider this Phil Barlett offering a must read...and the link to this zerohedge.com piece is here.

Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, which faces a state takeover of its finances, filed for bankruptcy after failing to pay the debt on a trash-to-energy incinerator.

The City Council made its 4-3 decision yesterday against the advice of a city attorney who said members did not follow proper procedure. It’s this year’s ninth bankruptcy filing by a municipal-bond issuer and the first by a U.S. state capital in at least three decades, said James Spiotto, a partner at Chapman & Cutler in Chicago who tracks such cases.

“This was a last resort,” said Mark D. Schwartz, the council’s Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania-based lawyer. “They’re at their wits’ end.”

I thank Washington state reader S.A. for sending along this story that was posted over at Bloomberg yesterday...and the link is here.

New compliance burdens tied to proposed regulations seeking to limit bank speculative trading could drive firms like Goldman Sachs & Co. and Morgan Stanley to consider ending their status as bank holding companies, according to Susquehanna Financial Group LLC analyst David Hilder.

I thank Florida reader Donna Badach for sending me this Market Watch story...and the link is here.

“The fact that people are even talking about the government stepping in to shore up the banks, when two months ago people thought there was nothing wrong with the Chinese banks, should tell you just how seriously this situation is deteriorating.”

This 7:45 interview with Jim Chanos that's posted over at the valuewalk.com website is well worth watching. This is Nitin Agrawal's second offering in today's column...and the link is here.

Standard & Poor's on Tuesday downgraded a key measure of risk for Spain's banking sector, warning that the economic crisis will continue to have a negative impact on Spanish banks in the next 15-18 months.

I think that S&P is just being kind saying that it will only affect Spain for that length of time. Spain's banks, like just about every other bank on Planet Earth is already insolvent.

This Reuters story from Tuesday is one I 'borrowed' from yesterday's King Report...and the link is here.

In Lisbon these days, they're so strapped for cash they're selling the metro stations. Not literally, of course. But Baixa-Chiado station in the heart of the city, pretty much the Portuguese capital's equivalent to Piccadilly Circus, has just been branded by Portuguese Telecom, and now rejoices in the name of PT Blue Station.

It doesn't half anger the locals. "It really symbolises what's going on in this country," says Frederico Duarte, 32, a design critic and teacher. "Public transport should be a public good by definition, for citizens, not for customers, and here it is getting the full corporate treatment. It's sad."

Duarte's sensibilities are upset. The station, built after a catastrophic fire in 1988, was conceived as a gleaming, white-walled temple to an ideal of transit for the people. Its architect, Álvaro Siza, fought a lengthy battle to keep all advertising off the walls. But it has now succumbed to ugly blue lighting and PT logos everywhere you look.

This story, posted in The Guardian on Tuesday, was sent to me by Swiss reader B.G...and the link is here.

After losing a vote on this on Tuesday, the Slovakian looks set to ratify the expansion of the euro bailout fund in a second vote this week after the government reached a deal with opposition parties on Wednesday. The country had thrown euro rescue efforts into doubt on Tuesday night when it became the only euro zone member to reject the measure.

The coalition parties that make up the outgoing Slovak government reached an agreement with the most important opposition party on Wednesday to ratify the expansion of the euro bailout fund, the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF).

I have no idea what happened...and why a second vote was needed...and the very short story on this, which is posted over at the German website spiegel.de, is not much help. I thank Roy Stephens for sending it along...and the link is here.

Here's an Ambrose Evans Pritchard blog from The Telegraph that was written before the second vote in Slovakia was announced yesterday. Here are three paragraphs...

Slovakia’s cry of defiance has not been entirely pointless. Richard Sulik – the speaker of parliament – has caught a mood of popular disgust that goes far beyond his own country.

His objections are unanswerable. How can there be any justification for a state of affairs where a poor but rule-abiding EMU state must bail out a serial violator with twice the per capita income, and triple the level of the pensions – a country which is in any case irretrievably bankrupt? How can it be that the no-bail clause of the Lisbon treaty has been ripped up?

But he also touched on the most neuralgic issue, reminding everybody that the EFSF is "mainly for saving foreign banks". These are French, German, British, Dutch, and Belgian banks, of course.

This is Roy Stephens second offering that he sent me early yesterday morning...and the link to this must read is here.

GoldMoney founder and GATA consultant James Turk told King World News yesterday that the next Lehman moment hasn't arrived yet, that the nationalization of Belgium's Dexia bank and the bankruptcy of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, are just intermediate steps to the next financial collapse when only assets without counterparty risk -- the precious metals -- will really protect investors. An excerpt from the interview with Turk is linked here...and I thank Chris Powell for writing the introduction for me.

Here's the JP Morgan analyst who called for $2,000+ gold by year end, being grilled by the boys and girls on CNBC's Squawk Box. One wonders if he is aware that his company holds the biggest short positions in the Comex futures market in both gold and silver. The interview runs for 7:43...and I thank reader Ron Flutur for sharing this with us...and the link is here.

At the Casey Research/Sprott Summit When Money Dies, Rick Rule spoke with Stefan Molyneux about energy and gold investments and his outlook for the near-future market overall.

The video interview runs 20:06...and the link is here.

The recent violent volatility in gold prices is disrupting traditional buying patterns in Dubai, with customers moving from jewelry to bullion as they renew a focus on the yellow metal's investment potential, a trend that is prompting more city jewelers to stock gold in the form of coins and bars.

Dubai, known as the city of gold, is a long-established market for bullion and wholesale and retail jewelry. Its trade is fueled by demand from India, the world's number one gold consumer, and domestic consumption which, at 19 tons in the second quarter of 2011, makes the United Arab Emirates the second-largest consumer of gold jewelry and bullion in the Middle East after Saudi Arabia.

This story appeared in yesterday's edition of The Wall Street Journal. Because it's subscriber protected, Chris Powell has posted it in the clear in this GATA release...and the link is to this must read story is here.

Gold -- When all else is suffering from devastation, when politicians have destroyed their own sovereign money, gold will still have value, and gold will still represent buying power. I'm holding mine for the same reason that I own health insurance. Although even the gold-bugs expect a big correction, silver and gold continue to creep north. Interesting and frustrating action for the precious metal shorts, and there are a lot of them.

Eric King sent me this short blog by the 'R' man last night...and the link is here.

Casey Research's BIG GOLD editor Jeff Clark posted this commetary in yesterday's edition of Casey's Daily Dispatch.

By almost any measure, gold stocks are undervalued. Should we load up?

After completing my research on this question, I'm convinced that as gold stock investors, we're in the right place.

The question, of course, is timing. We don't know when gold stocks will begin to catch up. And the data don't suggest that they must rise right now nor that they've hit bottom. We're convinced they'll someday hit lofty levels, but for now we maintain the same refrain: keep one-third of assets in cash. This reduces risk and gives us a nice pile of funds to deploy during selloffs.

This is, of course, excellent advice if you are a trader of any kind. I'm not. I've been a buy-and-hold investor almost all my life...and I'm certainly not a speculator I have neither the time nor the inclination to 'play' this market...or any other market.

This commentary is a must read...and the link is here.