The fallen hedge fund billionaire Raj Rajaratnam received the longest prison sentence ever for insider trading on Thursday, capping an aggressive government campaign that has ensnared dozens and may help deter the illegal use of confidential information on Wall Street.

Judge Richard J. Holwell of Federal District Court in Manhattan sentenced Mr. Rajaratnam, 54, the former head of the Galleon Group hedge fund, to 11 years in prison. A jury convicted Mr. Rajaratnam of securities fraud and conspiracy in May after a two-month trial.

Yet the crackdown on insider trading — a crime whose victims are not always apparent — has come at a time when many Americans have questioned why authorities have not pursued charges against bank executives over their role in the financial crisis, which still weighs on the economy.

A very good point is made in that last paragraph. I thank reader Roy Stephens for sending me this story out of yesterday's edition of The New York Times...and the link is here.

More U.S. homes are entering the foreclosure process, but they're taking ever longer to get sold or repossessed by lenders.

The number of U.S. homes that received a first-time default notice during the July to September quarter increased 14 percent compared to the second quarter of the year, RealtyTrac Inc. said Thursday.

That increase signals banks are moving more aggressively now against borrowers who have fallen behind on their mortgage payments than they have since industry-wide foreclosure processing problems emerged last fall. Those problems resulted in a sharp drop in foreclosure activity this year.

As I said in February 2007...call me in 2013 and we'll talk about the bottom of the real estate market in the U.S.A. This msnbc.com story was sent to me by reader Matthew Nel yesterday...and is well worth the read. The link is here.

In a second vote Thursday on the euro bailout fund, the Slovakian national parliament passed legislation approving additional powers for the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF). In a dramatic move, the parliament in Bratislava had rejected the legislation on Tuesday, unsettling markets and European leaders. Slovakia had been the last of 17 euro-zone members to approve the measure.

On Thursday, 114 members of parliament from governing parties and the opposition voted in favor of the EFSF, well above the 76 who were needed. Only 30 voted against it and three lawmakers abstained.

The move came one day after three parties in the governing coalition struck a deal with the main opposition party, the social democratic SMER. Prime Minister Iveta Radicova had pegged Tuesday's vote to a motion of confidence, which her government failed. The vote led to the collapse of her government and the coalition, now in a caretaker role, has since agreed to new elections in March in exchange for SMER support of the euro bailout measures.

How this second vote came about is beyond me. I thought the original vote on Tuesday was the real deal. I guess they had to vote until the EU got the answer it wanted. This is another Roy Stephens offering from yesterday's edition of the German website spiegel.de...and the link is here.

Legal & General Investment Management said "the UK's credit rating is likely to be reviewed in the coming years" as it becomes clear that the Government will miss its growth forecasts and fall back into recession.

The warning will come as a blow to George Osborne, who has staked his reputation on the UK retaining its AAA rating despite emerging from the recession with the biggest budget deficit in the G20.

"We expect the debt-to-GDP ratio to remain on an explosive path no matter what the Government does. [As a result] ratings agencies might negatively review the UK's AAA sovereign rating in coming years."

The U.K. is brother-in-arms with the U.S. in their attempts to dominate the world, so I will be amazed to see any U.S. rating agency downgrade Britain until they've downgraded all of continental Europe's countries and banking systems into junk status...which, by the way, they already are...whether the rating agencies say it or not.

This is reader Matthew Nell's second offering of the day. This one if from the Wednesday edition of The Telegraph...and the link is here.

Deutsche Bank AG, Germany’s largest lender, is among at least 13 financial firms that may have credit or viability grades cut by Fitch Ratings.

Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Morgan Stanley and Credit Suisse AG were also among firms that may be cut based on “Fitch’s view that these institutions’ business models are particularly sensitive to the increased challenges the financial markets are facing,” the ratings firm said in a statement today.

This very brief story only had two paragraphs...and you just read them. I thank West Virginia reader Elliot Simon for sending me this Bloomberg piece from yesterday...and the link to the hard copy is here.

Italy risks a debt spiral without "drastic" steps to cut spending and restore confidence in public finances, the country's central bank governor has warned.

"We must act fast. The sorts of interest rate rises seen over the last three months, if protracted, could lead to an uncontrollable spiral," said Mario Draghi, who takes over as head of the European Central Bank next month.

Mr. Draghi said austerity measures must be enacted "immediately" and warned that Italy's €54bn austerity package is "not enough".

This Ambrose Evans-Pritchard offering from The Telegraph on late Wednesday night is another offering from Roy Stephens...and the link is here.

As the G20 finance ministers and central bankers gather in Paris this Friday and Saturday, a collective sense of failure will loom large. But France still has time to rescue its G20 presidency. If a deal can be struck to restore confidence in the euro area and settle the baying markets, France will have done the global economy a great service. Work has already begun in earnest, and must continue this weekend.

Under huge international pressure to unveil a viable rescue, from President Barack Obama to David Cameron to Brazilian finance minister Guido Mantega, President Sarkozy simply can not fail. Traders, economists and bankers are all agreed – if the proposals at Cannes do not go far enough, it will be final proof that Europe’s political troubles are intractable. In that case, it will be open season on the euro - and the Cassandras can get out their Armageddon spreadsheets.

This will be an interesting meeting, but it really doesn't matter what they decide, because all they'll be doing is kicking the can a little further down the road. This is another Roy Stephens offering from The Telegraph late last night...and the link is here.

Over the weekend, we observed the perplexing sell off of $56 billion in US Treasurys courtesy of weekly disclosure in the Fed's custodial account and speculated if this may be due to an asset rotation, under duress or otherwise, out of bonds and into stocks, to prevent the collapse of the global ponzi (because when the BRICs tell the IMF to boost its bailout capacity you know it is global).

We also proposed a far simpler theory: "the dreaded D-day in which foreign official and private investors finally start offloading their $2.7 trillion in Treasurys with impunity (although not with the element of surprise - China has made it abundantly clear it will sell its Treasury holdings, the only question is when), has finally arrived."I

In hindsight the Occam's Razor should have been applied. Little did we know 5 short days ago just how violent the reaction by China would be (both post and pre-facto) to the Senate decision to propose a law for all out trade warfare with China. Now we know - in the week ended October 12, a further $17.7 billion was "removed" from the Fed's custodial Treasury account, meaning that someone, somewhere is very displeased with US paper, and, far more importantly, what it represents, and wants to make their displeasure heard loud and clear.

This short read posted over at zerohedge.com last night is well worth your time...and is Roy Stephens last offering of the day. The link is here.

Mark Lewis was delivering a keynote speech to economics students at Uludağ University in the north west of Turkey when he was suddenly interrupted by a demonstration.

One student shouted "IMF get out" as another hurled an egg, which Mr. Lewis just managed to avoid.

Showing quick reflexes, the terrified speaker briefly bobbed his head above his lectern before being forced to take evasive action for a second time.

This very short read includes a video of the event described...and the link to this story from yesterday's edition of The Telegraph, is here. I thank reader David Ball for sending it along.

Here's a little something that appeared in yesterday's edition of Casey's Daily Dispatch. It's a piece by Alena Mikhan and Andrey Dashkov.

The recent correction in gold is often compared to what took place in late 2008. It remains to be seen how similar these two periods will turn out to be, but while we're thinking along these lines, we thought we'd have a look at the data to see what impact the 2008 crash had on the exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and what to expect from the current slump.

The current situation resembles what happened in 2008, at least in this regard. Even though gold has dropped sharply in recent weeks, GLD holdings have held their ground. Our interpretation: Investors are holding on to their gold and their long-term expectations remain bullish. If the same small pattern continues to unfold, we may see ETF assets grow, even if the correction deepens.

I consider this very short piece a must read...and the link is here.

So why is it that gold mining stocks underperforming the metal so badly? "Gold stocks should be a levered bet on the price of gold...There has been a terrible underperformance," as one UK forum posting said back in June.

"Thought this could be a good hedge against market meltdown but doesn't follow gold price," said another gold mining fund holder in August.

"Switched my portfolio to Blackrock Gold Acc in Feb. '11 with the naive thinking it would give me a good exposure to gold prices," said a third. "Gold has jumped 30% since then, but the fund is pretty much at the same price.

"I know there must be a lot of people in the same situation."

Too true...indeed there are...including this writer. This piece by Adrian Ash over at the bullionvault.com is posted at the safehaven.com website. I thank reader U.D. for bringing this second must read piece to our attention...and the link is here.

"50% of all the gold sold last year went to the financial sector, and it may be even more in 2011 and 2012 as the public essentially decide to use gold as a currency versus putting their money in US dollar or putting it in euro," he says, adding that when you look at the total amount of wealth in the world, only 1% is represented by gold, which works out to about 30,000 tonnes of the yellow metal.

As a result, Lassonde remains very positive on the long term growth in the gold.

This mineweb.com story posted on Wednesday is well worth your time...and I thank reader Carl Lindfors for sending it along. The link is here.

All the major countries in the world are in a race to debase their currencies in order to restart their economies. Either economic growth returns or—as some doomsayers predict—the 40-year run of fiat currencies ends.

And if under this worst case scenario the solution was to return to the gold standard of the Nixon years, the price of bullion would be worth $10,000-plus, six-times the current price, according to Paul Brodsky, co-managing member of QB Asset Management company and a self-professed ‘Gold Bug.’

“Economic policy makers across the political spectrum have successfully maintained the debt-based monetary system since 1971,” said the money manager. “To do this they have had to marginalize the one competing currency capable of displacing it: gold.”

This cnbc.com story from yesterday was sent to my by West Virginia reader Elliot Simon...and the link to this must read story is here...and be sure to take part in the straw poll "Should the US go back to the gold standard of the Nixon years?"

Tocqueville Gold Fund manager John Hathaway told King World News yesterday that grassroots demand for metal is powering gold and silver higher because of distrust of banks and the inevitable monetary debasement that will result from bank "recapitalization" by central banks. An excerpt from the interview headlined "John Hathaway - We're definitely in the end game for the US dollar" has been posted at the KWN website...and the link is here.

This is an op-ed piece written by Lewis E. Lehrman for the Washington Examiner.

Lewis E. Lehrman is chairman of the Lehrman Institute...and author of "The True Gold Standard: A Monetary Reform Plan without Official Reserve Currencies, How We Get from Here to There."

This short read is well worth your time...and I thank Richard Sypher for sharing it with us. The link is here.