The number of Americans who lack access to basic necessities like food and health care is now higher than it was at the peak of the Great Recession, a survey released Thursday found. And, in a finding that could worsen fears of U.S. decline, the share of Americans struggling to put food on the table is now three times as large as the share of the Chinese population in the same position.

This story was posted over at news.yahoo.com yesterday...and I thank reader David Ball for sending it along. The link is here.

I've been down to "Occupy Wall Street" twice now, and I love it. The protests building at Liberty Square and spreading over Lower Manhattan are a great thing, the logical answer to the Tea Party and a long-overdue middle finger to the financial elite. The protesters picked the right target and, through their refusal to disband after just one day, the right tactic, showing the public at large that the movement against Wall Street has stamina, resolve and growing popular appeal.

But...there's a but. And for me this is a deeply personal thing, because this issue of how to combat Wall Street corruption has consumed my life for years now, and it's hard for me not to see where Occupy Wall Street could be better and more dangerous. I'm guessing, for instance, that the banks were secretly thrilled in the early going of the protests, sure they'd won round one of the messaging war.

Why? Because after a decade of unparalleled thievery and corruption, with tens of millions entering the ranks of the hungry thanks to artificially inflated commodity prices, and millions more displaced from their homes by corruption in the mortgage markets, the headline from the first week of protests against the financial-services sector was an old cop macing a quartet of college girls.

This Matt Taibbi piece was posted over at Rolling Stone magazine on Wednesday...and I thank Alaska reader Richard Vollertsen for sending it along. The link is here.

In his daily note, UBS floor guy Art Cashin delivers a monster history lesson on Weimar hyperinflation, and the roots of today's huge crisis.

This businessinsider.com story was posted on Thursday...and is well worth your time. I thank Roy Stephens for sharing it with us...and the link is here.

The claim that Iran employed a used-car salesman with a conviction for cheque fraud to hire Mexican gangsters to assassinate the Saudi ambassador in Washington goes against all that is known of Iran's highly sophisticated intelligence service.

The confident announcement of this bizarre plot by the US Attorney General Eric Holder sounds alarmingly similar to Secretary of State Colin Powell's notorious claim before the UN in 2003 that the US possessed irrefutable evidence Saddam Hussein was developing weapons of mass destruction.

It also sound equally as silly as the U.S. governments explanation of the events surrounding 9/11...but don't get me started on that. This op-ed piece posted at the independent.co.uk website on Thursday is well worth reading...and I thank reader Brad Robertson for sharing it with us. The link is here.

In Tehran, an unexpected source is expressing doubt about the assassination plot laid out by US officials, alleging that Iran was behind plans to kill the top Saudi Arabian diplomat in Washington and blow up embassies.

Dawud Salahuddin, an American fugitive who in 1980 was the last – and only – US citizen known to have killed on behalf of Iran's revolutionary regime, on US soil, says the plot borders on the unbelievable.

"For all the noise that comes out of this country, the Iranians know full well they are no military match for the Americans; they know that better than they know their names," says Salahuddin, who spoke to the Monitor by telephone from his home west of Tehran. "So the notion that [the Iranians] are going to bring that down on them, that just makes no sense at all."

This story, filed from Istanbul in Turkey, appeared in The Christian Science Monitor early yesterday...and was subsequently posted over at news.yahoo.com. I thank Swiss reader B.G. for bringing it to my attention...and the link is here.

The European Union may impose position limits for commodities derivatives and curbs on high- frequency trading as part of plans to overhaul the region’s financial-market rules.

The European Commission, the 27-nation EU’s executive arm, is seeking limits on the number of commodity derivative contracts “any given market members or participants can enter into over a specified period of time, or alternative arrangements” with the same impact, according to copies of proposals set for release on Oct. 20 that were obtained by Bloomberg News.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy has demanded steps to curb commodity derivatives speculation, which he blames for driving up world food prices. He has made the issue a priority of France's presidency this year of the Group of 20 nations.

This Bloomberg story from yesterday was sent to me by West Virginia reader Elliot Simon...and the link is here.

European officials are considering write-downs of as much as 50 percent on Greek bonds, a backstop for banks and continued central bank bond purchases as key planks in a revamped strategy to combat the debt crisis, people familiar with the discussions said.

The Greek bond losses may be accompanied by a pledge to rule out debt restructurings in other countries that received bailouts, such as Portugal, to persuade investors that Europe has mastered the crisis, said the people, who declined to be identified because the negotiations will run for another week.

I thank Elliot Simon once again...this time for this Bloomberg story from yesterday...and the link is here.

The euro zone hardly needed a reminder of the necessity for urgency as it searches for a strategy to contain its ongoing debt crisis. But that's what it got this week. Standard & Poor's announced on Friday that it was downgrading Spanish debt by a notch, joining the ratings agency Fitch, which slapped both Spain and Italy with negative marks last week.

Potentially even more concerning, however, is a shot fired over the bow of European banks by Fitch on Thursday evening. It placed several financial institutions on its watch list, suggesting that they might be downgraded. Among them was German market leader Deutsche Bank, long considered a model of financial health, despite the global crisis.

This spiegel.de story from Friday...and the one that follows this one...are both Roy Stephens offerings...and the link to the first of them is here.

A new idea to solve the euro crisis has suddenly become popular among Germany's political parties. People from all sides of the political spectrum are falling over themselves to call for a new European convention in a bid to fix the crisis that is putting the whole future of the European Union at risk.

According to the proposal, the convention -- which would be composed of representatives of national parliaments and governments, the European Parliament and the European Commission -- would revise the current European treaties as quickly as possible. There is a widespread belief in Germany that the euro crisis, which has long since become a crisis of the European Union, cannot be solved in the long term without fundamental changes to the treaties. But other EU member states are less keen on the idea.

The link to this second spiegel.de story is here.

Policy makers are discussing an expansion of the IMF’s firepower as part of a global G-20 agreement next month in Cannes, France, according to three officials, who declined to be named because the discussions are not public. Talks are in preliminary stages as potential contributors wait to see what measures Europeans take to end the debt turmoil at an Oct. 23 summit, they said.

IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde told member countries last month that her current $390 billion war chest may not suffice to meet all loan requests should the global economy worsen. Additional funds could be used to help shelter Italy and Spain with precautionary lending, the people said. Standard & Poor’s cut Spain’s credit rating by one level to AA- yesterday.

This Bloomberg story from yesterday is posted over at businessweek.com...and is courtesy of reader Phil Barlett. The link is here.

It is probably not too surprising that the negative news of the day, namely that the US has decided against expanding the IMF and thus leaving the European bailout to the Europeans (at least for now), was released quietly long after happy hour started on Friday. Yet that is precisely what happened after Reuters dropped a Friday night bomb.

This must read zerohedge.com posting is another Phil Barlett offering...and the link is here.

In Germany, the revolution against the financial system is already raging -- at least on the Internet. A cyber class war with photos, videos, texts and plenty of symbolism is in full swing. In the video messages calling for a nationwide protest in Germany this Saturday, images of the Frankfurt bank skyline are juxtaposed against paintings of the German Revolutions of 1848. Beethoven's "Moonlight Sonata" is mixed with the orchestral pomp of the "Requiem for a Dream" movie soundtrack.

"Something is going to happen on Oct. 15," the cyber revolutionaries pledge. Thousands will supposedly rise up in Germany alone so the "people can take back control from the dictatorship of money." "It began in New York," the call to action states, "but it will end in Hesse," a reference to the western German state where Frankfurt is located.

This is another very interesting read that was posted at the spiegel.de website yesterday. I thank Roy Stephens once again...and the link is here.

Ever since I read Zbigniew Brzezinski's tome "The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and its Geostrategic Imperatives" about fifteen years ago, I've become a serious student of the 'great game'...and every once in a while I run into a real jewel. This story definitely falls into that category.

This week, China and Tajikistan announced that they have settled their old border dispute. Under this settlement, Tajikistan ceded 386 sq miles or 1,000 sq km of land to China in the remote Pamir mountain range. China said that the move thoroughly solved their century-old border dispute. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei gave no details on the treaty but said that the dispute was solved "according to universally recognized norms of international law through equal consultations".

Right, China and Tajikistan dealt in "equal consultations" when China has become the largest investor in Tajikistan. The above is the extent of the coverage by the BBC and Washington Post. The New York Times did not even cover this story.

So why should we care about a tiny piece of land in the remote, sparsely populated Pamir mountain range?

That's a very good question, dear reader...and the answer is contained in this piece posted over at the cinemarasik.com website. I thank Nitin Agrawal for sharing this story with us. I consider it a must read, but you may have other ideas about this...and the link is here.

Here's a September 13th AP photo essay that appeared in The Sacramento Bee...and was sent to me by Roy Stephens yesterday.

Last Sunday was the six-month anniversary of the day the massive earthquake and tsunami devastated Japan's northeast coast.

Some 20,000 people are dead or missing. More than 800,000 homes were completely or partially destroyed. The disaster crippled businesses, roads and infrastructure. The Japanese Red Cross Society estimates that 400,000 people were displaced.

Half a year later, there are physical signs of progress.

Much of the debris has been cleared away or at least organized into big piles. In the port city of Kesennuma, many of the boats carried inland by the tsunami have been removed. Most evacuees have moved out of high school gyms and into temporary shelters or apartments.

Last week the Kyodo News agency distributed an amazing group of combination photographs showing three scenes. The first scene is right after the earthquake and tsunami hit, then three months later and finally, how the scene looks now.

The link to all these photos is here.

Most annual reports are pretty dry reading...but this 79-page 2011 annual report is an exception. There's lots of good background information in here...and since it's the weekend, I hope you can find the time to skim some it.

I thank reader Abdul Jiwan for sending it my way...and the link to the pdf file is here.

As you may know, Ken is the legislator in Utah that authored the legal coinage act in that state. The good doctor sent it to me on Monday, as he thought you might be interested.

If you are, the Ann Arbor, Michigan WAAM 1600 interview is here. It took a while to load on my rather ancient computer, so please be patient if it takes a while on yours as well.

Gold’s biggest slump in three years means traders and analysts are now the most bullish in three months, speculating that Europe's debt crisis, slowing growth and a bear market in equities will drive demand for bullion.

Twenty-two of 25 people surveyed by Bloomberg expect the metal to rise next week, the highest proportion since mid-July. Prices rebounded 9.2 percent since reaching a two-month low at the end of September and investors are adding to their holdings in gold-backed exchange-traded products for the first time in a month, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

This Bloomberg story was posted on their Internet site yesterday afternoon...and, in my opinion, is a must read. I thank Roy Stephens for this final offering of the day...and the link is here.