For the first time in 25 years, Minnesota farmer Dean Tofteland has missed his deadline to buy seed for next spring's corn and soybean crops.

With $200,000 of his money yet to be returned from the accounts of MF Global, his former broker, the 49-year-old farmer has missed a $5,000 discount for early buyers, and is watching friends and neighbors snap up the best varieties of seeds.

In the latest sign of how MF Global's failure is continuing to cascade across the commodity industry, Tofteland and other farmers who have yet to recover more than a third of their money from the bankrupt broker now find themselves in a cash crunch that risks rippling far beyond the futures market.

Reader Scott Pluschau sent me this Reuters story posted from Chicago yesterday...and the link is here.

If the price of restarting economic growth in the U.S. means the Federal Reserve would have to tolerate higher than desired inflation for a time, that is something policymakers should be willing to pay, an official of the U.S. central bank said Monday.

In a speech Monday, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago President Charles Evans didn't argue that higher inflation would be ideal or even likely. But as part of an address in which he again laid out arguments for guiding monetary policy by explicit levels in employment and inflation, he said allowing inflation to move above the Fed's current de facto target of 2% wouldn't necessarily be a problem.

Believing the U.S. economy is mired in a "liquidity trap" where savings and investment are badly mismatched, Evans said the environment "requires the central bank, if necessary, to allow inflation to run higher than its target for some time over the medium term." He explained: "I believe the inflation- safeguard threshold needs to be above our current 2% inflation objective-- perhaps something like 3%."

When the Fed starts talking dirty like that, you know that the next round of Q.E. can't be that far off. I thank West Virginia reader Elliot Simon for sending me this Dow Jones story that's posted over at the nasdaq.com website...and the link to this very worthwhile read is here.

As civilizations mature, they tend to make the same mistakes. We are in the middle of one of those mistakes right now.

We are in an unholy mess and however loudly the sane few may plead, the chances it will get turned around without disaster striking are slim indeed. The type of restructuring both America and Europe need is so difficult and painful that, even if the current political systems were functioning, it would still take many years and the kind of courage and sacrifice that does not seem to exist. One of these days, some unforeseen event, akin to the child in Hans Christian Andersen’s The Emperor’s New Clothes declaring “But he isn’t wearing anything at all!” may serve as the tipping point that brings the entire financial system to its knees.

This extremely well written piece showed up last Thursday in The Vancouver Sun in British Columbia. It's not overly long...and it's your first must read story of the day. I thank Roy Stephens for sharing it with us...and the link is here.

Very quickly, Standard & Poor’s is of course right.

The immediate eurozone crisis cannot be solved by punishment measures alone. There needs to be some form of joint debt issuance and a lender of last resort to halt "systemic stress".

It was well-timed to drop this bombshell on Monday night after the Merkozy fudge (though S&P made the decision earlier), since the duumvirate yet again failed to offer any meaningful way out of the impasse.

This Ambrose Evans-Pritchard offering was in yesterday's edition of The Telegraph...and is worth your time if you have it. I thank Roy Stephens for sending it along...and the link is here.

Ratings agency Standard and Poor's has piled pressure on EU leaders to come up with a deal to save the euro, warning that it may downgrade 15 of 17 euro-zone countries -- including powerhouse Germany. EU politicians have criticized the move. But the agency on Tuesday added that it may downgrade the euro bailout fund as well.

European policymakers criticized the timing of the announcement, just three days ahead of a make-or-break EU summit on Thursday and Friday, and said the agency hadn't taken into account proposals for far-reaching reforms of the euro zone's debt rules agreed by the leaders of France and Germany on Monday.

This story was posted over at the German website spiegel.de yesterday. I thank Roy Stephens once again for bringing it to my attention...and the link is here.

Germany, admired and envied for its economic success, has become a model for Europe in the debt crisis. The Continent is becoming more German as countries get serious about fiscal discipline. But the nation's new dominance is also stirring resentment, and old anti-German sentiments are returning.

When Sarkozy appeared in front of his supporters in Toulon last Thursday, he spoke of the "fear that France could lose control of its own destiny." His dramatic words were an appeal to French national pride, but his response to those fears was anything other than nationalist: "France and Germany have decided to unite their fate," he announced. So-called "convergence" -- greater alignment of the two countries -- was the only way out of the crisis.

In these days of crisis in Europe, the "German model" has become something of a magic formula. Like it or not, the dusty, dry Germans now seem to hold the key to European salvation.

This is another story out of yesterday's edition of spiegel.de...and another Roy Stephens offering. The link is here.

Europe's banks urgently need fresh capital to meet tougher EU rules, but they will have problems raising it amid the current crisis of confidence plaguing the euro zone. The survival of Commerzbank, Germany's second-largest bank, is at stake, and Berlin is considering a full nationalization of the bank if necessary.

One-quarter of Germany's second-largest financial institution already belongs to the state; now the government is considering fully nationalizing the bank if necessary.

According to government sources, if Commerzbank doesn't manage to raise sufficient capital on its own by next summer, Berlin will reactivate the Special Fund for Financial Market Stabilization (Soffin) and purchase additional shares in the bank. The sources say that they assume the government would acquire a majority of the bank's shares in a capital increase.

This is another Roy Stephens offering from spiegel.de yesterday...and the link is here.

Georgios Provopoulos, the governor of the central bank of Greece, is a man of statistics, and they speak a clear language. "In September and October, savings and time deposits fell by a further 13 to 14 billion euros. In the first 10 days of November the decline continued on a large scale," he recently told the economic affairs committee of the Greek parliament.

With disarming honesty, the central banker explained to the lawmakers why the Greek economy isn't managing to recover from a recession that has gone on for three years now: "Our banking system lacks the scope to finance growth."

He means that the outflow of funds from Greek bank accounts has been accelerating rapidly. At the start of 2010, savings and time deposits held by private households in Greece totalled €237.7 billion -- by the end of 2011, they had fallen by €49 billion. Since then, the decline has been gaining momentum. Savings fell by a further €5.4 billion in September and by an estimated €8.5 billion in October -- the biggest monthly outflow of funds since the start of the debt crisis in late 2009.

This is Roy Stephens last offering of the day...and the fourth in a row from spiegel.de...and the link to this one is here.

As European leaders scramble to overcome the Continent’s debt crisis, many are pointing to Ireland as a model for how to get out of the troubles.

Having embraced severe belt-tightening to mend its tattered finances, Ireland is showing glimmers of a turnaround. A year after it received a 67.5 billion euro bailout, or about $90 billion at current exchange rates, modest growth has returned and the budget deficit is shrinking.

But the effects of austerity have pummeled Ireland’s fragile economy, leaving scars that are likely to take years to heal. Nearly 40,000 Irish have fled the country this year alone in search of a brighter future elsewhere; the trend is expected to continue.

“This is still an insolvent economy,” said Constantin Gurdgiev, an economist and lecturer at Trinity College in Dublin. “Just because we’re playing a good-boy role and not making noises like the Greeks doesn’t mean Ireland is healthy.”

This story was posted in The New York Times on Monday...and I thank reader Phil Barlett for sending it along. It's well worth the read...and the link is here.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards have been put on a war footing amid increasing signs that the West is taking direct action to cripple Iran’s nuclear programme.

An order from Gen Mohammed Ali Jaafari, the commander of the guards, raised the operational readiness status of the country’s forces, initiating preparations for potential external strikes and covert attacks. Western intelligence officials said the Islamic Republic had initiated plans to disperse long-range missiles, high explosives, artillery and guards units to key defensive positions.

The Iranian leadership fears the country is being subjected to a carefully co-ordinated attack by Western intelligence and security agencies to destroy key elements of its nuclear infrastructure

This story was posted in The Telegraph late Monday evening...and is worth the read. I thank Matthew Nel for bringing it to my attention...and the link is here.

Two incidents that occurred on Sunday—Iran’s claim of a shoot-down of a U.S. drone, and an explosion outside the British embassy in Bahrain—may have been unrelated. But they appear to add to growing evidence that an escalating covert war by the West is under way against Iran, and that Tehran is retaliating with greater intensity than ever.

Asked whether the United States, in cooperation with Israel, was now engaged in a covert war against Iran’s nuclear program that may include the Stuxnet virus, the blowing-up of facilities and the assassination or kidnapping of scientists, one recently retired U.S. official privy to up-to-date intelligence would not deny it.

This story appeared in the National Journal on Saturday...and was updated yesterday. I borrowed this story from yesterday's King Report...and it's very much worth reading. The link is here.

US investors—both retail and professionals—poured $3.6 billion into gold exchange-traded funds last month, quadruple the $813 million in October, according to numbers crunched by research firm Birinyi Associates.

“It is going to be a go-to asset once everyone digests that if Europe is to be saved, the ECB will have to directly or indirectly print money and the inflation trade will be all on once again,” said Michael Block of Phoenix Partners Group. “I would be buying gold opportunistically.”

But gold has become more than just an inflation hedge or a safe haven from the world's woes. It's now its own asset class—and one that has outperformed stocks over the past decade.

This must read story was posted over at cnbc.com yesterday...and I thank West Virginia reader Elliot Simon for sharing it with us. The link is here.

A new study of Indian gold-buying practices showed its citizens carry gold in their households worth over $950 billion, representing 50 percent of the country's GDP.

Global research firm Macquarie found that Indian households own 18,000 metric tons of gold which is 11 percent of the global total.

Macquarie further noted that 7 percent to 8 percent of India's 329 billion households held their savings in gold in 2009-10.

Gold imports are India's third-largest merchandise imports after crude oil and capital goods. In 2010, 92 percent of the supply was met through net imports and the rest through recycled gold and other sources.

This story was posted on the ibtimes.com website on Monday...and I thank reader U.D. for sending it along. It's a very short must read...and the link is here.

When asked about the coordinated central bank actions, Hathaway replied, “I thought it was terrific because (the fact) that the Fed was involved just shows you how desperate the situation is. The message is the Fed will provide unlimited liquidity to get us through this.

The history of providing that liquidity is basically expansion of the Fed balance sheet. So at the end of the day we are not going to see any solution other than more central bank money printing.”

When asked how the gold price will act after the next round of money printing, Hathaway responded, “I think it could definitely get to new highs. I mean new highs are not that far from where we are. It just seems to me that it’s (gold is) a coiling spring. It tries to go to new lows, but I mean if you just look at the pattern of higher lows I find that very encouraging. If it can’t go down, ultimately it’s going to go higher.”

Eric King sent me this John Hathaway interview shortly after midnight. Everything that John has to say is worth your undivided attention...and this King World News blog is no exception. The link is here.

Here's a GATA release from yesterday. Like John Hathaway in the previous post, anything that Eric Sprott has to say falls into the same category. Chris Powell has already done the heavy lifting, so I'm not going to re-invent the wheel on this one. This is another must read...and the link is here.