Soon after taking the reins of MF Global in 2010, Jon S. Corzine visited the Wall Street firm's Chicago offices for the first time, greeting the brokers, analysts and sales staff there.

One broker, Cy Monley, caught Mr. Corzine's eye. Unknown to MF Global's top management in New York, the employee, whose job was to match buyers and sellers in energy derivatives, was also trading a small account on the side, using the firm's capital.

"How are you making money on side bets? What else are you guys doing to make money here?" Mr. Corzine asked enthusiastically, his eyes widening, the broker recalled. The new chief executive grabbed a seat and spent an hour questioning Mr. Monley as other top executives from New York hovered impatiently nearby.

This story was posted over at The New York Times website late on Sunday evening...and I snatched it from a GATA release late last night. I consider this story very much worth reading...and the link is here.

Now that the re-hypothecation bogeyman has been let loose, and the question of just how many paper (and apparently physical) assets have been double, triple, and n-counted (where 'n' can be a number up to "infinity") by the infinitely daisy-chained modern global financial system in which one's liability is someone else's asset....apparently up to infinity times, the next logical step was for the firms named in the original Reuters article to step up and begin denials they had anything to do with anything.

Sure enough, below is the first such response, by Interactive Brokers, claiming it has been greatly misunderstood and unlike MF Global, it has done nothing wrong at all.

This zerohedge.com story from Sunday was sent to me by reader Phil Barlett...ad the link is here.

Commodities investor Jim Rogers told Bull Market Thinking's Tekoa Da Silva this week that while the collapse of the MF Global brokerage house is a disaster for the firm's clients, its most important effect may be to push commodity trading away from Chicago and into Asia. We'd probably wish as much, at least until the new chairman of the Chinese Communist Party turned out to be Gee Me Dy-Minh.

I thank Chris Powell for providing the above introduction...plus the imaginative translation of Jamie Dimon into Mandarin Chinese. A summary and full audio of the interview with Rogers are posted at the bullmarketthinging.com website...and the link is here.

Economist and former banker Alasdair Macleod, who spoke at GATA's Gold Rush 2011 conference in London in August, writes at GoldMoney that the collapse of the MF Global brokerage house may herald the collapse of the futures and options markets as investors realize that their money is protected neither by exchanges nor governments. A transfer of trading from futures markets to physical markets, Macleod notes, would be very bad for the big short positions in gold and silver run by bullion banks.

This story is certainly worth your time, if you have it. I thank Chris Powell for wordsmithing the introduction..and the link to this short essay, posted at the goldmoney.com website, is here.

Americans seem ready to forfeit their most basic civil liberty -- actually, all their civil liberties -- without a whimper.

By a vote of 93-7 the Senate this month approved a military appropriations bill empowering the government to designate any U.S. citizen within the country as a terrorist and to have the military hold him indefinitely without trial and without the right to habeas corpus, the right to be brought before a court for a judgment on the legality of one's imprisonment.

In effect the legislation is a declaration of martial law throughout the country.

GATA secretary-treasurer Chris Powell is the managing editor of the Journal Inquirer in his day job. Here's an editorial he posted in the paper early yesterday afternoon. It's an absolute must read...and the link is here.

The single currency remains just as incoherent as it was last weekend, just as vulnerable to systemic collapse. The region’s banks and governments are still very highly indebted.

Eurozone leaders are deluded if they think some diplomatic sticking plaster, and a lot of bluster, can hold together an inherently unstable structure.

What’s more, to use a combination of borrowed and printed money to bail-out cash-strapped governments, which are insolvent largely because they, in turn, are standing behind insolvent banks, is to treat the symptoms of the crisis, not the cause.

This story was posted in the Saturday edition of The Telegraph...and I thank Roy Stephens for sending it along. The link is here.

The deal on Friday in Brussels to reformulate the rules of the euro zone has probably saved the shared currency for now — but there may be less to it than meets the eye.

At least four major issues still need to be resolved: how much money is needed to protect Italy now from speculative attack; whether banks will stumble because of the crisis; the isolation of Britain, which does not belong to the euro zone; and not least, whether the Brussels cure, prescribed by Germany, fits the disease.

With mounds of European debt due to be refinanced early next year, the crisis is far from over. “More tests will obviously come, and soon,” perhaps as early as the opening of financial markets on Monday, said Joschka Fischer, the former German foreign minister.

This story was posted in The New York Times yesterday...and I thank reader Phil Barlett for his second contribution to this column. The link is here.

Senior analysts and traders warned of impending bank failures as a summit intended to solve the European crisis failed to deliver a solution that eased concerns over bank funding.

The European Central Bank admitted it had held meetings about providing emergency funding to the region's struggling banks, however City figures said a "collateral crunch" was looming.

"If anyone thinks things are getting better then they simply don't understand how severe the problems are. I think a major bank could fail within weeks," said one London-based executive at a major global bank.

This story was filed on The Telegraph website late on Friday night...and I thank reader U.K. reader David Ball for bringing it to my attention. The link is here.

The Swiss government is preparing for a collapse of the euro, according to Swiss Finance Minister Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf.

She told parliament that a work group was studying the imposition of capital controls and negative interest rates to protect Switzerland from the capital flight that a euro collapse would engender.

tidal wave of euros would drive up the Swiss franc, devastate Switzerland’s export economy, and devalue its vast wealth invested in other countries.

This story was posted over at the businessinsider.com website on Friday...and I thank reader U.D. for sending it along. The link is here.

British Prime Minister David Cameron, under fire in Europe for blocking a key EU treaty change, defended his move on Monday and said EU membership remained 'vital' to the UK. He faces pressure from euroskeptics who want Britain to quit the bloc -- while his pro-European coalition partner is fuming.

"Britain remains a full member of the EU and the events of the last week do nothing to change that," Cameron told parliament during a debate on last week's European Union summit. "Our membership of the EU is vital to our national interest. We are a trading nation and we need the single market for trade, investment and jobs. We are in the EU and we want to be," he added.

Cameron's decision not to take part in an EU treaty change aimed at tightening fiscal rules for euro-zone member states has isolated Britain in the 27-nation bloc and opened a rift in his government coalition with the pro-European Liberal Democrat party.

This story appeared on the German website spiegel.de yesterday...and is another Roy Stephens offering. The link is here.

A stress test performed on European banks last week found a capital shortfall of some 115 billion euros. In a SPIEGEL interview, European Banking Authority head Andrea Enria defends the decision to perform the stress test and discusses the huge challenges facing the European banking sector.

The results of the stress test are not new news...but this interview is well worth your time and is not overly long. It was posted over at spiegel.de yesterday...and is Roy Stephens last offering of the day. The link is here.

As the European debt crisis roils the markets, American traders who once awoke at dawn are now rising in the dead of night to gain an edge when business begins in London, Paris and Frankfurt.

Gone are the days when traders showed up to work just before the New York Stock Exchange opened at 9:30 a.m. Now, Wall Street has an unofficial opening bell: the 2:30 a.m. alarm clock.

“We have a new credo: carpe noctem — seize the night,” said Douglas A. Kass, a hedge fund manager who routinely sets his alarm for precisely that time to scan the headlines coming out of Europe.

As you are probably aware, dear reader, I am more than familiar with these hours of work. This story is definitely worth the read...and I thank Phil Barlett for sharing this story with us. It was posted in The New York Times on Saturday...and the link is here.

The streets of downtown Lisbon are usually ablaze with Christmas lights around this time - but this year the city has put on a somber show that matches the somber mood of austerity.

The Yuletide gloom is seen across Europe's crisis-hit southern rim, as Athens and Madrid also dim the Christmas lights in a sign of how anxious countries have become about the future.

In Lisbon, the city council has cut its festivities budget to $200,000 from $1,150,000 last year, leaving main streets short on Christmas spirit. Portugal is in a double-dip recession, and austerity measures being enacted to reduce the country's crippling debt burden are expected to worsen the economic slowdown next year. The jobless rate has climbed to a record 12.9 percent.

This AP story, filed from Lisbon, was posted in The Philadelphia Inquirer on Saturday...and is Phil Barlett's fourth and final contribution to today's column. The link is here.

Here's a story that I received from reader Avinash Raheja on Sunday...and I'll just cut and paste what he had to say, because I could hardly do better myself.

Below is the link to a story in today's edition of The Times of India. Just shows how the economists, experts (including some from the Royal Bank of India) are either not getting it, or [are] intentionally misleading the public about the monetary nature of this inflation that we're experiencing. They repeatedly seem to be putting the cart in front of the horse by suggesting inflation (rising prices) is a cause, rather than the effect.

Personally, I see the current wave of Inflation in India a highly 'monetary' phenomenon, built up over the last decade and more. As always in history, Indians are no different in viewing this as price rises, rather than a loss in the value of their currency. It is surely a lot more serious than is generally thought among us.

This is a very short must read posted on the timesofindia.com website...and the link is here.

GoldMoney founder, GATA consultant, and gold and silver market analyst James Turk will join GATA Chairman Bill Murphy, GATA board member Ed Steer, and your secretary/treasurer as a speaker next month at the Vancouver Resource Investment Conference, sponsored by Cambridge House.

I will also be wearing my Casey Research hat when I'm there. All the details of this conference can be found in this GATA release...and the link is here.

Just in case you think you own gold when you own ETF shares...

It appears that the faulty plumbing connections in the euro-area banking system are now creating something I have never seen before: a crisis of confidence in a monetary system that leads to a frantic selloff in gold.

As James Steel, a gold market analyst for HSBC Securities (USA), says: "Until the funding difficulties at European banks are resolved, it is difficult for us to see any near-term halt in gold lending. This may help keep gold prices on the defensive."

John Dizard wrote this article that's posted in the Sunday edition of the Financial Times. It's an absolute must read...and it's printed in the clear in this GATA release. The link is here.

Monday's edition of Casey's Daily Dispatch is all about gold. International Speculator editor, Louis James, does the honours...and this, too, is a must read. The link is here.

An exceedingly rare 1787 gold Brasher doubloon has been sold for $7.4 million, one of the highest prices ever paid for a gold coin.

Blanchard and Co., the New Orleans-based coin and precious metals company that brokered the deal, said the doubloon was purchased by a Wall Street investment firm. Identities of the buyer and seller were not disclosed.

Minted by Ephraim Brasher, a goldsmith and neighbor of George Washington, the coin contains 26.66 grams of gold — slightly less than an ounce. Worth about $15 when it was minted, the gold value today would be more than $1,500.

The Brasher doubloon is considered the first American-made gold coin denominated in dollars; the U.S. Mint in Philadelphia didn't begin striking coins until the 1790s.

This AP story, filed from New Orleans, was posted at news.yahoo.com yesterday...and I thank reader Scott Pluschau for being the first person through the door with this story. It's a very interesting article...and the link is here. The photos are worth the trip.

Here's a video that was all over the Internet on the weekend. Chris Powell posted it in a GATA release yesterday...and I'll let him do the introduction. The link is here.

More than Rs 50,000 crore worth of gold is likely to be pledged this year to procure loans in a rapidly expanding gold loan market, allowing India's favourite hoarded asset to re-enter financial markets and provide a boost to the economy.

According to industry estimates, around 200 tonnes of gold have been used as collateral to raise loans by end November in 2011-12 fiscal.

A back of the envelope calculation shows nearly Rs 55,000 crore worth of the yellow metal has been pledged to raise loans to buy goods, real estate or fund short-term farm credit, providing some momentum to slowing economy.

Reader Avinash Rheja, who was kind enough to send me this story posted in The Economic Times of India yesterday, says that..."To save you the trouble of converting the figures in Rs. crores, you may simply use the yardstick that at current market for USD/INR, Rs.5,200 crs = $US 1 billion." This is another must read story...and the link is here.

Gold miners are rushing to boost their dividends in the hope of wooing investors from gold-linked exchange-traded funds and other vehicles.

In the latest move, Iamgold, a mid-sized producer with mines in west Africa, Canada, and Suriname, announced a 25 per cent increase in its payout on Friday. Iamgold's annual dividend is now 25 cents a share, more than four times last year's 6 cents payout.

Earlier this month, Goldcorp, another Toronto-based producer, lifted its dividend by 32 per cent, the third increase in little more than a year. Barrick Gold, the world's biggest producer by volume, pushed up its payout by a quarter.

This Financial Times story from Sunday is posted in the clear in this GATA release. It's another must read...and the link is here.