Some U.S. lawmakers want the coin to be the dollar of the realm.

Sens. Tom Harkin (D., Iowa), John McCain (R., Ariz.) and two colleagues Tuesday are introducing legislation that would kill off the dollar bill in favor of dollar coins, touting the move as a way to cut costs over the long run.

“Promoting the dollar coin is a smart investment for our country that saves taxpayer’s money,” Harkin said.

The move is latest in a long-running battle between those who think it is wasteful to print dollar bills, which wear out and have to be replaced frequently, and those who say the $1 coin is the real waste of money because Americans don’t like them.

Let's see if this attempt is successful. The story appeared in Monday's edition of The Wall Street Journal...and I thank Washington state reader S.A. for sending it along. The link is here.

The amount of money the federal government takes out of the U.S. economy in taxes will increase by more than 30 percent between 2012 and 2014, according to theBudget and Economic Outlook published today by the CBO.

At the same time, according to CBO, the economy will remain sluggish, partly because of higher taxes.

“In particular, between 2012 and 2014, revenues in CBO’s baseline shoot up by more than 30 percent,” said CBO, “mostly because of the recent or scheduled expirations of tax provisions, such as those that lower income tax rates and limit the reach of the alternative minimum tax (AMT), and the imposition of new taxes, fees, and penalties that are scheduled to go into effect.”

This story was posted on the cnsnews.com website yesterday...and I thank reader Scott Pluschau for bringing it to my attention. The link is here.

California's cash may be exhausted by March as tax collections trail budgeted amounts, Controller John Chiang said in a letter to lawmakers.

The nation’s most-populous state needs $3.3 billion for March and the first two weeks of April, Chiang said in the letter to state Senator Mark Leno and Assemblyman Bob Blumenfield, who lead the Joint Legislative Budget Committee. The Assembly Budget Committee is holding a hearing today in Sacramento on the state’s spending plan.

State receipts were $2.6 billion lower than forecast through Dec. 31, while expenditures were an equal amount higher, Chiang said. In a previous report, Chiang said the collections shortfall for the fiscal year that began in July was led by corporate and personal-income taxes.

This Bloomberg story from yesterday is also courtesy or reader Scott Pluschau...and the link is here.

Illinois’s unpaid bills may more than triple to $34.8 billion by 2017 unless lawmakers and Democratic Governor Pat Quinn immediately bring Medicaid and pension spending under control, said a research group.

The “potentially paralyzing” backlog, projected to reach $9.2 billion when this fiscal year ends June 30, would be fueled by an “unsustainable” increase in Medicaid spending, according to the Civic Federation, which calls itself a nonpartisan government research organization.

“Failure to address unsustainable trends in the state’s pension and Medicaid systems will only result in financial disaster for the state of Illinois,” Laurence Msall, president of the Civic Federation in Chicago, said in a press release on Monday.

I borrowed this Bloomberg story from yesterday's King Report...and the link is here.

Investors fled out of bonds of weaker European countries on Monday, sending yields on Portuguese government bonds to a record high over concerns that the euro zone debt troubles were spreading beyond Greece.

The fears of contagion spreading to other periphery countries in the zone that share the euro have grown more intense in recent months, with much of the latest focus on Portugal.

Yields on Portuguese 10-year government bonds closed at 16.58 percent, the highest they have been since the start of the euro currency and up from 14.645 percent on Friday.

This is another story I lifted from yesterday's King Report...and it was posted in The New York Times on Monday. The link is here.

Investors participating in a deal to slash Greece's massive debt would face an overall loss on their bond holdings of more than 70 percent, a person involved in with the negotiations said early Tuesday.

European leaders at a summit in Brussels said a final debt deal could be signed off in the coming days, together with a second multibillion-euro bailout package designed to save the country from a potentially disastrous bankruptcy.

Athens and representatives of investors holding Greek government bonds over the weekend came close to a final agreement designed to bring Greece's debt down to a more manageable level. Without a restructuring, those debts would swell to around double the country's economic output by the end of the year.

This AP story filed on Monday evening was posted over at the breitbart.com website...and I thank reader Brad Robertson for sending it along. The link is here.

Greek politicians have reacted angrily at a leaked German proposal for a euro-commissioner to control the country's fiscal policy.

"Our partners do know that European integration is based on the institutional parity of member states and the respect of their national identity and dignity,” finance minister Evangelos Venizelos said Sunday (29 January) in a statement.

“Whoever puts before a people the dilemma of choosing between financial assistance and national dignity disregards basic historical lessons," he warned, a veiled reference to the Nazi occupation of Greece during World War II.

This story, filed from Brussels, was posted over at the euobserver.com website on Monday...and is Roy Stephens first offering of the day. The link is here.

Europe could have a 'super' €1,500 billion ($1,969 billion) debt firewall by the summer under plans to combine three funds of €500 billion each. The Financial Times Deutschland reported on Tuesday that the plan was discussed at a meeting on the sidelines of the recent World Economic Forum in Davos attended by US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, International Monetary Fund (IMF) chief Christine Lagarde, German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble and his French counterpart Francois Baroin.

The proposal would see the current temporary bailout fund, the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF), combined with, rather than replaced by, the permanent European Stability Mechanism (ESM). The third €500 billion chunk would be provided by the IMF. In return, euro-zone countries have already agreed to €150 billion in bilateral credit for the fund. The other €350 billion would come from across the world from countries such as Brazil and the UK. The US, however, would not participate -- even though Geithner himself said in Davos that only an extremely large firewall would ensure financial security.

The massive fund will only become reality if Berlin agrees to it, and the IMF and the European Commission are hoping to secure Germany's approval at the next EU summit at the beginning of March.

More money out of thin air that will never be repaid. This story appeared posted on the German website spiegel.de yesterday...and is Roy's second offering of the day. The link is here.

The raging debate over Mario Draghi’s credit rescue has refused to die down.

A disturbingly large number of credit experts warn that the ECB life-line is not the "game-changer" that the markets seem to think, cannot in itself can save Euroland, and may prove counter-productive – perhaps soon.

This is not what I suggested in my Monday column.

Since I have a special affection for the monetarist camp, I tilted to their view in that the ECB has indeed carried out a coup and may have pulled Europe of spiralling depression, just in the nick of time. (This does not mean it can ever save monetary union in its current structure, but that is another matter.)

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, up on his soap box in London, seems to think that what he says really matters. But he is one of the New World Order's fair-haired boys, so maybe it does. This was posted at The Telegraph yesterday...and is worth the read. It's Roy Stephens third offering of the day...and the link is here.

This very interesting article was the headline story in yesterday's edition of Casey's Daily Dispatch. This short essay is posted at the Casey Research website...and It's definitely worth your time. The link is here.

The concentration of naval power in the Strait of Hormuz is heightening the risk of a fourth Gulf war, even though the show of force may be nothing more than posturing by the West and Iran in the run-up to negotiations. The stretch of water, 34 miles at its narrowest point, is the aorta of the oil trade.

A flotilla of warships is approaching the small emirate of Fujairah at that very moment, made up of the American aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, a guided missile cruiser, two destroyers, the British frigate HMS Argyll and the French frigate La Motte-Picquet. All of them were sailing west through the Strait of Hormuz toward the Persian Gulf. The US military already refers to this zone as a "theater," a possible scene of combat.

The Persian Gulf hasn't seen this kind of display of naval power since the final campaign against Saddam Hussein. Indeed, its size has prompted many to wonder whether it is merely posturing and bluffing or, rather, a sign of an upcoming fourth war in the Gulf.

If there is an 'accidental' war, it certainly will likely get started by a false-flag operation of some kind. This story was posted on the spiegel.de website yesterday...and is another Roy Stephens offering. The link is here.

"Venezuela today received the last shipment of gold bars in an operation that repatriated 160 tons of the South American country’s reserves of the metal held abroad, said Nelson Merentes, president of the country’s central bank.

Fourteen tons of gold arrived at the Caracas airport today on a flight from Europe, Merentes said. The gold bars were transported in a caravan, broadcast on state television, to vaults at the central bank where street banners proclaimed “Mission Complete.”

This Bloomberg story was filed on Monday afternoon...and I thank reader Richard Craggs for being the first one through the door with it. It's a must read...and the link is here.

"A gigantic amount of buying in the metals has been from China and India. The average American has been more concerned about preservation of capital."

"I’m suggesting that’s going to change and if you are going to have Americans buying gold, on top of the Chinese and the Indians, and the Europeans get involved, you are not going to be able to increase supply, so the only thing left to adjust is going to be price.”

Eric sent me this blog yesterday afternoon. It's posted at the KWN website...and the link is here.

Here's another blog that Eric King sent me yesterday afternoon. It's posted over at the King World News website as well...and that link is here.

I get the impression that the conference, hosted by silverseek.com yesterday, was a success.

Here are three transcripts from it...and there's enough reading linked below to keep you off the streets for a while. The first is Eric Sprott...and his speech is entitled "Mania, Manipulation, Meltdown."...and the link is here. The second one is headlined "James Turk reaffirms his $400 long-term silver target"...and the link to that is here. The third one is titled "David Morgan: Silver in the Next Decade"...and here's the link to that one.

I thank Roy Stephens for sending them along...and they are his last contributions to today's column.