Little noticed is that on Tuesday, Team Obama took its first formal steps toward putting taxpayers behind Wall Street derivatives trading -- not behind banks that might make mistakes in derivatives markets, but behind the trading itself. Yes, the same crew that rails against the dangers of derivatives is quietly positioning these financial instruments directly above the taxpayer safety net.

Specifically, the law authorizes the Federal Reserve to provide "discount and borrowing privileges" to clearinghouses in emergencies. Traditionally the ability to borrow from the Fed's discount window was reserved for banks, but the new law made clear that a clearinghouse receiving assistance was not required to "be or become a bank or bank holding company." To get help, they only needed to be deemed "systemically important" by the new Financial Stability Oversight Council chaired by the Treasury Secretary.

We're told that the clearinghouses of Chicago's CME Group and Atlanta-based Intercontinental Exchange were voted systemic this week, and rumor has it that the council may even designate London-based LCH.Clearnet as critical to the U.S. financial system.

This absolute must read story from yesterday's edition of The Wall Street Journal is posted in the clear in this GATA release...and I thank Washington state reader S.A. for digging it up on our behalf. The link is here.

The typical American household would have paid nearly all of its income in taxes last year to balance the budget if the government used standard accounting rules to compute the deficit, a USA TODAY analysis finds.

The big difference between the official deficit and standard accounting: Congress exempts itself from including the cost of promised retirement benefits. Yet companies, states and local governments must include retirement commitments in financial statements, as required by federal law and private boards that set accounting rules.

The deficit was $5 trillion last year under those rules. The official number was $1.3 trillion. Liabilities for Social Security, Medicare and other retirement programs rose by $3.7 trillion in 2011, according to government actuaries, but the amount was not registered on the government's books.

It's amazing that this fact isn't well known by the general public. But of course the government is careful never to point out this fact...but most times when they do slip up and do mention it, the press is careful not to print it. That's not the case in this usatoday.com piece from last week...and I thank Scott Pluschau for sending it along. The link is here.

Two years ago, when he signed the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, President Barack Obama bragged that he'd dealt a crushing blow to the extravagant financial corruption that had caused the global economic crash in 2008. "These reforms represent the strongest consumer financial protections in history," the president told an adoring crowd in downtown D.C. on July 21st, 2010. "In history."

This was supposed to be the big one. At 2,300 pages, the new law ostensibly rewrote the rules for Wall Street. It was going to put an end to predatory lending in the mortgage markets, crack down on hidden fees and penalties in credit contracts, and create a powerful new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to safeguard ordinary consumers. Big banks would be banned from gambling with taxpayer money, and a new set of rules would limit speculators from making the kind of crazy-ass bets that cause wild spikes in the price of food and energy. There would be no more AIGs, and the world would never again face a financial apocalypse when a bank like Lehman Brothers went bankrupt.

Most importantly, even if any of that fiendish crap ever did happen again, Dodd-Frank guaranteed we wouldn't be expected to pay for it. "The American people will never again be asked to foot the bill for Wall Street's mistakes," Obama promised. "There will be no more taxpayer-funded bailouts. Period."

Two years later, Dodd-Frank is groaning on its deathbed. It's bad enough that the banks strangled it. But even worse is the way they did it - with a big assist from Congress and the White House.

Normally I would save a 5-page essay such as this offering from Matt Taibbi over at Rolling Stone magazine, until the weekend...but I thought I'd post it now. It's a must read...and I thank Australian reader Wesley Legrand for sharing it with us. The link is here.

French President François Hollande managed to set the tone at his first EU summit with his proposal for euro bonds. It was the first such meeting in years that was not dominated by Chancellor Merkel. Hollande wanted to send the message that France will be more assertive in the future.

The air was stuffy in the French press room of the European Council building, which was crowded with journalists. Everyone wanted to see the new French president during his first press conference after a European Union summit. Shortly after 1 o'clock on Thursday morning, François Hollande held court just as his predecessor, Nicolas Sarkozy, once had, explaining his "vision for growth" for nearly an hour.

In the room next door was German Chancellor Angela Merkel. In front of her were just a few rows of chairs and some cameras, and the room was half empty. She had decided not to hold a full press conference. Instead, she gave a brief statement, answered two questions and left after five minutes. She apparently knew that she didn't have much of a chance against the appeal of her new French counterpart. It almost seemed as if she was happy to concede the stage to Hollande without a fight.

This story was posted over at the German website spiegel.de yesterday...and is Roy Stephens first offering of the day. The link is here.

Greece scarcely made it on to the agenda. The hard decisions have been delayed until the next summit in late June. There was no agreement on use of the European bail-out fund (ESM) to shore up Club Med banking systems and take the strain off the sovereign states.

Mario Draghi, president of the European Central Bank, said the EU is at a "crucial moment" in its history. "We have reached a point in which the process of European integration needs a courageous leap of political imagination in order to survive," he said. Yet no such leap was in evidence. The eurozone is no closer to equipping itself with federal debt machinery and a genuine lender of last resort.

French president Francois Hollande achieved his coup de theatre. The French media gently accused him of staging a choreographed spat with chancellor Angela Merkel over eurobonds, knowing that Germany will not share its credit card with the debtor states until there is a fully-fledged United States of Europe – anathema to France. "While Germany sees eurobonds as the end point, we see them as the starting point," said Mr Hollande.

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard has his own take on the European summit...and he is far from charitable in his comments. This story was posted in The Telegraph yesterday evening...and is certainly worth reading. I thank Roy Stephens once again for sending it along...and the link is here.

The European Central Bank is trying to limit the flow of information about so-called Emergency Liquidity Assistance, which is increasingly being tapped by distressed euro-region financial institutions as the debt crisis worsens. Focus on the program intensified last week after it emerged that the ECB moved some Greek banks out of its regular refinancing operations and onto ELA until they are sufficiently capitalized.

European stocks fell and the euro weakened to a four-month low as investors sought clarity on how the Greek financial system would be kept alive. The episode highlights the ECB’s dilemma as it tries to save banks without taking too much risk onto its own balance sheet. While policy makers argue that secrecy is needed around ELA to prevent panic, the risk is that markets jump to the worst conclusion anyway.

“The lack of transparency is a double-edged sword,” said David Owen, chief European economist at Jefferies Securities International in London. “On the one hand, it increases uncertainty, but at the same time we do not necessarily want to know how bad things are as it can add fuel to the fire.”

How bad are things really getting? They're terminal, dear reader...and this can they keep kicking down the road is getting bigger and uglier with each passing day. This story was posted on the Bloomberg website late yesterday afternoon...and I thank West Virginia reader Elliot Simon for bringing it to our attention. It's worth skimming...and the link is here.

This is incredibly tragic, but we need to remind everyone that an economic crisis is a human crisis

The ekathimerini.com story was picked up by the businessinsider.com website yesterday afternoon...and it's another Roy Stephens story. The link is here.

The new Greek parliamentary elections may still be three weeks away, but the country's euro-zone partners are already preparing for one possible outcome: that Greece will exit the European common currency zone soon after the vote.

Several newspapers, including the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times Deutschland, are reporting that euro-zone finance ministries are making contingency plans in the event of a Grexit, as the media has dubbed the eventuality. And early on Thursday morning, Euro Group head Jean-Claude Juncker essentially confirmed the supposition.

"I did not ask the member states of the euro area to prepare national contingency plans, but of course we have to consider all kinds of events," he said following the informal European Union summit in Brussels on Thursday night. "But our working assumption is that Greece will stay as a member of the euro area."

This story was posted over at the spiegel.de website yesterday...and is Roy Stephens last offering in today's column. The link is here.

Greece may have only a 46-hour window of opportunity should it need to plot a route out of the euro.

That’s how much time the country’s leaders would probably have to enact any departure from the single currency while global markets are largely closed, from the end of trading in New York on a Friday to Monday’s market opening in Wellington, New Zealand, based on a synthesis of euro-exit scenarios from 21 economists, analysts and academics.

Over the two days, leaders would have to calm civil unrest while managing a potential sovereign default, planning a new currency, recapitalizing the banks, stemming the outflow of capital and seeking a way to pay bills once the bailout lifeline is cut. The risk is that the task would overwhelm any new government in a country that has had to be rescued twice since 2010 because it couldn’t manage its public finances.

This very interesting story was posted on the Bloomberg Internet site on very late on Tuesday night. I lifted if from yesterday's edition of the King Report...and the link is here.

The first is with Gabelli & Company veteran analyst Caesar Bryan. It's headlined "Global Investors are Frightened at This Point". The next blog is with MEP Nigel Farage...and he's never lost for words. This one is headlined "We Are on the Edge of a Total Social Breakdown". And lastly is this blog with Rick Rule. It's headlined "Three Things That Will End This Bear Market".

As he clambered out of bed and onto his feet one morning late last year, Miguel Angel Cardona, 62, felt his body betray him. His head grew so heavy it pulled him tumbling back down.

“You feel fuzzy, like you’re drunk,” recalls the grandfather of nine, who’s spent most of his life in Segovia, a gold-mining town in northwestern Colombia. In the days that followed he noticed numbness in his hands and fingertips. He lost 12 pounds, no longer able to stomach the meat, rice and fried plantains his wife sent with him to work each day at a single-shaft mine on the edge of town. He worked with drums filled with mercury, water and crushed stone to process gold. Cardona suspected his job was poisoning him, Bloomberg Businessweek reports in its May 28 issue.

In Segovia, almost 100 shops refine the gold that prospectors bring down from the foothills of the Andes Mountains. Juan Camilo Hoyos, 17, had no doubt his work at one of the shops was toxic. Hoyos operated a smelting oven, and after inhaling fumes each workday for about two months, he too lost the fine motor skills in his hands. “I couldn’t draw a straight line,” he says.

This story was posted on the Bloomberg Internet site late on Wednesday evening. I thank Washington state reader S.A. for sending it along. The link is here.

With the greenback merely "the best-looking horse on its way to the glue factory", the global economic imbroglio will lead to gold regaining its mojo and hitting new heights.

Gold's recent performance has certainly been a major disappointment to the many analysts and investors who have been anticipating another stellar year for the yellow metal. But the year is hardly over . . . nor is gold's long-term bull market.

I believe we will see a reversal of gold's fortunes and new all-time highs, if not this year then certainly in 2013. Moreover, the now decade-long advance in the metal's price could last another five-to-ten years given the global economic challenges that lie ahead.

This story by author Jeffrey Nichols was posted over at the Mineweb Internet site early this morning...and the link is here.

Historically gold is perhaps the only store of wealth that has stood the test of time. Politicians and bankers may manipulate the markets short term, but long term gold has always held it value.

Well, gold and silver didn't manage to cling on to their gains made at the end of last week which, presumably, brings us back to square one. The dollar is currently calling the tune as the Euro continues to sink on doubts about Greece and resultant contagion afflicting other Eurozone countries should Greece have to default, which currently looks inevitable (as indeed it has for the past couple of years). We are already seeing serious runs on Greek banks, and Spanish ones are also beginning to see the seeds of doubt creeping in. But are any European banks safe from such mass withdrawals of money?

Given the interlinking of the global banking system it makes one wonder where on earth one can put one's money safely. U.S. treasuries appear to be the main beneficiary at the moment - hence in part the apparent strength of the dollar - but it can't be too long before the traditional safe haven of gold also starts to benefit - and where gold goes silver tends to follow - in a much more exaggerated manner.

This is another story that I found over at the Mineweb earlier this morning. This piece by Lawrence Williams is on the long side, but certainly worth reading. The link is here.