The storyline behind the convulsions shaking the money centers of the world is such a hopeless labyrinth of mathematical metaphysics...because abstraction unto infinity is the last refuge of those seeking to evade reality. This is why individual human beings faced with terrible choices go crazy, and it is true of societies and nations, too.

Reality is so boringly concrete. The facts just sit there implacably like dull cement bollards in a roadway, waiting for impact with objects in motion. These facts are as follows: The world is dead broke. (By "world" I mean those places where the electricity is on more than it is off.) The world spent all of its future capital to stage an orgy of blow-out development and then the future arrived and there was no money to run everything.

To make matters worse, there are massive interest payments due on all that money misspent. Nobody has the means to pay the interest. All the activity around this fact is an Olympiad of money games that amount to musical chairs and hot potato, signifying that 1) there is not enough to go around, and 2) somebody has to end up stuck with a problem.

Wow! No shades of grey here...and I couldn't have said it better myself. This first story of the day is an absolute must read...and it was posted over at the businessinsider.com website yesterday. It's Roy Stephens first offering of the day...and the link is here.

Job openings fell to a five-month low in April and showed their sharpest percentage decline in about seven and a half years, according to a government report Tuesday that helped confirm a slowdown in the labor market.

The Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, or JOLTS, indicated 3.4 million job openings at the end of April, an 8 percent decline from the previous month.

The pace of total hiring also slowed, with 160,000 fewer jobs filled during the month.

This CNBC story was posted on their website shortly before lunch Eastern time yesterday...and I thank West Virginia reader Elliot Simon for sending it along. The link is here.

OK, it’s no secret that nation’s public pension funds are in big trouble, holding large “unfunded” liabilities owed to public workers once they retire. But most politicians (New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie is an exception) will tell you the problem is fairly containable, that there are simple fixes — such as raising taxes on the rich or pruning benefits.

Not so, warns a “strictly confidential” report JP Morgan issued last year. It describes in straightforward, frightening detail how underfunded pensions are huge ticking time bombs for many of the nation’s big cities and states.

The scandal isn’t simply that most public officials are misleading the public about the enormity of the problem and what steps must be taken to address the matter. As the Morgan report notes, many of the real liabilities are located “off balance sheet,” hidden from the public’s eye, and lax accounting standards let cities and states minimize their enormity.

This rather short story was posted on the nypost.com website late on Sunday night..and was written by Charles Gasparino of the Fox Business Network. I extracted it from yesterday's edition of the King Report...and the link is here. It's definitely worth running through if you have the time.

After John Pierpont Morgan stepped in to quell the panic of 1907, U.S. lawmakers created the Federal Reserve in 1913 as a lender of last resort to defend against future financial crises.

Almost a century later, the disclosure of a $2 billion trading loss by the man who now heads the Morgan banking empire, Jamie Dimon, has prompted calls to end an arrangement that Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders calls "a clear example of the fox guarding the henhouse."

The bill signed by President Woodrow Wilson created a decentralized institution with a Washington-based Federal Reserve Board and 12 regional banks. Each has its own president and board that includes representatives from the banking industry. Dimon, chief executive officer of JPMorgan Chase & Co., has served since 2007 as a director of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the entity that oversees Wall Street banks including Dimon's, the largest U.S. lender.

"The optics in a situation like this are not good," said Alfred Broaddus, former president of the Richmond Fed. "Maybe it is fair now to take a look at this structure and see whether it still makes sense."

A stake through its cold, black heart would be a far better solution. I found this Bloomberg story imbedded in a GATA release yesterday...and the link is here.

While Antonis Samaras, leader of Greece's New Democracy party, scrambled to forge a coalition with Pasok, his officials admitted their first task would be to renegotiate the €130bn (£104.4bn) bail-out agreed in May.

Dimitrios Tsmocos, a senior economic adviser, said Mr Samaras intends to "honour Greece's contractual obligations but will actively and aggressively renegotiate the memorandum". Another senior aide warned of a "social explosion" in Greece if the bail-outs terms were not relaxed.

Athens has to reduce its budget deficit to below 3pc of GDP by 2014 and find a further €11.5 bn in public spending cuts by 2014. In a new agreement the next government is likely to ask for that deadline to be extended by two years. But spiralling economic woes have already driven Greece off course.

This story was posted on The Telegraph's Internet site at 4:30 p.m. BST yesterday...and I thank Roy Stephens for sending it. The link is here.

The Greek debt crisis has literally become a matter of life and death.

Reuters reports that the Greek health care system is cracking under crisis pressure, leaving many Greek citizens without access to basic medical services and vital drugs. Pharmaceutical companies have even begun crafting emergency plans that would get drugs into the country in the event of a complete currency fallout.

And it's not just well-visits and painkillers. People who need the care most—cancer patients and other life-threatening cases—just aren't getting the care and drugs they need.

The businessinsider.com 'thought police' changed the headline to a much softer "The Saddest Thing You'll Read About Greece Today". It's another Roy Stephens offering...and the link is here.

All through the 1930s, the European elites continued to blame the Great Depression on Wall Street excess and the crash of 1929 (a minor, if colourful, event).

They continued to do so long after Roosevelt had broken free of fixed-exchange ruin and launched a blistering recovery with monetary stimulus a l’outrance (perhaps helped slightly by the New Deal).

They clung to this belief into the final years of the cataclysm, resolutely grinding their democracies into the dust by enforcing debt-deflation and contraction.

Blaming somebody else induced policy paralysis because it subtly diverted intellectual energy away from the root problem – then the Gold Standard, just as it is the D-mark Standard (euro) today.

Ambrose does his best Nigel Farage imitation ever, towards the end of his blog. This is another absolute must read...and was posted on the telegraph.co.uk website yesterday...and was sent to us by Roy Stephens. The link is here.

Chancellor Angela Merkel and President Francois Hollande have to do something. The market reaction to Spain's €100bn EMU rescue for its banks has been calamitous. Monday's explosive rise in Spanish two-year bond yields was a warning that Spain's crisis would spiral out of control within days, taking Italy with it.

Yet the deal explored over ceviche and mango at Los Cabos in Mexico remains murky. Any plan will backfire horribly unless conducted in the right way, and with overwhelming force.

From what we know, the eurozone's leaders aim to deploy the European Stability Mechanism (ESM) to cap borrowing costs for Spain and Italy by purchasing sovereign bonds on the open market.

Unfortunately, the ESM fund does not yet exist. It has not been ratified by Germany and Italy. When it does come into being, it won't have much money. It has a theoretical limit of €500bn -- a nice wish -- but its paid up capital will start at just €22bn.

Here's Ambrose Evans-Pritchard once again in a story posted late yesterday evening on The Telegraph's website. I thank Roy for sharing it with us...and the link is here.

Pan-European Government funds are set to be used to buy Spanish and Italian bonds, which have recently hit record highs – in a move which will send a strong signal to financial markets that the German administration is prepared to back its weaker economic neighbours.

Angela Merkel and other European leaders have come under intense pressure at this week’s G20 summit to take radical action to stem the growing euro crisis which has pushed up the cost of Spanish bonds to unsustainable levels.

Francois Hollande, the French President, said: “It will be more on mechanisms that allow us to fight speculation”.

The French president said rates paid by Spain and Italy to borrow on debt markets were “unacceptable”.

“We must show a much faster capacity for action,” Mr Hollande said.

I'm underwhelmed. This story was posted on The Telegraph's website last night...and I thank Roy for sending it in the wee hours of this morning. The link is here.

The first blog is with Citibank analyst, Tom Fitzpatrick. It's headlined "Despite Rally, Crisis to Get Even Worse". The second one is with Richard Russell...and it's entitled "Don't Believe This Rally and Prepare Yourself". The third blog is with Michael Pento...and it's headlined "Fed Meeting, European Crisis & an Inflationary Death Spiral". And lastly is this audio interview with John Mauldin. I posted his blog in this space the other day.

I know I'm supposed to be taking the summer off, but comments on Twitter from Alan Beattie, international economy editor of the Financial Times, raised hackles and lured me from my bunker.

Beattie declares that there is “no fundamental valuation model" for gold; that "it pays no interest" and that therefore it's "intrinsically speculative". Really?

These are common arguments we hear from the gold-has-no-use brigade. I want to address them.

Here is commentary from Dominic Frisby...and it's posted over at the moneyweek.com website yesterday. It was originally headlined "What if Gold Became a Global Currency Once Again?". I thank Nick Laird for bringing it to our attention...and the link is here.

Italian tax police have seized 50 kg (110 lb) of gold from an Italian businessman at the Swiss border.

The gold, worth around 2 million euros ($2.5 million), was found in a hidden compartment in his car last Thursday, the police said on Monday.

The man and his daughter, who was also in the car, were both charged with smuggling.

Italians have billions of euros in undeclared wealth stashed in Switzerland - funds that Italy is trying to have the Swiss authorities tax retroactively.

This Reuters piece from Monday was picked up by the news.yahoo.com website...and I thank reader Matus Posvanc for sending it along. The link is here.

In 2008, the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) began investigating silver manipulation. That investigation is still underway and manipulation continues to plague the market. Members of the silver community have grown increasingly cynical about the CFTC’s ability and willingness to reign in manipulative practices, and US lawmakers’ decisions regarding the CFTC’s responsibilities and funding are raising the question of whether it is reasonable to expect improvement.

This story was posted on the silverinvestingnews.com website yesterday...and I thank reader Paul Laviers for sending it along. It's certainly worth reading...and the link is here.

Investing in mining stocks or bullion does not have to be an either/or proposition. There are differences between the two and, depending on the investor, one could invest in both, in appropriate percentages, at certain times. Mining stocks and bullion have very different attributes on the risk-reward spectrum; they can perform quite differently.

This 3-page article is posted on the bmgbullion.com website...and is well worth your time. I thank Paul Brent for sending it...and the link is here.

This must read gold commentary from Mark O'Byrne over at the goldcore.com website, was posted on the financialsense.com Internet site yesterday.

The blog contains a couple of Nick Laird's nifty charts as well. I thank Elliot Simon for bringing this to our attention...and the link is here.

Bron took one look at the 'Silver Seasonality' chart that I posted from Dimitri Speck's website...and told me in an e-mail earlier today [Australia time] that it "inspired him to cover the topic...as I just wanted to look a bit deeper into it. I was actually hoping for a stronger pattern so looked at many different time periods but just couldn't find anything reliable enough I think silver is just too volatile."

Well, we all know why silver's price is so 'volatile'...and I'm happy to post the results of Bron's efforts, which are well worth your time. It's posted over a the perthmintbullion.com website...and the link is here.

Gold may rebound, after dropping for the first time in eight sessions, on speculation that the U.S. Federal Reserve may take steps to boost the economy amid signs of faltering growth, increasing demand for a haven.

Spot gold was little changed at $1,620.55 an ounce at 12:24 p.m. in Singapore. Holdings in the SPDR Gold Trust, the biggest exchange-traded product backed by bullion, were unchanged at a one-month high of 1,281.62 metric tons yesterday, the company’s website showed.

Gold prices almost doubled after the Fed bought $2.3 trillion of debt in two rounds of quantitative easing from December 2008 to June 2011. The central bank will review new economic forecasts as it concludes a two-day meeting today, and may announce further measures to spur growth after recent data in the housing and labor markets missed projections.

“Investors are exercising caution in case the Fed disappoints,” said Huang Fulong, an analyst at CITICS Futures Co., a unit of China’s biggest listed brokerage. “Gold above $1,600 has easing priced in and may sell off hard if some form of stimulus isn’t taken.”

This Bloomberg story was filed from Singapore earlier today...and was posted on their website late last night here in North America. It's West Virginia reader Elliot Simon's third and final contribution to today's column...and the link is here.