The ranks of America's poor are on track to climb to levels unseen in nearly half a century, erasing gains from the war on poverty in the 1960s amid a weak economy and fraying government safety net.

Census figures for 2011 will be released this fall in the critical weeks ahead of the November elections.

The Associated Press surveyed more than a dozen economists, think tanks and academics, both nonpartisan and those with known liberal or conservative leanings, and found a broad consensus: The official poverty rate will rise from 15.1 percent in 2010, climbing as high as 15.7 percent. Several predicted a more modest gain, but even a 0.1 percentage point increase would put poverty at the highest level since 1965.

This AP story was posted on the chicagotribune.com Internet site yesterday...and I thank West Virginia reader Elliot Simon for sending it. The link is here.

By the end of the third quarter of fiscal 2012, the new debt accumulated in this fiscal year by the federal government had already exceeded $1 trillion, making this fiscal year the fifth straight in which the federal government has increased its debt by more than a trillion dollars, according to official debt numbers published by the U.S. Treasury.

Prior to fiscal 2008, the federal government had never increased its debt by as much as $1 trillion in a single fiscal year. From fiscal 2008 onward, however, the federal government has increased its debt by at least $1 trillion each and every fiscal year.

The federal fiscal year begins on Oct. 1 and ends on Sept. 30. At the close of business on Sept. 30, 2011—the last day of fiscal 2011—the total debt of the federal government was $14,790,340,328,557.15. By June 29, the last business day of the third quarter of fiscal 2012, that debt had grown to $15,856,367,214,324.44—an increase for this fiscal year of $1,066,026,885,767.29.

This story was posted over at the cnbsnews.com website yesterday...and the link is here. I thank Scott Pluschau for digging it up on our behalf.

While this quarter's earnings reports have crossed a substantially lowered profit bar, future expectations through the year indicate a recession could be on the way.

Estimates for the third and fourth quarters have been dropped to levels not seen since the days of the 2008 financial crisis, below even the muted 2 percent expected level of inflation.

That's an ominous recession sign for an economy that has barely managed to attain positive growth this year even with the strong level of earnings beats, according to an analysis by Nicholas Colas, chief market strategist at ConvergEx in New York.

"Revenue estimates for the back half of 2012 have been slowly working their way lower this year," Colas said. "This trend, however, has accelerated to the downside over the past 30 days and we are fast approaching levels where these estimates are unambiguously pointing to the risk of a U.S./global recession later into 2012 and 2013."

This CNBC story was posted on their website early yesterday afternoon...and is Scott's second offering in a row in today's column. The link is here.

America’s breadbasket is baking to a crisp – and the combination of extreme heat and expansive drought is likely to continue well into early August, further damaging corn and soybean crops that have already been severely compromised – and almost certainly pushing prices up higher.

In the last five weeks, U.S. corn prices have surged more than 55 percent as crops continue to bake in the worst drought in the Midwest in more than 50 years, Reuters reported Friday. The scorching conditions will cause further damage to crops that already have been nearly decimated in some Midwest areas.

On Friday corn and soybeans rose to record highs, extending the biggest gains in two-and-a-half years.

Though some rain fell over the past few days in about a third of the Midwest, the week ahead "will be dry and very hot (in St. Louis), with temperatures in the 100s (degrees Fahrenheit), reaching 106 on Wednesday," meteorologist Don Keeney told Reuters on Friday. That same hot weather is predicted for the bulk of the central and western Midwest.

This story was posted on thefiscaltimes.com website on Saturday...and I thank reader 'h c' for sending it along. The link is here.

US prosecutors and their European peers are understood to have contacted defence lawyers representing traders at banks such as Royal Bank of Scotland, Barclays and UBS to notify them arrests are imminent.

Prosecutors in Washington DC are understood to be furthest advanced towards making arrests. In the UK the Serious Fraud Office has said it will investigate the alleged manipulation of Libor and other interest rate benchmarks but has yet to make decision over whether there is enough evidence to prosecute.

Arrest and criminal charges are expected to be made within the coming weeks.

"The individual criminal charges have no impact on the regulatory moves against the banks," a European source familiar with the matter told Reuters. "But banks are hoping that at least regulators will see that the scandal was mainly due to individual misbehavior of a gang of traders."

This story was posted on the telegraph.co.uk website about lunchtime BST...and is Roy Stephens first offering in today's column. The link is here.

Paying a plumber cash in hand is "morally wrong" because it denies the revenue vital funds, a Treasury minister said as the government outlined new ways of cutting down on £5bn in tax avoidance.

David Gauke, the exchequer secretary to the Treasury, risked shining a spotlight on whether any of his government colleagues have ever made cash in hand payments to plumbers when he described the practice as a large part of Britain's "hidden economy".

The minister spoke out after delivering a speech on the next steps for tackling tax avoidance at the Policy Exchange think-tank.

"Getting a discount with your plumber by paying cash in hand is something that is a big cost to the Revenue and means others must pay more in tax," Gauke said.

This story from The Guardian yesterday was sent to me by U.K. reader Tariq Khan...and the link is here.

A global super-rich elite has exploited gaps in cross-border tax rules to hide an extraordinary £13 trillion ($21tn) of wealth offshore – as much as the American and Japanese GDPs put together – according to research commissioned by the campaign group Tax Justice Network.

James Henry, former chief economist at consultancy McKinsey and an expert on tax havens, has compiled the most detailed estimates yet of the size of the offshore economy in a new report, The Price of Offshore Revisited, released exclusively to the Observer.

He shows that at least £13tn – perhaps up to £20tn – has leaked out of scores of countries into secretive jurisdictions such as Switzerland and the Cayman Islands with the help of private banks, which vie to attract the assets of so-called high net-worth individuals. Their wealth is, as Henry puts it, "protected by a highly paid, industrious bevy of professional enablers in the private banking, legal, accounting and investment industries taking advantage of the increasingly borderless, frictionless global economy". According to Henry's research, the top 10 private banks, which include UBS and Credit Suisse in Switzerland, as well as the US investment bank Goldman Sachs, managed more than £4tn in 2010, a sharp rise from £1.5tn five years earlier.

This story sort of puts the Paying a plumber cash in hand is "morally wrong" story posted above in some sort of perspective, doesn't it? It's Tariq Khan's second story in a row from The Guardian...and the link is here.

Moody's Investors Service on Monday changed its outlook for top-rated Germany, the Netherlands and Luxembourg to negative from stable, warning that they may have to increase support for indebted euro zone states such as Spain and Italy.

Moody's also cited an increased chance of Greece leaving the euro zone, which "would set off a chain of financial sector shocks ... that policymakers could only contain at a very high cost."

The agency affirmed Finland's 'Aaa' rating and stable outlook, but it said all four countries were adversely affected by rising uncertainty about the outcome of the euro area debt crisis and the increasing likelihood that greater support would be needed by other euro area countries, most notably Spain and Italy.

This is another story that was posted on the CNBC website yesterday...and Scott Pluschau's third offering in today's column. The link is here.

The German news magazine Spiegel reports that the IMF has told the EU it will provide no additional funds for Greece. The report has sparked fresh fears that Greece could fall into bankruptcy by the autumn.

A report by a German news magazine on Sunday sparked fresh concerns about the possibility of Greece being forced into insolvency.

In an article published on its website, Spiegel cites unnamed senior European Union sources in Brussels who told the news magazine that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) had signaled it would not contribute to any further aid for Greece.

According to the report, this makes the possibility of Greece going bankrupt more likely, and it could do just that as soon as September.

This story was posted over at the dw.de website yesterday...and I thank reader 'h c' for his second story in today's column. The link is here.

The ECB has turned the screws on Greece, announcing it will stop accepting Greek bonds as collateral. Athens has tried to play down the development.

The European Central Bank (ECB) on Friday said that it would no longer accept Greek bonds and other collateral used by Greek banks to tap into ECB funding until after Greece talks with its international creditors.

“The ECB will assess their potential eligibility following the conclusion of the currently ongoing review, by the European Commission in liaison with the ECB and the IMF, of the progress made by Greece under the second adjustment program," said the central bank in a statement.

The bank said that the arrangement was "for the time being" and would take effect from July 25.

The development turns up the heat on Greece, according to analysts, as it prepares for talks with the so-called "troika" - the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the ECB and the European Commission - about whether Athens has gone far enough to slash its budget and carry out reforms.

This is another story from the dw.de website...this one from Friday. I thank reader 'h c' for his third and final offering in today's column...and the link is here.

Greece is in a "Great Depression" similar to the American one in the 1930s, the country's Prime Minister Antonis Samaras told former US President Bill Clinton on Sunday.

Mr Samaras's comments come two days before a team of Greece's debt inspectors arrive in Athens to push for further austerity measures if the debt-laden country wants to qualify for further rescue payments and avoid a chaotic default.

Athens wants to soften the terms of a €130bn bailout agreed last March with the European Union and the International Monetary Fund, to soften their impact on an economy going through its worst post-war recession.

Greek GDP is expected by the end of this to have shrunk by about a fifth in five consecutive years of recession since 2008, hammered by tax hikes, spending cuts and wage reductions required by two EU/IMF bailouts. Unemployment climbed to a record 22.6pc in the first quarter.

This story was posted on The Telegraph's website early in the afternoon BST on Sunday...and it's Roy Stephens second offering of the day. The link is here.

Spain’s financial woes deepened ominously Friday after a heavily indebted region asked Madrid for help and the government predicted more recession next year, prompting investors to dump stocks and government bonds.

Just as European ministers approved a rescue of Spain’s troubled banks, the region of Valencia revealed it would become the first to tap a new, week-old fund designed to provide liquidity to the country’s 17 semi-autonomous regions.

The yield on Spanish 10-year bonds shot up 0.25 percentage points to 7.22 percent on the news, while the Ibex stock index fell 5.8 percent.

Many Spanish regions are so heavily in debt — due to the recession and a burst real estate bubble — that they cannot raise money at affordable rates. As a result, they are struggling to repay creditors and settle contract bills. Like the central government, many have enacted stinging austerity measures with cuts in health care and other services.

This AP story showed up on the washingtonpost.com website on Friday...and I lifted it from yesterday's edition of the King Report. The link is here.

Tiny Murcia was on course on Sunday to be the second Spanish region to request help from the central government to keep it afloat, as media reported half a dozen local authorities were ready to follow in the footsteps of Valencia.

How Spain's 17 indebted autonomous regions, locked out of international debt markets, refinance 36 billion euros in debt this year has been a major source of concern for investors ever since they missed deficit targets last year.

Spain's central government set up an 18 billion euro ($22 billion) fund earlier this month to ease their funding pain.

Asked in a Q&A newspaper interview whether Murcia planned to tap the fund created, the head of the local government, Ramon Luis Valcarcel, answered "of course", and added that he hoped it would be available for September.

This Reuters piece was filed from Madrid on Sunday...and is another story that I borrowed from yesterday's edition of the King Report. The link is here.

The financial credibility of Spain is close to zero. Fiscal credibility is zero. Political credibility is zero. The new government of Mariano Rajoy has squandered the advantages of its absolute majority in a matter of months, and completely lost the confidence of Europe's institutions.

That is the verdict of unnamed EU officials and sources in Brussels cited by El Pais, following the twin crash of the Madrid bourse and the Spanish bond market on `Black Friday'.

The claims are self-serving spin by Europe’s incompetent policy elite. Once again, they are blaming the victim for the consequences of their own scorched-earth monetary, fiscal, and regulatory policies.

The reason why Spain is spiralling into deeper depression is because EMU policy settings are contractionary...as the European Central Bank caused the Spanish money supply to collapse last year by tightening policy. Real M1 money was falling at double digit rates by mid-2011. The economic damage we are seeing now was baked into the pie.

This AE-S offering was posted on the telegraph.co.uk website early Sunday evening...and I thank Roy Stephens for sending it. It's worth reading...and the link is here.

Spanish and Italian regulators banned the short-selling of financial stocks on Monday after stock markets fell sharply on fears that might need a full international debt bailout.

"The situation of extreme volatility across the European markets could interfere with their smooth functioning and the normal course of their activities," the Spanish regulator said in a statement.

Spain has banned short selling for three months until October 23 to "maintain stability". The ban could be shortened or increased, as necessary, the regulator said.

Italy reintroduced a temporary ban on the short selling of financial stocks for this week.

In mid-afternoon trade, Madrid's Ibex was down around 3pc, having lost some 5pc earlier after tumbling nearly 6pc on Friday while other European bourse were all under heavy pressure. Italy's FTSE MIB fell 3.5pc after failing as much as 4.5pc in the morning.

This is another story from The Telegraph yesterday...an it's Roy Stephens final offering in today's column. The link is here.

Some suspect that the Federal Reserve, in order to forestall a declining dollar and thus declining prices of dollar-denominated financial instruments, is behind the sales of naked shorts every time demand for physical bullion drives up the price of gold and silver. The short sales–paper sales–cancel the impact on price of the increased demand for bullion.

Some also believe that they see the Federal Reserve’s hand in the stock market. One day stocks fall 200 points. The next day stocks rise 200 points. This up and down pattern has been ongoing for a long time. One possible explanation is that as wary investors sell their equity holdings, the Federal Reserve, or the “plunge protection team,” steps in and buys.

Just as the “terrorist threat” was used to destroy the laws that protect US civil liberty, the financial crisis has resulted in the Federal Reserve moving far outside its charter and normal operating behavior.

To sum up, what has happened is that irresponsible and thoughtless–in fact, ideological–deregulation of the financial sector has caused a financial crisis that can only be managed by fraud. Civil damages might be paid, but to halt the fraud itself would mean the collapse of the financial system. Those in charge of the system would prefer the collapse to come from outside, such as from a collapse in the value of the dollar that could be blamed on foreigners, because an outside cause gives them something to blame other than themselves.

This long, but must read essay, headlined "The Libor Scandal in Full Perspective", is posted on the paulcraigroberts.org Internet site...and is linked here.

On Sunday I was interviewed by Dr. Janda on WAAM 1600 in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The interview runs about 25 minutes...and the link to the podcast is here.

The first is with Bank of Montreal's Global Strategy Advisor, Don Coxe. It's headlined "The Global Situation is Becoming Quite Desperate". The second blog is with Michael Pento...and it's entitled "Why We Can All Kiss This Financial System Goodbye". The third blog is with John Embry. It's headlined "Expect Shortages Of Gold as Soon as Next Month". Next is this Richard Russell blog that's entitled "Bear Market to Last Another 15 Years to 2027". The last two are with Eric Sprott. The blog is entitled "The Frightening Black Swan Nobody is Talking About"...and the audio interview is also available now...and the link to that is here. All these blogs and interviews are definitely worth your time.

For one, Nouriel Roubini the NYU economist who predicted the financial crisis and is now warning of a “perfect storm” for the global economy in 2013, recently said he believes the Federal Reserve might, at some point, feel forced to buy equities, if all else fails.

Roubini isn’t advocating that the Fed do so, but other very influential people have. In 1989, a former Federal Reserve governor named Robert Heller argued publicly that the central bank should intervene in the stock market to prevent stock market crashes. Fast forward to today and prominent UCLA economist Roger Farmer is essentially advocating the same thing. Farmer believes that the stock market crash contributed significantly to the Great Recession and that the government should act to put a floor on tumbling stock prices when they threaten the wider economy.

Ruminations on unconventional interventions extend to the gold market, too. According to a 1993 Federal Reserve transcript, then-Fed chairman Alan Greenspan suggested to colleagues that the government sell gold to push down its price. In doing so, the Fed might have been able to lower the public’s expectations of future inflation because gold is widely seen as a hedge against generalized price increases.

And the temptation for governments to fiddle with things they don’t usually touch is rising. It’s very easy to understand why the BOE might have considered allowing or persuading banks to misreport LIBOR. In 2008 the world was in the middle of a financial storm the likes of which had not been seen since the 1930s. Desperate times call for desperate measures, some might argue.

Hepburn's commentary is headlined "Why the Idea of the Bank of England Tampering with LIBOR Isn't as Crazy as You Think"...and it was posted at the macleans.ca website late yesterday afternoon. I borrowed it from a GATA release yesterday...and the link is here.

In his office in Khartoum's gold market, central bank sales agent Mohamed Adam sips tea and watches while his staff load bundles of cash worth tens of thousands of dollars from the safe into four boxes.

The government will use these piles of Sudanese pounds to purchase gold, which it plans to sell for the dollars needed to pay for imports of food and other essentials.

"We buy all gold from local traders and people who search for gold," Adam said. Outside his office, gold traders make deals in the busy market in a rundown downtown building, where paint is peeling from the walls.

Sudan is looking to expand gold mines and boost production of the metal to help keep the economy afloat.

This Reuters piece was filed from Khartoum...and was posted on their website last Wednesday. This is another story I found in a GATA release yesterday...and the link is here.

In order to keep gold prices under check, the practice of giving gold as dowry or as an offering at religious places must be curbed, as should gold jewellery purchases, suggests a senior official at India's central bank.

Gold offerings at temples have come under the scanner of the Reserve Bank of India. Deputy Governor K C Chakrabarty has called for a reduction in demand for gold as an offering to the deities.

"Ninety percent of the gold demand is jewellery or to offer to God. Both have to stop," said the official of the apex bank. The deputy Governor noted that Indian society's obsession with gold was an archaic idea of pre-historic times when India was a rich society of abundance.

"Wearing gold as an ornament was a culture when you were a rich society, when you were contributing to 30% of the GDP of the world. Today, we have become a poor country, we need to change our culture," he added.

You can't make this stuff up! This story mineweb.com story was filed from Mumbai on Monday...and I thank reader Donald Sinclair for bringing it to our attention. It certainly falls into the must read category...and the link is here.

A four-year probe of potential price manipulation in the silver market may be completed as early as September, according to Bart Chilton, a member of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

"I am hopeful and expect the silver investigation to conclude in the not-too-distant future, hopefully in September or October," Chilton, a 52-year-old Democrat, said in an e-mail. "It has already taken way too long."

The enforcement division of the Washington-based agency, the main U.S. overseer of derivatives markets, began pursuing allegations of manipulation in the silver market in September 2008. Investigators have analyzed more than 100,000 documents and interviewed dozens of witnesses, the CFTC said in a November 2011 statement.

We are coming up on the fourth anniversary of this farce...and it will be interesting to see how Gary Gensler et al over at the CFTC lie their way out of this one. The story was posted on the Bloomberg website yesterday...and is worth skimming. The link is here.

It has taken more than 25 years for me to fully comprehend a conclusion that I never wanted to reach, namely, that there is an organized war against the price of silver that has come to include the US Government. I think the US Government involvement came into being almost accidently, but even if it was an accident of sorts, that does not diminish the serious nature of what must be described as illegal activity at the highest levels. I am conflicted between feelings of sadness and outrage.

Starting around 1985, I became convinced that the price of silver was being manipulated by collusive and concentrated short selling by certain commercial entities on the world’s leading precious metals commodity exchange, the COMEX. Having a background in futures trading going back to 1972, it dawned on me that the concentrated and orchestrated short selling was dominating and, therefore, manipulating the price of silver.

The very first thing I did after this discovery was to petition the regulators at the CFTC and the COMEX to alert them to the existence of the most serious market crime possible. My petitions fell on deaf ears but I continued to petition them through the present. Since this was in the pre-Internet era, I was limited in convincing others of the silver manipulation due to distribution restrictions. Communication was very different 25 years ago.

This is the last offering in today's column...and falls into the absolute must read category. This story was sent out to his paying subscribers last Wednesday...and Ted felt it important enough to put up in the public domain...a decision which I applaud. It's posted over at the silverseek.com Internet site...and the link is here.