Pharmaceutical companies, military contractors, banks and other corporations are on track to pay as much as $8 billion this year to resolve charges of defrauding the government, analysts say — a record sum and more than twice the amount assessed last year by the Justice Department.

But while the collections are a boon to the government and taxpayers, they are resurrecting questions about the relative lack of charges against executives at the companies that are getting the stiffest penalties.

“A lot of people on the street, they’re wondering how a company can commit serious violations of securities laws and yet no individuals seem to be involved and no individual responsibility was assessed,” Senator Jack Reed, Democrat of Rhode Island and chairman of a subcommittee that oversees securities regulation, said at a recent hearing.

This story appeared in The New York Times yesterday, but now bears the title "Corporate Fraud Cases Often Spare Individuals". I thank Phil Barlett for sending it...and the link is here.

A bailiff calls out names and charges: disorderly conduct, possession of marijuana, violating a park curfew. Men and women shuffle forward, heads hung low, and listen as a prosecutor offers more or less the same deal — whatever time they have already served in a sweaty lockup and a fine.

The judge poses a final question to each defendant: Do you acknowledge guilt?

Do you?

An hour passes, and I hanker for a more ambitious, not to mention less repentant, class of wrongdoer. Enough with the teenage mother who smoked a joint, the jewelry salesman who loitered past midnight in a park or the multiply pierced young woman who stole a ham to pay for a heroin fix.

I board the No. 4 train and ride north to a gorgeous Beaux-Arts building with a mansard roof on the corner of 40th Street and Fifth Avenue. This is the American headquarters for HSBC.

The rest of the story shows that there are two kinds of justice...one for the rich, powerful and 'too big to fail'...and then there's the justice for the rest of us. This story was posted in The New York Times on Monday...and it's Phil Barlett's second offering in a row on this issue. The link is here.

Mr. Mann, who is a member of the Treasury Select Committee, said he was concerned about the scale of money laundering, and also about an increasing anti-British bias by US regulators and politicians, which he said was shifting financial markets from London to New York.

In a statement on Tuesday, he said: “I have no truck whatsoever with British banks profiteering from Iran and Burma, nor with US banks profiteering from drug and illegal arms money or the private accounts of world dictators.”

“The British Parliament should instigate an unbiased and far reaching investigation into money laundering in Britain, involving British banks and endangering the well-being of British interests and the British people.”

Standard Chartered has rejected US claims that it “schemed” with Iran to conduct secret transactions worth $250bn (£160bn), insisting that "99.9pc of the transactions" complied with regulations.

This story showed up early yesterday afternoon BST on the telegraph.co.uk Internet site...and I thank Roy Stephens for his first offering in today's column. The link is here.

U.S. consumer credit posted its weakest growth in eight months in June as Americans reduced credit card debt, a potentially negative sign for an economy that has struggled to create jobs.

Consumer credit grew by $6.46 billion in June, the Federal Reserve said on Tuesday. That was well below the $11 billion advance Wall Street economists had forecast in a Reuters poll.

The Fed also said credit climbed slightly less during May than originally thought.

Credit has been expanding since late 2010 as the country recovered from the 2007-2009 recession. The expansion in June, however, was the smallest since October 2011.

This Reuters piece was posted on the CNBC Internet site yesterday afternoon...and I thank West Virginia reader Elliot Simon for sharing it with us. The link is here.

The Bank of England will slash its growth forecasts close to zero [today] as the double-dip recession deepens and the eurozone storm closes in on UK shores.

Governor Sir Mervyn King is expected to indicate no growth for 2012 in the Bank's quarterly inflation report, compared with 0.8 per cent predicted three months ago and 2 per cent a year ago.

As the sluggish economy weighs on prices, inflation forecasts are likely to be cut as well, with the consumer price index dipping below the Government's 2 per cent target by the end of the year.

This story showed up on the independent.co.uk website yesterday...and I thank U.K. reader Tariq Khan for bringing it to our attention. The link is here.

Monte dei Paschi di Siena, the world's oldest bank, took five centuries to accumulate its wealth -- and three years to gamble it away. Its fall from grace is a disaster for its home city of Siena, which relied on distributed profits from the bank. Now the picturesque Tuscan city is trying to come to terms with the new reality.

The bank's fall from grace can be dated to 2007. It was a time of mergers, and it was widely believed that small banks no longer stood a chance on the global financial markets -- not even a bank like MPS, which has been in business since 1472 and was lending money when Columbus was still learning how to sail.

This 2-page essay was posted on the German Internet site spiegel.de yesterday...and is a very interesting read. I thank Donald Sinclair for being the first person through the door with this story...and the link is here.

Italy’s economy contracted by 0.7 per cent in the second quarter, data showed on Tuesday, compounding the difficulties for Mario Monti’s technocrat government as it grapples with a debt crisis that threatens the whole euro zone.

The 0.7 per cent fall in gross domestic product was the fourth consecutive drop for an economy mired in recession since the middle of last year, with the rate of contraction easing only marginally from a 0.8 per cent decline in the first quarter.

Official statistics agency ISTAT reported that GDP was down 2.5 per cent year-on-year after a fall of 1.4 per cent in the first quarter, posting the steepest fall since the end of 2009.

Italy has been the euro zone’s most sluggish economy for more than a decade, fuelling investor concerns about its ability to bring down public debt of around 123 per cent of output.

This Reuters story showed up on the globeandmail.com Internet site yesterday...and I thank Donald Sinclair for finding it. The link is here.

The call to Vincent Grandil’s Paris law firm began like many others that have rolled in recently. On the line was the well-paid chief executive of one of France’s most profitable companies, and he was feeling nervous.

President François Hollande is vowing to impose a 75 percent tax on the portion of anyone’s income above a million euros ($1.24 million) a year. “Should I be preparing to leave the country?” the executive asked Mr. Grandil.

The lawyer’s counsel: Wait and see. For now, at least.

“We’re getting a lot of calls from high earners who are asking whether they should get out of France,” said Mr. Grandil, a partner at Altexis, which specializes in tax matters for corporations and the wealthy. “Even young, dynamic people pulling in 200,000 euros are wondering whether to remain in a country where making money is not considered a good thing.”

This story was posted on The New York Times website yesterday...and also sports a new headline that reads "Indigestion for ‘les Riches’ in a Plan for Higher Taxes". This is another story courtesy of reader Phil Barlett...and the link is here.

So we enter the treacherous market month of August with Europe in limbo. The actors wait upon each other. World finance held hostage to a fiendishly complicated game of diplomatic chess.

The European Central bank will not move until Spain requests a full sovereign rescue from the EU bail-out fund (EFSF), and cedes yet more ground to EU commissars.

Spain in turn will not move until the ECB lays out the exact terms of any deal, and until the Teutonic bloc signals whether it intends to crush Spain into abject humiliation - a la Grecque - or seek a fraternal outcome.

Madrid has no bond auctions in August. It can in theory hold out until October, if it is willing to let contagion spread to the last redoubts of corporate solvency.

Global markets were surprised by Mario Draghi's refusal to deliver instant ECB salvation last week. They should not have been.

This essay by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard was posted on The Telegraph's website late on Sunday evening...and I just didn't have the space for it in Tuesday's column, so here it is now. I thank London reader Iain Doherty for sending it...and the link is here.

A Greek departure from the eurozone would be “manageable” said a top Brussels policy-maker, as figures showed that its major economies are in painful slowdown.

Jean-Claude Juncker, the Luxembourg prime minister who leads the eurozone’s finance ministers group, yesterday addressed the prospect of that Greece’s exit from the currency bloc - making it the first country to do so.

“From today’s perspective, it would be manageable but that does not mean it is desirable,” he said. “Because there would be significant risks, especially for ordinary people in Greece.”

Asked if he could rule out a Greek eurozone exit, he said: “At least until the end of the autumn. And after that, too.”

His comments to a German broadcaster will raise expectations that Brussels now is braced for Greece to abandon the shared currency.

This story was posted on the telegraph.co.uk Internet site late yesterday afternoon BST...and I thank Roy Stephens once again. The link is here.

A great orgasm shuddered through the money world last week when Mario Draghi paused between scamorza con arugula tidbits to remark that the European Central Bank (ECB) would stop at nothing to keep the financial blood of Europe circulating. Of course you wonder how many pony glasses of Campari he knocked back before that whopper came out. The markets squirmed with glee. I suppose it feels good to have quantities of smoke blown up your ass.

This is the last month of the Great Pretending over on that lovely continent of exquisitely preserved towns and the corniche winding down to the crashing green sea, and the lunch table under the grape arbor... I mean, compared to, say, the universal slum vista of tilt-up, strip-mall America along the deafening highways, with the wig shops, tattoo dens, pawn shacks, dollar stores, parking lot swap-meets, and supersized citizens waddling through the greasy 100-degree heat of a new climate regime. When things blow, as you may be sure they will, at least the Europeans will sink amid all that loveliness while the American experience will be more like getting flushed down a toilet.

Wow! No shades of grey here. This piece was posted on the businessinsider.com Internet site on Monday afternoon...and is certainly worth reading. The link to this Roy Stephens offering is here.

Money should always be separated from politics. Germany learned this lesson the hard way, and the Allies wanted to make sure for everyone’s sake that history didn’t repeat.

So when the Allies established in March 1948 the predecessor to the Bundesbank, the Bank deutscher Länder, it was completely independent of all German political bodies and influence. As Wikipedia makes clear: “After the negative experience with a central bank subject to government orders, the principle of an independent central bank was established.” A central bank should be attuned to markets, not government dictates.

The Bank deutscher Länder introduced the Deutsche Mark in June 1948, and so began Germany’s economic miracle. Following the sound money policies of its predecessor, the Bundesbank after its creation in 1957 made the Deutsche Mark one of the world’s most valued currencies. As a result of this achievement, the Bundesbank became the most respected central bank through the end the 20th century. Importantly, the principle aim of the Allies was achieved; politics and money were kept separate.

This short essay by James Turk was posted over at his fgmr.com website yesterday...and is worth reading as well. The link is here.

The first blog is with Jean-Marie Eveillard...and it's headlined "Gold & The Brutal Reality Of The Current Cycle". The second one is with Dr. Stephen Leeb. It's entitled "We're Headed Into Massive Inflation & A Major Gold Spike". Next is this blog with Robert Fitzwilson, founder of The Portola Group. It bears the title "If The World Is Ending, Here Is What Smart Money Is Doing". The first audio interview is with Egon von Greyerz...and the second audio interview is with John Embry.

Instead of the regular sacred thread tied around the brother's wrist, this rakhi festival, consumers opted for gold bracelets and coins to mark the occasion.

The festive occasion of Raksha Bandhan, a thread-tying ceremony between siblings, celebrated in India on August 2, has set the cash registers ringing at jewellery stores across the country. As the country celebrated the festival of Raksha Bandhan, buying and gifting of gold appears to have dominated the changing trends.

Gold retailers recorded a jump in sales ranging from 30% to 70%, with most retailers hoping the jump in sales on one day could make good the losses incurred in the past few months due to a slump in the market.

The old sentiment of buying sweets or gifting chocolate boxes on this day has been replaced by buying gold or silver. ``In most homes, it is now the norm to gift a gold band or bracelet to be tied on the brother's wrist, instead of a traditional rakhi (decorative thread),'' said Nandlalbhai Kedia, of MBS Jewellers.

This story was filed from Mumbai on Monday...and posted on the mineweb.com Internet site...and I thank Donald Sinclair for his last contribution in today's column. It's an educational read...and worth it if you have the time. The link is here.

This is the London gold market report from Ben Traynor over at the Bullion Vault. I don't agree with everything that's in it, but there are a few 'nuggets' that are worth noting. Roy Stephens slid this into my in-box in the wee hours of this morning...and it's his final offering of the day. It's posted over at the goldseek.com Internet site...and the link is here.

The Indian government is at it again. Worried that the flow of savings is moving towards investment in gold, India's Finance Minister P Chidambaram has said there is a need to spread financial literacy to encourage people to invest in market instruments and not bullion.

This was followed by the Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, laying down policy decisions to direct the shift of investment towards insurance and mutual fund schemes.

In the first two months of 2012, gold purchases in India jumped 35%, impacting investments in other instruments like the stock market, mutual funds and property. The government has said it would prefer savings to be invested in ``more productive assets'' that would help boost the growth rate.

This story was filed from Mumbai earlier today...and is posted over on the mineweb.com Internet site. I thank Donald Sinclair for sending this in the wee hours of this morning as I was doing the final edit on this column. It's a must read...and the link is here.

Chris was interviewed at surprising length on yesterday's installment of the "Capital Account" program with Lauren Lyster on the Russia Today television network. Video of the program is about 28 minutes long and is posted at youtube.com. Reader André Gouin sent me the clip even before Chris had the chance to dispatch it himself. It's an absolute must watch from one end to the other...and the link is here.