JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s rivals may face government lawsuits claiming tens of billions of dollars in damages tied to investor losses on mortgage bonds after New York’s attorney general filed a fraud lawsuit against the nation’s biggest bank by assets.

A state-federal task force set up this year to investigate misconduct in the bundling of mortgage loans into securities will bring other cases, according to New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman. Investor losses in the JPMorgan case alone will be “substantially more” than the $22.5 billion cited in his complaint, he said.

“We do expect this to be a matter of very significant liability, and there are others to come that will also reflect the same quantum of damages,” Schneiderman said in an interview yesterday with Bloomberg Television’s Erik Schatzker. “We’re looking at tens of billions of dollars, not just by one institution, but by quite a few.”

Today's first story is courtesy of West Virginia reader Elliot Simon...and it was posted over at the Bloomberg Internet site just a few minutes after the closing bell in New York yesterday afternoon. The link is here.

The national average price of gasoline has broken daily record highs every day for six consecutive weeks (43 days in a row since Monday, Aug. 20). Today’s average of $3.78 a gallon is 16 cents more expensive than the previous record for Oct. 1 from 2008. AAA expects that pump prices will continue to break daily records through at least the end of the year based on current trends.

“Motorists are frustrated nationwide because gas prices have not declined more than a few cents from summertime highs,” said Avery Ash, AAA spokesperson. “Despite an end to the busy driving season, record-low supplies are preventing drivers from catching much of a break.”

September’s monthly national average of $3.83 was the most expensive ever for the month. The previous record-high average for September was $3.72 a gallon in 2008.

Of course any readers living outside of North America would love to have these gas prices...and with the "Print, or Die" philosophy of the world's central banks now on display for all to see, today's prices in the U.S...and elsewhere...will seem ridiculously cheap in the years to come. This story was posted on the American Automobile Association website yesterday...and I 'borrowed' it from yesterday's edition of the King Report. The link is here.

The markets have celebrated Mario Draghi's announcement that the European Central Bank will embark on unlimited purchases of sovereign bonds from crisis stricken countries. But are such purchases really legal? Draghi's own justification for the program leaves plenty of room for doubt.

European Central Bank President Mario Draghi is spending a lot of time on the road these days, not unlike a traveling salesman. The product he has on offer is credibility, but in Germany at least, it is proving difficult to find eager takers.

Last week, for example, Draghi gave a speech to several hundred business leaders at the Berlin Congress Center -- and the mood was reserved. German business owners still have fond memories of the old deutsche mark, and Germany's central bank, the Bundesbank, still has a good reputation. Draghi's recently announced plans to launch unlimited purchases of sovereign bonds from crisis-stricken euro-zone member states, on the other hand, are being met with disconcertment and concern.

Draghi, of course, was not as concerned about those gathered in the room before him as he was about a man sitting 425 kilometers (266 miles) away in Frankfurt: Bundesbank President Jens Weidmann. Weidmann believes that, with its bond purchases, the ECB will help euro-zone governments gain access to funds at attractive rates by pushing down interest rates on those bonds. But that, in Weidmann's view, is fiscal policy rather than monetary policy and is thus outside the ECB mandate.

This story showed up on the German website spiegel.de yesterday...and it's Ulrike Marx's first offering of the day. The link is here.

The latest twist in the eurozone's three-year-old sovereign debt crisis comes as financial markets and some other European partners are pressuring Madrid to seek a rescue programme that would trigger European Central Bank buying of its bonds.

"The Spanish were a bit hesitant but now they are ready to request aid," a senior European source told Reuters on Monday. Three other senior eurozone sources confirmed the shift in the Spanish position, all speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to discuss the matter.

German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble has said Spain is taking all the right steps to overcome its fiscal problems and does not need a bailout, arguing that investors will recognise and reward Spanish reforms in due course.

Privately, several European diplomats and a senior German source said Chancellor Angela Merkel preferred to avoid putting more individual bailouts for distressed eurozone countries to her increasingly reluctant parliament.

This story showed up on the telegraph.co.uk Internet site early yesterday morning BST...and I thank Roy Stephens for sharing it with us. The link is here.

Greece's international creditors are demanding the imposition of even tougher austerity measures despite the delivery this week of Antonio Samara’s hard-won €13.5bn package of cuts.

On the second day of negotiations in Athens, the troika - officials representing the European Union, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund - reportedly pushed for Greece to make deeper cuts to the minimum wage and pensions, while imposing longer working hours.

Greece, which this week warned its economy was heading for a sixth year of recession, has asked Brussels to relax the terms of its bail-out conditions to allow the economy time to recover. The troika is reviewing Greece’s progress on austerity measures and its 2013 draft Budget to determine whether to approve the release of the next tranche of bail-out money worth €31bn.

But with awkward timing, it emerged that Greece has “unblocked” €30bn in order to push ahead with its plans to building a motor-racing circuit capable of hosting Formula 1 Grand Prix. The total cost of constructing the track in Xalandritsa, near Patras, is expected to be €94.6m.

A new Formula 1 Grand Prix race track??? What are these guys smoking? In light of this, the situation in Greece has to be considered hopeless. This story was posted on The Telegraph's website early yesterday evening BST...and is Roy Stephens' second offering in a row. The link is here.

From Reuters: "China would be interested in buying into a Eurobond backed by core euro zone countries and considers investment in bonds issued by heavily indebted European countries unrealistic, a senior official with China's $480 billion sovereign wealth fund said. Jin Liqun, chairman of the supervisory board of the China Investment Corporation (CIC), said until fundamental problems of fiscal, social and monetary policies in euro zone countries burdened by debt are solved, there could be no investment."

The rest of this Reuters story was posted over at the ZeroHedge.com Internet site yesterday...and I thank reader Marshall Angeles for bringing it to our attention. The link is here.

Today's first KWN blog is with Dr. Stephen Leeb. It's headlined "The Tremendous War in Gold Continues Near the $1,800 Level". The second is with both Bill Fleckenstein and Jason Goepfert...and it's entitled "Here Are Two Incredibly Frightening Charts". And lastly is this blog with Louise Yamada. It bears the headline "Here Are the Key Levels to Watch in Gold & Silver".

Federal limits on commodity market speculation, the prospect of which has haunted Wall Street's big banks, pension funds, and energy merchants for five years, may have died in the District of Columbia courts on Friday.

Just two weeks before the "position limits" rule was to take effect, U.S. District Judge Robert Wilkins rejected it and sent it back for an overhaul, a move that even some opponents said was surprisingly tough.

Wilkins said the Commodity Futures Trading Commission had failed to prove that it was necessary to impose new caps on speculative bets in 28 U.S. markets, including copper, corn, and crude oil, to reduce price spikes and volatility.

CFTC Chairman Gary Gensler has several options for reviving the measure -- one of the agency's hallmark reforms -- including an appeal, a fresh round of rule-writing, or even asking Congress to amend it.

Of course there's the little matter of the short positions of JPMorgan and the other three commercial traders that are short mega amounts of silver and gold in the Comex futures market.

This Reuters story was posted on their website yesterday...and I found it in a GATA release. It's definitely worth reading...and the link is here.

The U.S. Supreme Court's refusal Monday to hear an appeal by the Colorado and Wyoming Mining Associations to strike down the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule, prohibiting most roads on 45 million acres of national forests, effectively bans mining development and exploration access on these lands.

The Colorado Mining Association had argued the rule "is a sweeping usurpation of the authority vested solely in Congress to designate lands as wilderness."

Wyoming had argued the 2001 rule effectively bans grazing, oil and gas development, and motorized vehicle use in 58.5 million acres of Forest Service lands, or an area equal in size to the states of Connecticut, two Delawares, Hawaii, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, two Rhode Islands and Vermont combined.

This story showed up on the mineweb.com Internet site in the wee hours of yesterday morning, but I had no room for it in my Tuesday column, so here it is today. I thank Donald Sinclair for sending it our way...and the link is here.

Platinum companies in South Africa, the nation that produces three-quarters of the metal, could cut more than 8,000 jobs as they reorganize amid strikes, SBG Securities Ltd. said.

Pay increases will likely lead to "material" cost inflation which will "place further pressure on already unsustainable industry margins," analysts Justin Froneman and Walter de Wet said in a note today. Company earnings this year may fall by about 65 percent, they said. Employment may drop to about 176,650 next year from about 184,890 last year, they said.

Lonmin Plc, the third-largest platinum producer, gave miners pay increases ranging from 11 percent to 22 percent last month to end a six-week unofficial strike that left about 44 people dead. Impala Platinum Holdings Ltd., the second-largest producer of the metal, raised pay twice since a six-week stoppage in January and February. Strikes have spread to Anglo American Platinum Ltd., the largest platinum producer as well as Gold Fields Ltd. Samancor Ltd., Coal of Africa Ltd., Village Main Reef Ltd. and others.

This Bloomberg story was picked up by the mineweb.com Internet site yesterday...and I thank Ulrike Marx for sending it. The link is here.

The minister of mineral resources, Susan Shabangu has thrown her weight behind the National Union of Mineworker's call for employers to re-open existing wage agreements saying that if this was necessary to achieve stability then it should be done.

This would likely irk mining bosses who have vowed not to deal with illegally striking workers outside the formal bargaining structures where two year wage agreements in the gold industry for example are only due to expire next year June.

Shabangu was unveiling a new water atomising plant at the premises of national mineral research organisation, Mintek, in Randburg today.

Needless to say the question and answer session after the launch quickly turned to the contagion of unprotected mine worker strikes across the industry with Shabangu showing concern for the potential for wide scale job losses.

This mineweb.com story was filed from Johannesburg sometime yesterday...and I thank Ulrike Marx for her second article in a row. The link is here.

Gold prices are forecast to rise above $2,200 an ounce in 2013, supported by central bank stimulus action, said a German-based bank on Tuesday.

Energy and industrial metals could get a leg up next year because of policy actions, even though fundamentals are poor because of a weak growth outlook, Deutsche Bank said in a research note. The bank also said supply constraints in South Africa could support platinum.

“We believe the major beneficiary of a third round of quantitative easing by the U.S. Federal Reserve and fiscal cliff fears will be the precious metals complex. Not only will it keep U.S. real interest rates negative for the foreseeable future, but, it will sustain U.S. dollar weakness, in our view,” the bank says.

Deutsche Bank is most likely one of the 'Big 8' short holders in the Comex futures market in both gold and silver...and maybe even one of the 'Big 4'. This story was posted over at the Kitco website yesterday morning...and I thank Elliot Simon for digging it up on our behalf. The link is here.

The good folks over at GoldSilver.com have calculated the performance of gold against the world's major currencies for the first three quarters of this year and for the 12 years back to 2000, and those government currencies are all humiliated losers against the ancient monetary metal.

This is definitely worth checking out...and I borrowed 'all of the above' from a GATA release yesterday.

The yearly performance report is linked here...and the 12-year performance report is linked here.

The latest round of quantitative easing made gold “even more attractive” and owning the metal should be considered as part of a diversified portfolio, analysts at bond giant Pacific Investment Management Co. said in a white paper posted Tuesday on company’s website.

Pimco founder and co-chief investment officer Bill Gross, in his separate monthly investment outlook also posted Tuesday, said only gold and real assets would thrive in a “ring of fire” of U.S. fiscal problems.

Gold elicits black and white responses, the Pimco analysts said. Some investors “have a deep, almost religious conviction that gold is a useless, barbaric relic with no yield,” while others “love it” and see it as “the only asset that can offer protection from the coming financial catastrophe” always just around the corner, they said.

“Our views are more nuanced … Our bottom line: given current valuations and central bank policies, we see gold as a compelling inflation hedge and store of value that is potentially superior to fiat currencies,” the analysts said. ”We believe investors should consider allocating gold and other precious metals to a diversified investment portfolio.”

Everyone at Pimco is on the gold bandwagon these day...and this marketwatch.com piece from yesterday is another example of that...and the link to that story is here. But if you want to go directly to PIMCO's "white paper" that the MarketWatch article talks about, the link to that is here. I thank Ulrike Marx for her final offering in today's column.

Somewhere deep in the bowels of the world’s Western central banks lie vaults holding gargantuan piles of physical gold bars… or at least that’s what they all claim. The gold bars are part of their respective foreign currency reserves, which include all the usual fiat currencies like the dollar, the pound, the yen and the euro.

Collectively, the governments/central banks of the United States, United Kingdom, Japan, Switzerland, Eurozone and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) are believed to hold an impressive 23,349 tonnes of gold in their respective reserves, representing more than $1.3 trillion at today’s gold price. Beyond the suggested tonnage, however, very little is actually known about the gold that makes up this massive stockpile. Western central banks disclose next to nothing about where it’s stored, in what form, or how much of the gold reserves are utilized for other purposes. We are assured that it’s all there, of course, but little effort has ever been made by the central banks to provide any details beyond the arbitrary references in their various financial reserve reports.

Twelve years ago, few would have cared what central banks did with their gold. Gold had suffered a twenty year bear cycle and didn’t engender much excitement at $255 per ounce. It made perfect sense for Western governments to lend out (or in the case of Canada – outright sell) their gold reserves in order to generate some interest income from their holdings. And that’s exactly what many central banks did from the late 1980’s through to the late 2000’s. The times have changed however, and today it absolutely does matter what they’re doing with their reserves, and where the reserves are actually held. Why? Because the countries in question are now all grossly over-indebted and printing their respective currencies with reckless abandon. It would be reassuring to know that they still have some of the ‘barbarous relic’ kicking around, collecting dust, just in case their experiment with collusive monetary accommodation doesn’t work out as planned.

This is Sprott's latest edition of Markets at a Glance. As you have probably figured out on your own already...this is a must read from one end to the other. It was posted over at the sprottasset.com Internet site yesterday afternoon...and the link is here.