There never really could be much doubt that the current experiment in competitive global currency debasement would end in anything less than a total war. There was always a chance that one or more of the principal players would snap out of it, change course and save their citizenry from a never ending cycle of devaluation. But developments since September 13, when the U.S. Federal Reserve finally laid all its cards on the table and went "all in" on permanent quantitative easing, indicate that the brainwashing is widely established and will be difficult to break. The vast majority of the world's leading central bankers seem content to walk in lock step down the path of money creation as a means to economic salvation. Never mind that the path will prevent real growth and may ultimately lead off a cliff. The herd is moving. And if it can't be turned, the only thing that one can do is attempt to get out of its way.

Peter's commentary was posted over at the europac.ca Internet site on Tuesday...and I thank Donald Sinclair for providing our first story of the day. The link is here.

A typical middle-income family making $40,000 to $64,000 a year could see its taxes go up by $2,000 next year if lawmakers fail to renew a lengthy roster of tax cuts set to expire at the end of the year, according to a new report Monday

Taxpayers across the income spectrum would be hit with large tax hikes, the Tax Policy Center said in its study, with households in the top 1 percent income range seeing an average tax increase of more than $120,000, while a family making between $110,000 to $140,000 could see a tax hike in the $6,000 range.

Taxpayers across the income spectrum will get slammed with increases totaling more than $500 billion - a more than 20 percent increase - with nine out of 10 households being affected by the expiration of tax cuts enacted under both President Barack Obama and his predecessor, George W. Bush.

This AP story from Monday was one I pulled from yesterday's edition of the King Report. The link is here.

Gasoline station owners in the Los Angeles area including Costco Wholesale Corp. are beginning to shut pumps because of supply shortages that have driven wholesale fuel prices to record highs.

Costco’s outlet in Simi Valley, 40 miles (64 kilometers) northwest of Los Angeles, ran out of regular gasoline yesterday and was selling premium fuel at the price of regular, Jeff Cole, Costco’s vice president of gasoline, said by telephone. The company hasn’t been able to find enough unbranded summer-grade gasoline to keep its stations supplied, he said.

Spot, or wholesale, gasoline in Los Angeles has surged 70 cents this week to a premium of $1.15 a gallon versus gasoline futures traded on the New York Mercantile Exchange, data compiled by Bloomberg show. That’s the highest level for the fuel since at least November 2007, when Bloomberg began publishing prices there. On an outright basis, the fuel jumped to $3.9495 a gallon.

Gasoline at the pump cost $4.232 a gallon in California on Oct. 2, according to AAA.com, 45 cents more than the national average of $3.782. In Los Angeles the price was $4.259.

This Bloomberg story was posted on their Internet site early yesterday evening...and my thanks go out to West Virginia reader Elliot Simon...and the link is here.

Kyle Bass, who famously made a fortune shorting the subprime market before the housing market collapse, is worried that there's too much debt in the world.

“We’ve never been here before,” said Bass, founder of hedge fund Hayman Capital, in an interview Wednesday on CNBC'S “Squawk on the Street.” “It has been the largest peacetime accumulation of debt in history.”

With ongoing uncertainty about the global debt situation, the fund manager said his “goal is not to lose money.”

Gold should also be owned, but Bass didn’t have a specific answer as to how much of a portfolio it should make up.

This story, along with an embedded 8:52 video clip, was posted on the cnbc.com website during the east coast lunch hour yesterday...and I thank Elliot Simon for his second story in a row. It's definitely worth reading/watching...and the link is here.

Iran is in the grip of economic meltdown, with trading in its currency halted after it dropped 40pc in a week.

After the rial on Tuesday hit a record low of around 37,500 to the dollar, from about 24,600 just eight days earlier, riot police in Tehran today ordered exchange bureau to close and arrested illegal money changers, witnesses said.

The state-backed news agency Mehr reported the rial had opened at a new low of 36,100, but currency websites said that to “comply” with central bank policies they would not provide price updates.

Shopkeepers refused to open as they did not know how to price their goods. Inflation is thought to be running far higher than the official 25pc rate.

This story was posted on the telegraph.co.uk Internet site yesterday afternoon BST...and I thank Roy Stephens for sending it. It's worth reading...and the link is here.

A protest and scuffles with police occurred in central Tehran on Wednesday in the first sign of public unrest over Iran's plunging currency, which this week has lost more than half of its value.

Hundreds of police in anti-riot gear stormed the capital's currency exchange district of Ferdowsi, arresting illegal money changers and ordering licensed bureau and other shops closed, witnesses told AFP.

Several arrests were seen, carried out by uniformed police or plain-clothes security officers.

Individuals threw stones at police officers and a police car before running away, witnesses said.

This longish AFP story was picked up by the uk.finance.yahoo.com Internet site yesterday morning Eastern time...and I thank Scott Pluschau for bringing it to our attention. It's worth your time if you have it...and the link is here.

The fiber-glass skiffs hurtle across the water at break-neck speed, skirting the rocky cliffs on the last leg of the perilous journey from Iran to the sleepy backwaters of Oman's Musandam peninsula.

At the helm are Iran's fast-boat smugglers, an army of mostly teenagers who shuttle back and forth across the narrow Strait of Hormuz, smuggling all manner of goods into Iran's southern ports and evading import duties in the process.

Until recently the Iranian boats and their fearless young skippers escorted several cargoes a day - loaded with everything from soft drinks to mobile phones and cosmetics - bought in the flourishing trading centers of the United Arab Emirates and sold to merchants in Iran.

The proximity of Iran to the UAE and Oman and their historic trade and finance links have supported thriving trade, which in recent years has undermined the impact of economic sanctions imposed by the United States and its allies on Tehran - until now.

This very interesting Reuters story was filed from Khasab, Oman yesterday...and I thank Roy Stephens for digging it up on our behalf. The link is here.

The first blog is with Richard Russell...and it's entitled "October Stock Plunge, Gold & the Fear Index". Next is Caesar Bryan. Hi blog is headlined "Massive Fear in Gold Means We May Not See a Correction". And lastly is this blog with Rick Rule...and it bears the title "The Availability of Physical Gold Will Disappear".

The Spanish may not have found El Dorado, the city of gold, but they certainly hit the jackpot when they landed in the Bolivian city of Potosi, home to “Cerro Rico” or Rich Mountain, one of the largest silver deposit in recorded history.

But after 467 years of mining engineers are warning that the 15,800-foot monument to native slaves, who mined the mountain's silver in brutal conditions, is pitted throughout and in danger of a catastrophic collapse, as 60 miles of shafts that have left the mountain hollowed out like a chunk of Swiss cheese.

The cone-shaped peak that once bankrolled the Spanish empire currently hosts, according to an in-depth report from The Washington Post, as many as 16,000 miners at any given moment.

Hundreds of thousands have died over the years, as a direct result of cave-ins, overwork, hunger and disease. Many more could be vanishing soon if Bolivia’s government doesn’t do something about the safety of the place, say experts.

This short mining.com story was posted on their website on Tuesday...and is well worth reading. I thank Carl Lindfors for sharing it with us. The link is here.

"Gold Wars" by the late Ferdinand Lips, the history of Western central banking's struggle to deprive humanity of the best and most democratic money, has just been published in a Spanish edition, and the Spanish economist and trader Felix Moreno de la Cova celebrated it in a recent speech delivered in Madrid. An excerpt from that speech has been put into English and posted at GoldMoney's Internet site.

GATA is cited favorably by Lips in "Gold Wars."

De la Cova's remarks are headlined "'Gold Wars' Revisited" and they're posted at the goldmoney.com Internet site...and the link is here. I thank Chris Powell for the headline and the introductory paragraphs.

The deadline when local commercial banks will be prohibited from mobilizing gold deposits is now just a month and a half away, but the question of how the State Bank of Vietnam will deal with the massive amount of public gold reserves after the ban comes into effect remains unanswered.

On April 29, 2011 the central bank halted gold mobilization at banks, but lifted the ban a year later, ruling that the credit institutions would still be able to accept savings in gold bullion until November 25, 2012.

Although the deadline is approaching, banks are currently still mobilizing gold deposits, and even at attractive interest rates of up to 3 percent a year.

Experts have demanded that banks be given an extension to continue mobilize gold deposits, as some banks still have outstanding loans in gold, and others are in gold liquidity trouble.

“The lack of gold liquidity has forced banks to offer high interest rates for gold bullion,” said Nguyen Thanh Long, chairman of the Vietnam Gold Business Association.

This story was posted on the Vietnamese website tuoitrenews.vn early on their Thursday morning...and I thank Manitoba reader Ulrike Marx for sending it along. The link is here.

It’s looking more like the bear market for gold stocks is over.

Investors should use any market weakness to take positions in gold stocks because there is a strong case for the price of gold bullion blowing through $2,000 (U.S) an ounce over the next 12 months, suggests the head of research at Dundee Securities Ltd.

Gold bullion and equities have moved “dramatically higher” after the Aug. 23rd release of the minutes of the U.S. Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meeting that took place some three weeks earlier, and indicated another round of quantitative easing [bond-buying program] was imminent, he wrote.

The trend of gold outperforming equities was likely broken by events in August, and “signals the possibility of a change in market sentiment towards gold companies, which were previously stuck in a secular bear market when compared to the bullion price since 2006,” Mr. Stewart wrote in a report.

This story from Canada's Globe and Mail newspaper in Toronto...and was posted on their website early yesterday afternoon. I thank Roy Stephens for today's last story...and the link is here.