A single mysterious computer program that placed orders — and then subsequently canceled them — made up 4 percent of all quote traffic in the U.S. stock market last week, according to the top tracker of high-frequency trading activity. The motive of the algorithm is still unclear.

The program placed orders in 25-millisecond bursts involving about 500 stocks, according to Nanex, a market data firm. The algorithm never executed a single trade, and it abruptly ended at about 10:30 a.m. Friday.

“Just goes to show you how just one person can have such an outsized impact on the market,” said Eric Hunsader, head of Nanex and the No. 1 detector of trading anomalies watching Wall Street today. “Exchanges are just not monitoring it.”

Hunsader’s sonar picked up that this was a single high-frequency trader after seeing the program’s pattern (200 fake quotes, then 400, then 1,000) repeated over and over. Also, it was being routed from the same place, the Nasdaq.

“My guess is that the algo was testing the market, as high-frequency frequently does,” says Jon Najarian, co-founder of TradeMonster.com. “As soon as they add bandwidth, the HFT crowd sees how quickly they can top out to create latency.”

No wonder the public is abandoning the stock market in droves. This CNBC story was posted on their Internet site shortly after the markets closed yesterday. It's a must read...and I thank West Virginia reader Elliot Simon for providing our first story of the day. The link is here.

Ruth Davidson, the Scottish Conservative leader, is to highlight official figures showing that only 283,080 households north of the border – 12 per cent of the total – pay more in tax than they receive in public services.

She will tell delegates that, because the public sector is seen as the key provider of everything from housing to employment, state spending now accounts for more than half Scotland’s wealth.

She will blame Alex Salmond, the SNP First Minister, and his Labour predecessors for nurturing a “corrosive sense of entitlement” among voters that has prevented her party making a comeback in Scotland.

Miss Davidson will argue this Left-wing “stranglehold” suits Labour and the SNP but has made it difficult for the Tories as so many voters are reliant on the public sector for their household income.

And you thought the situation was out of control in the U.S.? This is another story from The Telegraph...this one from the Sunday edition...and the link is here. This is the first of many from Roy Stephens today.

France’s national statistics institute INSEE on Thursday halved its 2012 growth forecast to 0.2 percent, predicting zero growth in the third and fourth quarters and claiming "The French economy is stuck in neutral."

The French economy appears to be settling into a period of no growth according to the INSEE national statistics institute, which halved late Thursday its 2012 growth forecast to 0.2 percent.

The new forecast puts INSEE just below the government's forecast of 0.3 percent growth to bring France's public deficit to 4.5 percent of GDP as pledged to the European Union.

The French economy is stuck in neutral, said the head of INSEE's forecasting unit Cedric Audenis.

This story was posted on the france24.com Internet site on Friday...and I thank Roy Stephens for his second offering of the day. The link is here.

Central banks are currently flooding cash-strapped industrialized nations with money. This may help governments reduce their debt load, but it also erodes the value of people's savings. A massive redistribution of wealth is threatening to take place in Germany and Europe -- from the bottom to the top.

Germany's central bank, the Bundesbank, has established a museum devoted to money next to its headquarters in Frankfurt. It includes displays of Brutus coins from the Roman era to commemorate the murder of Julius Caesar, as well as a 14th-century Chinese kuan banknote. There is one central message that the country's monetary watchdogs seek to convey with the exhibit: Only stable money is good money. And confidence is needed in order to create that good money.

The confidence of visitors, however, is seriously shaken in the museum shop, just before the exit, where, for €8.95 ($11.65) they can buy a quarter of a million euros, shredded into tiny pieces and sealed into plastic. It's meant as a gag gift, but the sight of this stack of colorful bits of currency could lead some to arrive at a simple and disturbing conclusion: A banknote is essentially nothing more than a piece of printed paper.

It has been years since Germans harbored the kind of substantial doubts about the value of their currency that they have today in the midst of the debt crisis. One in four Germans is already trying to protect his or her assets from the threat of inflation by investing in material assets.

This is the first story of the day from the spiegel.de website...and I thank Roy Stephens for sending it along. It's certainly worth skimming...and the link is here.

Mr Asmussen said that the ECB could not lengthen the time period for loans to Greece or lower interest rates as "both concessions would be a form of debt forgiveness and therefore a direct financial support for the Greek state.

"That would not be allowed under the law governing the ECB," he said.

He also said that it would be wrong for Greece to say it needed more time but not more money.

"A temporary extension of fiscal targets automatically means that Greece needs more financial assistance from abroad." he told German newspaper Bild am Sonntag.

This article showed up on the telegraph.co.uk website shortly after 4:00 p.m. BST on Sunday...and is Roy Stephens fourth offering in a row. The link is here.

Chancellor Angela Merkel's spokesman says her trip to Athens on Tuesday is a "normal visit." Judging by the security arrangements, it is anything but.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel will undertake what is being billed as the toughest trip of her career on Tuesday when she travels to Athens for the first time since the start of the euro crisis.

Merkel, hated by many Greeks who hold her personally responsible for their economic plight, will encounter massive protests by Greece's left-wing opposition and trade unions.

"She does not come to support Greece, which her policies have brought to the brink. She comes to save the corrupt, disgraced and servile political system," said Alexis Tsipras, who leads the opposition Syriza alliance. "We will give her the welcome she deserves."

This story appeared on the German website spiegel.de on Sunday...and is Roy's fifth offering in a row. It's worth reading. The link is here.

The so-called "Lagarde List" – the name given by the Greek press to a list containing 1,991 names of wealthy, Swiss-bank-account-possessing Greeks who are being investigated for corruption and tax evasion – is causing a major stir in Greece right now.

Since Friday, two men on the list have turned up dead in apparent suicides.

Here is what has happened in the past few days.

Last Tuesday, October 3, the "Lagarde List" was passed to Greek prime minister Antonis Samaras from PASOK party leader and former finance minister Evangelos Venizelos.

Apparently, it had been "missing," according to a Financial Times article from a few days prior, and current finance minister Yannis Stournaras had vowed to track it down.

You can't make this stuff up. This must read was posted on the businessinsider.com Internet site late yesterday evening...and I thank Roy Stephens for sending it. The link is here.

Two centuries after Napoleonic forces snuffed out the 1,000-year Venetian Republic, Venetians are once again aspiring to become an independent state.

Inspired by the nationalist aspirations of Scotland and Catalonia, pro-independence campaigners will hold a mass rally in the heart of the lagoon city on Saturday, calling for an urgent referendum to be held on the issue.

Indipendenza Veneta, a newly-founded pro-independence movement, says it expects several thousand people to turn up for the rally.

They will be ferried across the Grand Canal in gondolas to deliver a "declaration of independence" to the headquarters of the Veneto regional government.

It may sound fanciful, and it will be fiercely resisted by Rome, but activists want to carve out a new country in north-eastern Italy which would comprise Venice, the surrounding region of Veneto and parts of Lombardy, Trentino and Friuli-Venezia Giulia.

The "Repubblica Veneta", as it would be known, would encompass about five million people.

This story was posted on the telegraph.co.uk Internet site early on Friday afternoon BST...and I thank Washington state reader S.A. for bringing it to our attention. The link is here.

“Risks for recession in the advanced economies are alarmingly high,” said the Fund’s latest World Economic Outlook. “The intensity of the euro area crisis has not abated as assumed in previous projections.”

Spain’s economy is expected to contract by 1.5pc this year and 1.3pc next as austerity bites, pushing public debt to 97pc of GDP in 2013. The estimate was 84pc as recently as April, showing how quickly the debt dynamics have gone horribly wrong.

Italy will shrink by 2.3pc this year and 0.7pc next, pushing the debt ratio to an all-time high of 128pc. The report said fiscal austerity in Europe was doing more damage than “expected” .

The Fund said “weakness is spreading from the periphery to the whole of the euro area”, with even Germany buckling. The eurozone will shrink at a 0.7pc rate in the second half of this year before eking out growth of 0.2pc in 2013, but only if Europe delivers on a string of promises made over recent months.

This Ambrose Evans-Pritchard commentary was posted on The Telegraph's website very late yesterday evening BST...and is definitely worth reading. I thank Ulrike Marx for her first story in today's column...and the link is here.

Contrary to reports, there is no hyperinflation in Iran right now at all.

In fact, the Western sanctions imposed on Iran's oil trade are failing miserably to meet their objectives.

And a regime collapse – or even, coming short of that, another popular uprising reminiscent of June 2009 – seems further away from Iran than ever.

Meanwhile, the Iranian regime is using the current sanctions imposed against it by the West as a weapon to weaken its own fiercest domestic threat – the educated, relatively pro-Western Iranian constituency that comprises the middle class.

This interesting commentary showed up on Bloomberg on Saturday...and I thank Roy Stephens for his final offering in today's column. The link is here.

Iran has few policy options to end turmoil in its currency markets, as the U.S. and allies seek to inflict enough economic pain to force the Islamic republic into concessions over its nuclear plans, analysts said.

The rial has depreciated as much as 40 percent against the dollar in street markets since August and gold purchases have surged as residents seek to shield savings. The currency plunge led to unrest in Tehran’s markets last week as police used tear gas to end protests. Iran has raised interest rates on deposits and opened an exchange center to stabilize the currency market.

The U.S. and European Union are starving Iran of foreign currency by blocking sales of oil, its main export, and other transactions in dollars and euros. Israel has threatened to attack to stop Iran’s nuclear program if the sanctions don’t succeed in curbing it. Iranian leaders say they won’t bow to the pressure, even as the country’s crude output plunges to the lowest in more than two decades.

Here's a differing view of the situation in Iran that showed up on the same Bloomberg website...this one from Sunday afternoon. The first reader through the door with this story yesterday was Ulrike Marx...and the link is here.

The first blog is with Michael Pento...and it's headlined "Phony Government Release Used to Attack Gold Market". Next is Dan Norcini. His blog is entitled "More Stunning Developments in the Gold & Silver Markets". Egon von Greyerz is up next with a blog headlined "Global Debt Over $200 Trillion, Gold Demand Surges". The fourth blog is with Richard Russell...and it bears the title "Gold & China's Plan to Take Over the World". The last blog is with Robert Fitzwilson of The Portola Group...and it's headlined "No Currencies Will Survive What Lies Ahead, But That's OK". The two audio interviews are with Gerald Celente here....and John Embry here.

The rules of the game in South Africa's labour market have changed and the new players are workers such as Tshepo Modise and Thulani Soko, wildcat strikers at mining giant Anglo American Platinum (Amplats).

They feel underpaid, stretched to the limit financially and betrayed by established unions they say are more concerned about ties with politicians and management than workers in the shafts.

But to a few global mining firms, they are part of an overpaid workforce breaking their contracts and in the crosshairs for sacking as costs are cut at marginal shafts in South Africa.

"We no longer want to sit at the table with unions. We've been sabotaged," said Modise, a 30-year-old machine operator at Ikanini, a slum settlement next to an Amplats mine 120 kilometres (75 miles) northwest of Johannesburg.

This Reuters story was posted on the mineweb.com Internet site yesterday...and I thank Ulrike Marx for her last offering in today's column. The link is here.

South Africa's local government workers' union said on Monday it would launch a strike over pay in the next few days, the first sign of a wave of labour unrest in Africa's biggest economy spreading from the mines into the public sector.

Since August, close to 100,000 workers, including 75,000 in the mining sector, have downed tools in often illegal and violent protests that look likely to hit growth this year and undermine the government's efforts to cut its budget deficit.

Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan has promised to reduce the deficit from the 4.6 percent of GDP forecast for this financial year. Any public sector wage increase would make that more difficult.

"The union is mobilising towards a national protest, which would begin as soon as this week," South African Municipal Workers Union (SAMWU) spokesman Tahir Sema said.

This Reuters story was filed from Johannesburg yesterday...and was picked up the news.yahoo.com Internet site. I thank reader U.D. for bringing it to our attention. It's certainly worth skimming...and the link is here.

The economist Alasdair Macleod, research director for GoldMoney, observes today that U.S. economic sanctions against Iran are pushing that country's trading partners away from the U.S. dollar and toward gold as a currency of international settlement. Macleod writes: "Attempts over the years by Western central banks to bluff us out of gold ownership have given China and its Shanghai Cooperation Organization affiliates a tremendous wealth-transfer windfall, as we may be about to discover. That's what the geopolitics of gold is actually about, and it is a pity our leaders seem to be blind and deaf to it."

I thank Chris Powell for wordsmithing both the headline and the preamble. Alasdair's essay is posted over at the goldmoney.com Internet site...and the link is here.

Vietnam gold prices continued to stay well above global prices after scarcity of gold has become more acute on central bank's decision to stop gold mobilization which will come into effect this November 25.

Analysts said the gap is expected to widen in the coming days if the central bank does not make timely interventions.

At present, Vietnam gold price was VND3.2 million ($152) per tael than the global rate per tael (a tael is 1.2 ounces). According to Viet Nam Gold Business Company, scarcity of the precious metal had forced domestic prices up.

This story, filed from Hanoi late Monday morning India Standard Time, is posted on the bullionstreet.com Internet site...and the link is here.

While gold bugs have long been aware that gold is, and always has been, a monetary metal many others in the investment community have, in the past, continued to feel otherwise and valued it accordingly as just another commodity. But this perception is changing as recent events, and price movements, have emphasised that the gold price moves are currently being dictated more by global economic and political factors than by normal commodity economics of supply and demand. Even renowned investment guru, Denis Gartman, who has a huge following in the U.S. and elsewhere, has recently come out and said, in a CNBC interview "Gold is just another currency....It is doing well in other currency terms...I am not a gold bug. I don't think the world is coming to an end, but I think everyone needs to own some gold."

Recent developments, though, have clearly emphasised gold's monetary role, with perhaps the most significant being the turnaround in Central Bank policies. These banks have become important buyers of the yellow metal over the past two years. The ongoing debate about classifying gold as a banking tier 1 asset is also an indicator of the financial elite's perhaps reluctant re-acceptance of gold as a monetary metal - or indeed as the ultimate in reserve currencies.

There is little doubt that the upwards trajectory of the gold price over the past 11 years has less to do with traditional supply/demand economics. It rather represents a parallel decline in the value of global currencies as Central Banks around the world effectively devalue them against the gold ‘constant' through monetary easing policies - the basic problem with un-backed fiat currencies

This Lawrence Williams offering, posted on the mineweb.com Internet site early yesterday morning, is a must read...and I thank reader U.D. for digging it up on our behalf. The link is here.

With gold back up within reach of its nominal record high last year, a lot of new investors are thinking about gold mining stocks.

With this in mind, today we take a peek at one of the issues that confuses some metals investors: cash mining costs. It's simple in a way, but also nuanced and subject to misinterpretation. I'll let Andrey Dashkov explain.

The point, for now, is no surprise; be careful, think things through, be thorough in your due diligence. But there are opportunities out there, and more coming.

This 3-paragraph introduction was written by Casey Research's Senior Metals Investment Strategist, Louis James as an introduction to Monday's edition of the Casey Daily Dispatch. It's certainly worth reading...and the link is here.

When a patch of land on the edge of Nweneso No. 1 village was bought by a Ghanaian who said he wanted to search for gold, few residents objected. Then dozens of Chinese moved in with excavators, wrecking farmland and turning the local stream into a trickle of mud.

“The Chinese destroyed our land and our river, they are sitting there with pick-ups and guns, plenty of guns,” Maxwell Owusu, acting chief of the village in the central Ashanti region, said last month. “They operate big machines and it makes it very difficult to reclaim the land for farming when they are done.”

As global gold prices climb amid economic uncertainty in Europe, Ghana is facing an influx of illegal small-scale miners from China using machinery villagers say they can’t afford. The operations are raising concern over environmental damage in Africa’s second-biggest gold producer and sparking anger among Ghanaians who say they sold their farmland without knowing Chinese gold miners would move into camps nearby.

This very interesting story showed up on the Bloomberg website early on Wednesday morning Mountain time...and I thank Washington state reader S.A. for finding it for us. The link is here.

An accelerating monetary trend is basically an indication that ever-greater amounts of money are required to achieve a monetary objective; we normally associate such a curve with a collapse in purchasing power of the money involved; but so far this is not happening. In this case it simply indicates the increasing amounts of money required to fund government obligations and to keep multiple market bubbles from deflating. The effect on prices for goods comes later.

We can be sure the Fed doesn’t want to look at things this way; but now that the increase in TMS [Total Money Supply] plus excess reserves is beginning to lag behind the curve, it indicates that monetary policy is failing. Alternatively, it shows the difficulty for monetary policy alone to rescue us from our economic ills.

This is Alasdair's second essay in today's column...and it falls into the must read category. I found it embedded in a GATA release...and the link is here. The charts alone are worth the trip.

Noting a federal appeals court decision holding that denying cost-of-living raises to federal judges is unconstitutional, the New York Sun today asks: What about the rest of us? How come it's OK to debase our money?

The Sun writes: "The idea that a dollar could be worth a different number of grains of silver or gold at the end of a contract than it meant at the beginning of a contract would have horrified George Washington and nearly all of the other Founders. (Benjamin Franklin, a printer, had a vested interest in paper money.) So would the idea that the dollar would be permitted to decline over a decade to but a sixth of the number of grains of gold at which it was valued at the start of a decade. That is what has just happened in America. ...

"The legal tender question is the elephant in the courtroom, so to speak. If a dollar can't be diminished for judges -- that is, if the legal tender laws are not good enough for judges -- why should they be good enough for the rest of us? If they are not good enough for the contract between the government and judges, why should they be good enough for contracts between private parties?"

I found this story in a GATA release yesterday...and I thank Chris Powell for writing "all of the above" for us. The link to this must read New York Sun editorial is here.