Federal authorities are using taped phone conversations to build criminal cases related to the multibillion-dollar trading loss at JPMorgan Chase, focusing on calls in which employees openly discussed how to value the troubled bets in a favorable way.

Investigators are looking into the actions of four people who previously worked for the team based in London responsible for the $6 billion loss, according to officials briefed on the case. The Federal Bureau of Investigation could make some arrests in the next several months, said one person who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the inquiry was ongoing.

The phone recordings, which were turned over to authorities by JPMorgan, have helped focus the investigation, the officials said. Authorities are poring over thousands of conversations, in English and French. They are also relying on notes that employees took during staff meetings, instant messages circulated among traders and e-mails sent within the group.

This story was posted on The New York Times Internet site late on Wednesday night...and I thank Donald Sinclair for providing today's first story. It's well worth reading...and the link is here.

The U.S. is heading towards fiscal disaster and no one in Washington is doing anything about it, the authors of the Simpson-Bowles reform plan and Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein told CNBC Thursday.

"People are never going to understand how critical this particular time in history is," said Erskine Bowles, the North Carolina businessman and co-chairman of President Barack Obama's National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform. "We have $7.7 trillion worth of economic events that are going to hit America in the gut in December, and in Washington they're doing nothing about it."

Bowles' co-chair on the commission was former Wyoming Sen. Alan Simpson, who said political culture in Washington is preventing any action to address what is known as the "fiscal cliff."

"They're both in this," Simpson said of the warring Democratic and Republican parties. "They worship the god of re-election."

This story was posted on the CNBC website early yesterday afternoon Eastern time. There are two video clips embedded in this article. The first one runs less than a minute...but the second one is the "Full Meal Deal" at 8:49 minutes. On Wednesday it was Jamie Dimon ringing the bell...and now it's Lloyd Blankfein doing the same thing on Thursday. All of this is definitely worth the time if you have it...and I thank West Virginia reader Elliot Simon for sharing it with us. The link is here.

As Gary Jenkins from Swordfish says this morning: Spain is junked if it does, and junked if it doesn’t.

A key reason for Standard & Poor’s two-notch downgrade of Spain to near junk last night is the refusal of premier Mariano Rajoy to bite the bullet on a rescue. His "hesitation" is "potentially raising the risks to Spain’s rating".

By contrast, Moody’s said earlier that it will cut Spain to junk if it DOES request a bail-out. What a marvelous mess.

The decision by the AAA bloc of Germany, Austria, Finland and Holland to walk away from the June summit deal for direct ESM recapitalisation of Spanish banks (lifting the burden off Madrid's shoulders) has keelhauled Spain.

This is pretty much what I said in my comments in this space yesterday when I posted the story about the S&P's downgrade of Spanish debt. This is Ambrose Evans-Pritchard up on his soap box...and he has a field day with it. It's Roy Stephens first offering of the day...and the link is here.

The four institutes - Ifo in Munich, IfW in Kiel, IW in Halle and RWI in Essen - also lashed out at the European Central Bank, saying its latest anti-crisis measures risked fuelling inflation in the 17 countries that share the euro.

"The euro crisis is negatively impacting economic activity in Germany," the institutes wrote in their joint twice-yearly forecasts, published on Thursday.

"Should the situation in the eurozone continue to deteriorate, this will also impact the German economy. Over the forecasting period as a whole the downside risks prevail and there is a great danger that Germany will fall into a recession," they warned.

While Germany clocked up growth of 0.5pc in the first quarter and 0.3pc in the second quarter, "there are currently a large number of signs that overall economic expansion will weaken towards the end of the year," they wrote.

This unattributed item was posted on the telegraph.co.uk Internet site mid-afternoon BST yesterday. The Telegraph is a day late and a dollar short on this news, as I posted something about it from spiegel.de earlier this week. Roy Stephens sent me this story as well...and the link is here.

Several top German economic institutes on Thursday warned that German growth is slowing as the country continues to be hampered by the ongoing euro-zone debt crisis. And Greece, they say, will be unable to "free itself from its debt burden" and will need another haircut.

Chancellor Angela Merkel had been hoping that her trip to Athens earlier this week would help demonstrate Germany's solidarity with Greece as it struggles to overcome its debt crisis. Just two days later, however, leading economic institutes in Germany have darkened the mood considerably. The institutes presented their autumn economic forecast on Thursday, and cast doubt on whether Greece would be able to remain part of the euro.

"We believe that Greece cannot be saved," said Joachim Scheide from the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, one of several top economic institutes tasked by the German government with examining the state of the country's economy twice a year.

This story appeared on the German website spiegel.de yesterday...and I thank Roy Stephens for his third offering in a row. The link is here.

Greece's largest company is to move its headquarters to Switzerland and list its shares in London, in a further blow to the struggling eurozone country.

Drinks bottler Coca-Cola Hellenic, which already has secondary stock listings in the U.K. and New York, said in a statement that leaving Greece is the right move at this time.

"A primary listing on Europe's biggest and most liquid stock exchange reflects better the international character of Coca Cola Hellenic's business activities and shareholder base," the company said.

The company, in which The Coca-Cola Co of the U.S. has a 23pc stake, bottles drinks in 28 countries from Russia to Nigeria. Despite saying that Greece comprises just 5pc of its business and that its plants in the country will operate as normal, chief executive Dimitris Lois said the move "makes clear business sense".

The stories from Roy Stephens just keep coming. This one was posted on The Telegraph's website mid-afternoon BST on Thursday...and the link is here.

The governor of the Bank of Greece was given a severance payment of 3.4 million euros when he left his former employer, a major bank that he now regulates, documents seen by Reuters show.

George Provopoulos was awarded the sum when he stepped down as vice-chairman of Piraeus Bank to become governor of Greece's central bank and a member of the board of the European Central Bank in 2008. The scale of the pay-off, previously unknown to most Greeks, is likely to prove controversial, amounting to nearly 2.8 million euros ($3.6 million) after tax.

As governor of the central bank, Provopoulos, now 62, has played a key role in propping up Greece's banking system, which has received billions of euros in liquidity from the ECB and is in line for up to 50 billion euros of new capital from the bailout provided by euro zone countries and the International Monetary Fund.

This Reuters story was filed from Athens yesterday...and I plucked it from a GATA release. The link is here.

A spat has broken out between developing countries and the US over Washington’s refusal to sign off a deal struck two years ago that would give the smaller nations greater influence at the International Monetary Fund.

The Obama administration is believed to be dragging its feet because the agreement would formally release roughly $55bn to the IMF that its political opponents could paint as bail-out funds for the eurozone. With just a month to go before the presidential elections, the sign-off comes at a sensitive time.

A deal to double the IMF’s resources between its 188 members was first struck in April 2009 when Gordon Brown hosted the G20 summit in London. It was formalised in November the following year, and wrapped up with governance reforms to give developing economies more seats on the managing board.

At the time, the IMF set a target of ratifying the arrangements at its annual meetings in Tokyo, which are currently taking place.

This short story showed up on the telegraph.co.uk Internet site early yesterday afternoon BST...and I thank Manitoba reader Ulrike Marx for bringing it to our attention. The link is here.

The European Union may consider pushing back when lenders need to start phasing in tougher Basel bank-capital rules by as much as a year after warnings that pressing ahead with the original timetable may drive up costs, according to three people familiar with the talks.

EU lawmakers and officials, facing a Jan. 1 international deadline for incorporating the rules, held the latest in a series of meetings yesterday on how the bloc should implement the Basel measures, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the negotiations are private.

Representatives of Cyprus, which holds the rotating EU presidency, and legislators from the European Parliament, discussed whether the start date for phasing in the measures within the bloc could be delayed beyond the beginning of next year, said the people. Possible alternative dates might include July 1, 2013, or Jan. 1, 2014, one of the people said.

This story showed up on the Bloomberg Internet site at 5:00 p.m. Mountain Daylight Time yesterday...and I thank Ulrike Marx for her second story in a row in today's column. The link is here.

The families of 17 Russian passengers on a Damascus-bound plane from Moscow got a midnight shock upon learning that Turkish jets had intercepted the flight. For those asking why, the answer begins in Syria, and ripples throughout the world.

Damascus called it an act of piracy. Ankara said it was exercising its rights. Moscow accused the Turkish government of endangering the lives of Russian nationals. That Turkish military jets would intercept a passenger plane en route from Moscow to Damascus shows just how much the 18-month conflict to topple the government of President Bashar al-Assad has rippled throughout the region and the world.

Turkey’s increased belligerence, which began with a disproportionate retaliatory shelling campaign against Syria last week and culminated in the interception of the Syrian passenger plane under the pretext that it was carrying Russian military equipment, has sparked a diplomatic row for which Ankara initially had few answers.

On Thursday Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced the plane was carrying munitions for the Syrian Defense Ministry.

Even if you're not a student of the "New Great Game"...this is an absolute must read...and I didn't want to wait until tomorrow's column to post it, as this whole Syrian/Iranian conflict is now approaching critical mass. Even though the story is posted on the Russia Today website...I'll take their word for the situation over anything that comes out of the North American press on this. It's another Roy Stephens offering...and although a bit on the longish side, it's definitely worth your while. The link is here.

The first is with James Turk. His blog is entitled "Expect a Massive Short Squeeze in Gold & Silver". Next comes Jeffrey Saut, chief investment strategist for Raymond James. This blog is headlined "The $2 Trillion European Bailout Package is Coming". Last...and certainly not least...is this blog with John Embry titled "This War in Gold & Shorts Getting Overrun"

Striking gold miners in South Africa have rejected the industry's latest wage offer, a trade union said on Thursday, dimming hopes that strikes that have led to dozens of deaths and paralyzed the sector could end soon.

Since August, almost 100,000 workers across South Africa - including 75,000 in the mining sector - have downed tools in often illegal and violent walkouts that are hitting economic growth and undermining investor confidence in the minerals hub.

"This was a final offer from the companies. They said take it or leave it," Lesiba Seshoka, spokesman for the National Union of Mineworkers said. "Now that it has been rejected our options have been exhausted."

This Reuters story was filed from Johannesburg late Thursday morning Eastern Daylight Time...and I thank Ulrike Marx for her final offering in today's column. It's definitely worth reading...and the link is here.

As is always the case, everything that I 'discover' that I think is new regarding silver, has already been written about by Ted. This was the case the other day when I fingered the Bank of Nova Scotia[?] as the "NEW" non-U.S. bank that was suddenly incorporated into October's Bank Participation Report.

When I first stumbled around the Internet back in 1999...I was only interested in gold...and at least a year passed before I came across Ted's work for the first time over at gold-eagle.com. By then, Ted had already been involved in silver's price management scheme for about 15 years...and I knew practically nothing about either metal up to that point.

Only a couple of people were talking about silver seriously back in those days...and it took me a number of years to figure out that everything that was known about the inner workings of the silver market had passed through Ted first...and it wasn't until silver broke out of its twenty-year $5-7 price range, that more and more silver [and gold] 'experts' began showing up on the Internet. But without exception, they all ended up using Ted's material, because that was the only body of work out there that they could draw from. I was one of them...and I'm not too proud to admit that a very large portion of everything I know about silver came from him. And it's no stretch to say that most other silver pundits talking about the metal in any sort of believable manner, learned it from him either directly, or indirectly, as well...whether they care to admit it or not.

The same came can be said about my 'discovery' of the Bank of Nova Scotia. As I said, Ted had already been there...and I'd forgotten about it entirely. Even though this essay is over five years old, it could have been written yesterday, as nothing much has changed in five years, except the price. The silver [and gold] price remains as 'managed' as ever...a 'controlled retreat' as some have said. It was posted over at the silverseek.com Internet site in August of 2007...and it's a must read. The link is here. Ted's complete body of work on the Internet goes back to 1997. Except for what has been posted in his subscription service during the last few years, everything preceding that is still available in the public domain...and is linked here.

This is the second article in a 5-part series that is based on a question and answer session with Nick Barisheff...CEO of Bullion Management Group Inc.

It was posted on the goldsilverworlds.com Internet site yesterday...and is well worth reading if you have the time. The link is here.

In early July, Japan set a premium price for solar energy that was three times the rate of conventional power. This meant utility companies would be paid three times more for electricity sourced from solar. It's widely expected that the premium will ignite the use of solar power – and solar uses a lot of silver.

As you may know, silver is used in photovoltaic (PV) technology to generate solar power. A typical solar panel uses a fair amount of the metal – roughly two-thirds of an ounce (20 grams). To put that in perspective, a cell phone contains around 200 to 300 milligrams (a milligram weighs about as much as a grain of sand). A laptop contains 750 milligrams to 1.25 grams.

Photovoltaic technology is relatively young, but each year its use is growing rapidly. Just since 2000, the amount of silver consumed by solar-panel makers has risen an average of 50% per year. Demand grew from one million ounces in 2002 to 60 million ounces in 2011. Last year demand from the PV industry represented almost 11% of total industrial demand for the metal (excluding jewelry). According to statistics from CPM Group, demand grew by 11.2 million ounces, the strongest volume growth of all major sources (jewelry and electronics). And this was before the Japanese announcement was made.

Wow! Casey Research's own Jeff Clark was a busy boy writing this very excellent article. It's definitely worth reading...and I thank Elliot Simon for bringing it to my attention. The link is here.