The United States government reported a budget surplus for the final month of the 2012 fiscal year, but the tiny bump in revenues did not prevent the country's deficit from exceeding $1 trillion for the fourth year in a row.

The 2012 budget gap was $1.089 trillion, narrower than last year's deficit of $1.297 trillion because of higher corporate income tax receipts and less spending, the Treasury Department said on Friday.

The deficit equaled 7.0 percent of U.S. economic output, down from 8.7 percent last year, the department said. Economists generally consider deficits exceeding 3.0 percent of gross domestic product to be unsustainable in the long term.

This Reuters story was posted on their Internet site late on Friday afternoon...and I thank Manitoba reader Ulrike Marx for providing the first story in today's column. The link is here.

Bank stocks fell Friday afternoon along with the broader market as concerns over Europe's debt crisis returned. JPMorgan stock dropped 1.5% even though the country's largest bank by assets reported $5.7 billion in third quarter profits, up 34% from a year ago. Shares of Wells Fargo slipped 3.1% after it reported a 22% increase in earnings but revenues of $21.2 billion that were lower than revenues in the previous quarter.

Chris Whalen, senior managing director of Tangent Capital Partners, tells The Daily Ticker that the decline in JPMorgan shares was "a sell-the-news reaction." JPMorgan did better on lending, he says, but "there's only so much of that left."

Whalen says banks overall won't be able to maintain the volume of mortgages and refinancings that have been supporting earnings. He says the Federal Housing Administration has been tightening requirements for the loans it guarantees and the majority of refinancings have already been done.

This CNBC story was posted on their website half an hour before the markets closed in New York yesterday...and I thank Ontario reader Richard O'Mara for being the first one through the door with this article yesterday. The 5-minute video interview with Chris Whalen that is embedded in this piece is a must watch...and you can forget about reading the story, as the video is much more interesting. The link is here.

Microsoft Corp. co-founder Bill Gates and former United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan asked a judge to show leniency in 11 days when he sentences ex- Goldman Sachs Group Inc. director Rajat Gupta for insider trading.

Gates and Annan were among more than 200 supporters seeking mercy for Gupta, citing his lifetime of good deeds. He will be sentenced on Oct. 24 for leaking stock tips to hedge-fund manager Raj Rajaratnam. The letters were made public yesterday by U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff in Manhattan.

“I urge you to recognize Rajat for the good that he has done in this world, to give him the credit that he deserves for helping others, and to take into account his effort to improve the lives of millions of people,” Annan said of Gupta’s work to reform management of the UN.

You can't make this stuff up! This story was posted on the Bloomberg Internet site late last night Mountain Daylight Time...and I thank West Virginia reader Elliot Simon for bringing it to our attention. The link is here.

The history of money is a sad state of affairs. Failing to learn from a litany of previous monetary fiascos, “money” is these days being abusively over-issued. And when the marketplace inevitably decides that over-issuance (in conjunction with only deeper structural maladjustment) has sufficiently impaired the “moneyness” of federal and related debt, there will be no one to step in to backstop Washington’s creditworthiness. There will be no entity left with the wherewithal for backstopping system “moneyness,” as the Treasury and Federal Reserve have done for Trillions of intermediated mortgage debt since the bursting of the previous Bubble. Moreover, in the meantime, outrageous fiscal and monetary policies will continue to foment uncertainties that will impinge the type of sound investment and wealth creation necessary to get our economy on sounder footing.

Doug's weekly Credit Bubble Bulletin is always a must read for me when it's posted on the prudentbear.com Internet site most Friday evenings...and yesterday's commentary is no exception to that rule. The link is here.

The European Union has won the Nobel Peace Prize, despite a year marked by riots on streets of many capitals and the looming prospect of an acrimonious break up amid an economic crisis caused by the euro.

The EU has been nominated many times for the prize in the past but has never won it because the Union is politically controversial, not least in Norway, the home of the Nobel peace prize, a country which rejected membership twice, in two referendums.

"The union and its forerunners have for over six decades contributed to the advancement of peace and reconciliation, democracy and human rights in Europe," said the Nobel prize committee.

In its citation the Nobel committee acknowledged that the EU was today facing turmoil as the economic defects of the euro have laid waste to many Southern European countries and have plunged all Europe into the worst recession for 80 years.

Only the Nobel peace prize for Obama, three weeks after he was elected president, was a worse choice than this. The surprise and outrage followed immediately. This story was posted in The Telegraph early yesterday morning BST...but London, U.K. reader Iain Doherty didn't get it to me in time to make yesterday's column. The link is here.

The decision to award the Nobel Peace Prize to the European Union has divided the Continent. While European leaders in Brussels and national capitals are basking in the glow provided by the unexpected honor, euroskeptics in the EU have unleashed their contempt for the Norwegian Nobel Committee.

In Britain, Friday's award has been the subject of particularly heated commentary. Iain Martin, a columnist with the conservative Daily Telegraph dismissed the prize as "beyond parody." He writes that the prize has been awarded prematurely because "we have no idea how the experiment to create an anti-democratic federation will end." Besides, he writes, "daftest of all is the notion that the EU itself has kept the peace." Instead, he writes, it was the Brits and the Americans who brought peace to the Continent.

Members of the House of Commons with the conservative Tories described the decision as "laughable" and an "April Fool's Joke." Meanwhile, the tabloid Daily Mail runs with photos of protesters in Athens burning a flag emblazoned with a swastika during this week's visit by German Chancellor Angela Merkel and quotes the head of the Tory party in the European Parliament, Martin Callanan, as stating, "Presumably this prize is for the peace and harmony on the streets of Athens and Madrid."

This spiegel.de story was sent to me by Roy Stephens...and the link is here.

Roy also sent this blog from The Telegraph on the same issue. It was written by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard...and is headlined "The wrong Europe wins the Nobel peace prize". The link to that is here...and it's a must read.

Mount Athos, a self-governed peninsula in northeastern Greece, has been attracting pilgrims to its Orthodox monasteries for centuries. But the debt crisis has led to a sharp rise in the number of guests seeking calm and solace there. Women still aren't welcome, though.

In a few minutes, the oil lamps will be lit in Agiou Andrea, one of 12 "sketes," or monastic communities, on Mount Athos.

Agiou Andrea is not a place to expect luxury. But no one has come here for that. "I am here to wash myself clean of my sins," says Ilie, a young Romanian who lives in Germany. "Here, we are closer to heaven than anywhere else." Nikos, a Greek businessman, has come to the monastery to find himself. "To simply turn off, meditate and forget the material world," he says.

The "Holy Mountain" of Athos is a special place for Orthodox Christians. The sparsely inhabited third finger of the Halkidiki Peninsula in northeastern Greece is wildly beautiful, with almost 350 square kilometres (135 square miles) of dense forests and hills. Legend has it that the Virgin Mary landed here on her way to Cyprus and was overcome by its beauty. God then gave her the mountain on it as a gift. And since the "Garden of the Virgin Mary," as the place is known, is devoted to only the "purest of all women," other women are not allowed in. At least that is the reason given by the monks who have ruled Athos as an autonomous monastic republic since the 10th century. Not even female animals are allowed on Athos, except cats.

Roy Stephens sent me this very interesting read on Thursday...and I decided to save it for today because of its length and subject matter. It's worth your while to spend some time on this. It was posted on the spiegel.de website...and the link is here.

Vladimir Putin has delayed a planned trip to Turkey following the forced landing of a Syrian plane in Ankara. In an interview, Vladimir Yukanin, a confidant to the Russian president, defends Russian weapons deliveries to dictator Bashar Assad and accuses the West of provoking a confrontation.

You're the initiator of World Public Forum "Dialogue of Civilizations." What is the current state of relations between Russia and the West?

Vladimir Yakunin: We're on a dead-end road. At the same time, we face many common problems. The world order as we once knew it is breaking into pieces. During the Cold War, we at times found ourselves on the brink of nuclear war. The balance of terror ensured a kind of stability -- we were able to avoid a major war. But today's world is no less dangerous, as the conflict along the Syrian-Turkish border shows.

This spiegel.de story from Friday is a must read for all students of the "New Great Game". It's a contribution from Roy Stephens of course...and the link is here.

Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov blames the “bloc thinking” of Western countries for failing to adjust to the present realities.

"Unfortunately, the Euro-Atlantic military-political processes are lagging behind the rapidly changing realities,” Lavrov said at the Federation Council on Wednesday. “The political elites of a number of Western countries are still obviously backsliding into bloc thinking."

"Certain politicians wish to reanimate the image of a geopolitical adversary in the person of our country,” the minister said, adding that such scare tactics helps to preserve “a strong military-political bond between the United States and European NATO members."

Although Lavrov did not mention Republican challenger for the White House, Mitt Romney, by name, the comments seem too well-timed to be a mere coincidence.

Here's the Russia Today version of the spiegel.de story that was posted before. It's also a must read...and is also courtesy of Roy Stephens. The link is here.

A multi-billion dollar arms deal with Iraq, a summit meeting with Turkey, a fence-mending exercise with Saudi Arabia, a debut with Egypt's Sphinx-like Muslim Brothers - all this is slated to happen within the period of a turbulent month in the Middle East. And all this is to happen when the United States' "return" to the region after the hurly-burly of the November election still seems a distant dream. Simply put, Russia is suddenly all over the Middle East.

Moscow announced on Tuesday that Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki was in town and the two countries signed contracts worth "more than" US$4.2 billion in an arms deal that includes Iraq's purchase of 30 Mi-28 attack helicopters and 42 Pantsir-S1 surface-to-air missile systems that can also be used to defend against attack jets.

The joint Russian-Iraqi statement issued in Moscow revealed that discussions had been going on for the past five months over the arms deal and that further talks are under way for Iraq's purchase of MiG-29 jets, heavy-armored vehicles and other weaponry. A Kremlin announcement said Maliki is due to meet President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday and the focus of the discussions will be energy cooperation between Russia and Iraq.

The stunning news will send US politicians into a tizzy. Reports say the phone kept ringing in Maliki's office in Baghdad as soon as it transpired that he was to travel to Moscow and something big could be in the works. Queries were coming in from the US State Department and the National Security Council as to what warranted such a trip at this point in time.

Of course the summit meeting mentioned in the first sentence of the first paragraph is now out the window, as this story was posted before the Syrian airliner was forced to land in Turkey...but the rest of this Asia Times piece is worth reading. I thank Roy Stephens for sending it...and the link is here.

Iran's vital seaborne trade is buckling under the weight of Western sanctions, deepening hardship for a population deprived of basic imports and heaping intense pressure on Tehran over its nuclear program.

Many of Iran's imports, including food and consumer goods, arrive on container, bulker and other ships, but the number of vessels calling at its ports has dived by more than half this year as the United States and European Union tighten the screws.

Analysts doubt the Iranian economy is near collapse, even though its rial currency has plunged in the last few weeks, but they say some shortages and rising prices of imported goods could provoke public unrest directed at Tehran's leadership.

You just never know how much of this Reuters story from yesterday is believable...and how much is propaganda. As an old saying goes..."The first casualty of war is the truth". I thank Ulrike Marx for her second offering in today's column, which she sent our way in the wee hours of this morning...and the link is here.

Former U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld coined the phrase "unknown unknowns," a snappier way to describe "unintended consequences." Both refer to events that are unanticipated, unexpected and unpredictable.

Beyond the arming of the mujahedin with Stinger missiles in Afghanistan that ultimately drove out the Russians and led to a Taliban takeover, a more telling example of unintended consequences was the implosion of the Soviet Union.

Although some wrongly attribute the end of the Soviet Union to U.S. President Ronald Reagan's attempt to spend the "evil empire" into oblivion by forcing an arms race capped by the Strategic Defense Initiative, derisively called "star wars," the truth lies elsewhere.

This UPI story from Wednesday is another must read for students of the "New Great Game"...and I thank Roy Stephens for sending it. The link is here.

A trip through Kim Jong Un's North Korea reveals a country where one can find widespread poverty as well as an increasing number of Western products. Government minders, however, remain vigilant.

"Potemkin villages," I scribble onto a scrap of paper for the interpreter, Mr. Kim. "What does that mean?" he asks. "It means that you are just showing us facades here to feign growth and progress, just as the Russian Prince Potemkin once did," I reply. "You should google it."

That, though, is not an option available to Mr. Kim. The Democratic People's Republic of Korea is the only country on earth in which the people have no connection to the World Wide Web.

The 21-year-old interpreter has never left North Korea. He believes in the imminent victory of the socialist revolution and is now trying to show us the achievements of his native country: The capital, cleaned up for the 100th birthday of the country's founder, Kim Il Sung, and a new high-rise development that looks like something the Austrian artist Friedensreich Hundertwasser might have designed, albeit in concrete. Western diplomats in Pyongyang sardonically refer to the development as the city's new "Manhattan skyline."

Mr. Kim doesn't understand why foreign guests always ask these questions...

This 2-page exposé showed up on the spiegel.de Internet site yesterday...and I thank Roy Stephens for his final offering in today's column. The link is here.

The blog is with Art Cashin...and it's headlined "We Are at Risk of a Frightening Hyperinflation". The audio interview is with Jeffrey Saut.

A second man has been indicted and arrested in what federal prosecutors say was a multimillion dollar Ponzi scheme involving precious metals.

A federal grand jury indictment charged that 60-year-old Wallace Lindsey Howell of Mauldin conspired to defraud and to obtain money by false and fraudulent pretenses related to silver investment accounts opened at Atlantic Bullion & Coin, according to prosecutors and court records.

U.S. Attorney Bill Nettles said Howell was arrested after being charged in an indictment with conspiracy to commit mail fraud.

Do you know where your physical gold and silver are, dear reader? This story was filed from Greenville, S.C. late on Thursday evening...and is posted on the greenvilleonline.com Internet site. I thank Elliot Simon for sharing it with us...and the link is here.

Lars Schall conducted an exclusive video interview related to this topic with the technical analyst and book author Dimitri Speck. Dimitri's chart work has graced this column on quite a number of occasions over the past few years...and his work [in English] started showing up on the Internet at least ten years ago, so he's been around the block a few times.

The video interview runs for 24 minutes...and is well worth your time if you're looking to understand the mechanics of the gold price management scheme by the world's central banks and bullion banks. It's posted on the larsschall.com Internet site on Wednesday...and the link is here.

It is difficult to visualise the enormous quantity of gold that arrives in Switzerland every year. In 2011, over 2,600 metric tons of raw gold were imported into the country, to a total value of SFr96 billion ($103 billion). This was a record, the quantity having more than doubled over the last ten years, not including the gold that transits through Swiss free ports.

To get an idea of Switzerland’s profile in the sector of gold refining and trading, consider another figure: the production of gold from all the mines in the world in 2011 amounted to 2,700 metric tons, according to data from the US Geological Survey.

If to this figure you add the gold coming from small businesses all over the world, which say “we buy gold,” and from illegal mines – a figure not considered in official statistics, – it would appear that two thirds of the world’s gold transits through Switzerland.

“In an average year, Switzerland refines about 70 per cent of world gold,” according to Frédéric Panizzutti, spokesman of MKS (Switzerland) SA, a Geneva-based company, which specialises in gold trading and which owns the Pamp refinery in Castel San Pietro, Ticino.

This very interesting story was posted on the swissinfo.ch Internet site on Friday sometime...and I thank Ulrike Marx for sharing it with us. The link is here.

Singapore has repealed a 7% tax on investment-grade gold and other precious metals to spur the development of gold trading in the country. It is hoped the move will lift demand for gold bars and coins in the fourth quarter and applies to gold of 99.5% purity, silver of 99.9% purity and platinum of 99% purity.

While in the works for several months, the repeal came into effect on October 1.

Singapore is hoping the scrapping of the tax will lure bullion refiners to the country and convince trading houses to open storage facilities, transforming it into a key Asian pricing hub. along the lines of London and Zurich. Currently holding 2% of global gold demand, the Southeast Asian city-state aims to hike that to 10% to 15% over the next five to 10 years.

This story mineweb.com story was filed from Mumbai yesterday. I thank Ulrike for her second story in a row...and her final article in today's column. The link is here.

The preferred asset for Indian investors is real estate sector, followed by gold and silver, a survey today said.

“The investment pattern in the country suggests that investment flow have been highest in the traditional modes of investments such as in real estate market followed by gold and silver,” the survey of PHDCCI said.

It said that due to the uncertain economic environment and sluggish growth in financial markets, investors are pumping money towards safe and less risky investments as compared with highly volatile investment avenues such as stock market.

“...salaried people and the agriculturists have shown very strong preferences towards gold & silver,” it added.

This story, filed from New Delhi yesterday, was posted on the hindubusiness.line.com website...and I thank West Virginia reader Elliot Simon for finding it for us. It's also his last offering in today's column...and the link is here.