Pimco has seen enough of the federal government's "fiscal theatre" and now says the U.S.'s credit rating will inevitably be slashed, Bloomberg's Tracy Withers reports.

The U.S. will get downgraded, it’s a question of when,” Withers quotes Scott Mather, Pimco’s head of global portfolio management, as saying. “It depends on what the end of the year looks like, but it could be fairly soon after that.”

This very short item was posted on the businessinsider.com website early yesterday morning...and I thank Robert Wangnick for our first story of the day. The link is here.

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. sought to profit last year by persuading clients to buy and sell stock options on European banks such as BNP Paribas SA and UniCredit SpA, according to former employee Greg Smith’s new book.

“We must have changed our view on each of these institutions from positive to negative back to positive ten times,” Smith writes in “Why I Left Goldman Sachs: A Wall Street Story,” scheduled for release on Oct. 22. “I remember thinking, ‘How can we be doing this with a straight face? No thinking client could believe that conditions on the ground could change that frequently.”’

Smith, a South African who graduated from Stanford University, is the first former employee to write a critical account of his career at New York-based Goldman Sachs. The 143-year-old firm was once the most profitable on Wall Street and counts among its alumni two former U.S. Treasury secretaries and the European Central Bank president. Excerpts of the book were published yesterday by Politico.

This Bloomberg story was posted just after midnight Mountain time yesterday...and I thank Manitoba reader Ulrike Marx for her first story in today's column. The link is here.

Yesterday I sat down with author Chrystia Freeland (whom I knew from Russia, where we both worked as reporters in the 90s) to talk about her excellent new book, Plutocrats: The Rise of the New Global Super Rich and the Fall of Everyone Else, with Bill Moyers. The show will begin airing on public TV stations this weekend, and will be available online tomorrow. The subject was income inequality and the rise of a new oligarch class.

When I went into Bill's studio yesterday, I heard about a crazy dustup he had recently with Bill O'Reilly, the details of which are extremely aggravating in a way that, as anyone who has followed this political season knows – this is a story about someone getting facts wrong – is becoming increasingly and unpleasantly familiar.

What happened was that in his much-publicized debate with Jon Stewart, O'Reilly bashed PBS for funding lefty agitators like Bill Moyers. "Here's what we get – a $16 trillion debt, and we've gotta pay for Bill Moyers," O'Reilly boomed. He also at one point held up a flash card with a picture of Moyers, along with the headline, "Why is NPR getting our money?"

This very short Matt Taibbi blog was posted over on the Rolling Stone website yesterday...and I thank Roy Stephens for sending this item along. It's worth your time to read the rest...and the link is here.

Germany has a clear vision for the future of the European Union -- but so does France. Unfortunately, the two concepts are radically different, and neither side seems interested in backing down. The conflict is set to dominate the EU summit on Thursday and Friday.

A bit of brinksmanship on the eve of European Union summits is to be expected. Heads of state and government are fond of going public with what they hope to achieve, only to make concessions once negotiations begin in Brussels. What might look like a deep abyss prior to the meeting will often be bridged.

But this time around, the self-serving rhetoric has been so intense that it is difficult to imagine the 27 EU leaders coming to agreement at the two-day summit, which begins on Thursday afternoon. First, it was German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble, from Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservative Christian Democrats, who went on the offensive on Tuesday with a far-reaching plan to outfit Brussels with a veto right over national budgets. The position, widely referred to as a "super-commissioner," would even be able to override national parliaments, a taboo in Paris and in many other European capitals.

This story showed up on the German website spiegel.de yesterday...and I thank Ulrike Marx for her second offering in today's column. The link is here.

Diplomats predict that Thursday night's EU summit dinner will not resolve any urgent issues for the eurozone.

This will include prevarication on moves to banking union and the controversial issue of bank recapitalisation.

“All the underlying problems are still there but they won’t go forward because the market pressure is off. I can’t see these arguments going forward,” said a senior diplomat.

Another European diplomat said: “It’s going to be a foot-dragging and lowest common denominator summit.”

Here's the view on this summit from across the English Channel. It was posted on the telegraph.co.uk Internet site at noon BST...and I thank Roy Stephens for his second offering in today's column. The link is here.

A plan to create a single euro zone banking supervisor is illegal, according to a secret legal opinion for EU finance ministers that deals a further blow to a reform deemed vital to solving the bloc’s debt crisis.

A paper from the EU Council’s top legal adviser, obtained by the Financial Times, argues the plan goes “beyond the powers” permitted under law to change governance rules at the European Central Bank.

The legal service concludes that without altering EU treaties it would be impossible to give a bank supervision board within the ECB any formal decision-making powers as suggested in the blueprint drawn up by the European Commission.

This story was first posted in the Financial Times, but was then picked up by CNBC...and posted on their website in the wee hours of yesterday morning Eastern time. I thank Donald Sinclair for bringing this story to our attention...and the link is here.

Europe's leaders agreed on Thursday to plans for a “fiscal facility” to help eurozone countries cope with shocks, opening the door to partial budgetary union.

The joint fund is to go far beyond crisis firefighting or enforcement of fiscal discipline on states in trouble. EU documents describe it as a fiscal buffer to offset the booms and busts caused by the EMU’s one-size-fits-all interest rates, along the lines of America’s system of fiscal transfers to depressed regions.

“All other monetary unions have built-in mechanisms that allow them to absorb asymmetric regional shocks in a much smoother and automatic way,” it said.

Mats Persson, from Open Europe, said the plan aims to “soften German resistance to the idea of a joint back-stop”. For Berlin, it is preferable to eurobonds, or money-printing by the European Central Bank.

This Ambrose Evans-Pritchard offering was filed just after midnight BST on their Friday morning...which was 7:00 p.m. Eastern time last night...and long after the previous three stories posted above it. It's a must read, as it's current...and Ulrike Marx pulled it off The Telegraph's website just minutes after it was posted there. The link is here.

The world's oldest bank has been cut to "junk" by Moody's, as the rating agency warned that there was a "material probability" that the lender may need another cash injection from the Italian government.

Monte Paschi was the only Italian lender to fail the European Banking Authority's stress tests and is the first of the five main Italian banks to fall below investment grade.

In a statement, Moody's said that there remained "a material probability" that the bank will need to seek further external support over the rating horizon.

"Given the weak growth prospects for Italy's economy and the EU operating environment, there is a strong probability that the bank would not be able to generate sufficient capital internally to maintain regulatory capital levels," it added.

I posted a story about this bank back in June...and here's an unhappy update. The medieval city of Siena...and her citizens...deserve better than this. This is another story from the telegraph.co.uk website...and I thank Roy Stephens for bringing it to our attention. The link is here.

A payment of $260,000 to the Calabrian Mafia for 4,000 votes. Procuring prostitutes for the prime minister. The theft in just one region of more than $1.3 million from public coffers. Lavish holidays and fancy dinners, all on the public dime.

Twenty years after Italy’s postwar political order collapsed in a bribery scandal, accusations are again flying in a widening array of new scandals that is further eroding Italians’ already shaky confidence in their politicians. The last round led to the rise of a former prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, and the question now is what the latest implosion will yield.

“We’re in a moment of transition, which creates anxiety,” said Michele Ainis, a constitutional law professor and political columnist. “Everyone sees that the phase of the Second Republic is finishing, and we don’t yet know what the Third Republic will be.”

In a nod to growing public outrage at political graft, the technocratic government of Prime Minister Mario Monti passed a bill on Wednesday that calls for creating an anticorruption watchdog and increases the penalties for extortion and abuse of office.

This rather long 2-page story showed up on The New York Times Internet site sometime on Wednesday...and I thank Donald Sinclair for sharing it with us. There are no surprises here, as all the PIGS that have a Mediterranean coastline are corrupt to the core...and that includes France. The link is here...and it's worth your time if you have it.

The first is with Egon von Greyerz...and it's headlined "Despite Manipulation, Swiss Gold to Become Money". Second is this Richard Russell commentary...and it bears the title "What Current & Future Generations Face". And lastly is this blog with my good friend John Embry. It's entitled "London Trader, Commercials & a Spike in Gold".

Gold imports by India, the world’s largest buyer, are set to climb for the first time in six quarters as a decline in domestic bullion prices stokes jewelry and investment demand ahead of major festivals.

Overseas purchases may jump to as much as 200 metric tons this quarter, said Bachhraj Bamalwa, chairman of the All India Gems & Jewellery Trade Federation. That compares with the 157 tons in the fourth quarter of 2011, according to World Gold Council data. Purchases in the quarter ended September probably fell to as low as 170 tons from 205 tons a year earlier, Bamalwa said. The council is yet to release data for the third quarter.

A rebound in Indian imports may help sustain an 11 percent rally in global prices, headed for a 12th consecutive year of gains. Bullion in India has fallen about 3 percent since climbing to a record last month after the rupee posted the biggest monthly gain against the dollar since January.

This Bloomberg story, filed from Mumbai early Friday morning, was posted on their Internet site late yesterday evening in North America. It's definitely worth reading...and I thank Elliot Simon for sending it. The link is here.

A metal detectorist made the nationally-significant find of 159 Late Roman gold coins on private land in the north of the district.

A team from the district council's museums service investigated the site at the beginning of October and confirmed the find. The coins are in very good condition and were scattered across a fairly wide area. Evidence suggests that the hoard was disturbed in the last couple of hundred years due to quarrying activity or plough action.

The coins date to the very end of Roman rule in Britain and there are practically no other comparable gold hoards from that period because after AD 408 no further coin supplies reached Britain.

I found this very interesting story in a GATA release yesterday...and the photo alone is worth the trip. It was posted over at the hertsad.co.uk Internet site early yesterday morning BST...and the link is here.

Canaccord's Global Resource Conference happening in Miami at the moment featured a lengthy lunchtime chat with billionaire investor Frank Giustra where he said "he doesn't want to sound apocalyptic," but probably ended up scaring the bejezus out of the audience anyway.

I don't know when and I don't know how high. But gold is going a lot higher.

"Gold is the bubble of all bubbles. It's the mother of all bubbles. It's the bubble people will go to when they've exhausted all other bubbles.

"Here's why: It is moveable. It is easily transferable across borders in times of crisis. It's a currency. It's liquid. It's easily tradable.

"I'm a fan of all hard assets, but particularly gold. It's the largest part of my portfolio and it will continue to be until this cycle is over."

Well, this falls into the absolutely, positively must read category...and if a guy like this is shouting it from the rooftops in the main-stream media for the second time in less than a fortnight, you can pretty much bet that it's baked in the cake. It's posted over on the businessinsider.com Internet site late yesterday evening...and I thank Roy Stephens for his last offering in today's column. The link is here.

A remark by Mark O'Byrne over at goldcore.com caught my eye - "Longer term, respected analysts are calling for gold prices above $5,000/oz and much higher forecasted prices such as between $5,000 and $10,000 per ounce are not raising eyebrows as much as they have in the past." Indeed with even many of the ultra-conservative bank and fund analysts suggesting that gold will reach $2,000 or even higher within the next year, or even the next few months, certainly $5,000 or even $10,000 should not seem out of sight in some unspecified timeframe."

If one tracks the price of gold during its current bull run it has risen around 600 percent in 13 years - at the same pace of increase it could thus reach $12,250 in another 13 years - or by some time in 2025! Thus is it ridiculous to suggest that this huge valuation on an ounce of gold is achievable? Never say never! When I started managing and writing for Mineweb back in 2006 even $1,000 looked completely out of sight and people like Rob McEwen who then were predicting that level were perhaps considered at the extreme end of the spectrum. Yet within 3 years the $1,000 level was achieved and now it is a further 75% higher than that a further three years on. Nowadays, McEwen is predicting $5,000 gold - should that still be considered over extreme?

Of course, dear reader, the question remains as to whether we get to those prices by grinding higher, or by an overnight price adjustment. I suspect the latter myself, but I'm only speculating. This excellent must read commentary by Lawrie was posted over at the mineweb.com Internet site yesterday...and the link is here.