Central bankers have been flying under the radar ever since the ECB’s Mario Draghi offered Spain and Italy open-ended bond purchases and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke unveiled a third round of quantitative easing. Working behind the scenes, Bernanke & Co. have been gathered in Washington for two days and on Wednesday delivered their latest policy decision. The FOMC statement revealed it decided to keep the monetary levers in their current position and is in wait-and-see mode until December, as I reported here.

The real action will come in the December meeting, Goldman Sachs’ chief economist Jan Hatzius believes, where he expects QE3 to be expanded to $85 billion a month to make up for the end of Operation Twist, and the possibility of outcome-based rate guidance. Also in Fed watchers’ minds will be the future of Bernanke. A report suggested the Chairman will end his tenure in January 2014, not seeking a third mandate if Barack Obama wins and, would be replaced if Mitt Romney is victorious.

This story showed up in Forbes yesterday afternoon Eastern time...and I thank Washington state reader S.A. for our first story of the day. I found the page slow to load...and the link is here.

Ford Motor Co. and Dow Chemical Co. joined a growing number of companies firing thousands of workers as sluggish U.S. growth and Europe’s deepening recession lead to a persisting slump in sales.

North American companies have announced plans to eliminate 62,600 positions at home and abroad since Sept. 1, the biggest two-month drop since the start of 2010, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Firings total 158,100 so far this year, more than the 129,000 job cuts in the same period in 2011.

Ford is closing its first European car-assembly factories in 10 years, adding to more than 5,500 cuts announced by Dow Chemical, DuPont Co. and Advanced Micro Devices Inc. in the past week. The reductions coincide with a majority of U.S. companies missing analysts’ third-quarter revenue estimates and a focus on jobs in the final weeks of the U.S. presidential campaign.

This Bloomberg story from yesterday was something that I borrowed from this morning's edition of the King Report....and the link is here.

Five years after the housing market crumbled, government officials are still trying to assign blame for the problems that fueled the mortgage boom and bust.

On Wednesday, federal prosecutors in New York took aim at Bank of America. They accused it of carrying out a scheme, started by its Countrywide Financial unit, that had defrauded government-backed mortgage agencies by churning out loans at a rapid pace without proper checks. In a civil suit, prosecutors seek to collect at least $1 billion in penalties from the bank as compensation for the behavior that they say forced taxpayers to guarantee billions in bad loans.

Financial firms have been battling chaotic — and at times redundant — litigation related to the mortgage mess. The cases have come from a patchwork of federal agencies, state officials and shareholder suits, some of which have been resolved in multibillion-dollar settlements.

Nobody will go to jail. There will be a big fine...and it will be 'business as usual' after that. This story showed up on The New York Times website during the lunch hour in New York yesterday...and I thank Phil Barlett for sending it. The link is here.

Not being a big fan of Mr. Trump, I must admit that I nearly deleted this youtube.com video without watching it. Now I'm glad I didn't.

Donald tells Obama that if he comes up with certain documentation, such as a passport and a registration form from his university, Donald will donate a BIG cheque/check to the charity of the president's choice.

The video runs 2:45 minutes...and is worth watching. I thank reader Brad Robertson for sending it...and the link is here.

Rajat K. Gupta, the former Goldman Sachs director, was sentenced to two years in prison on Wednesday for leaking boardroom secrets to the former hedge fund manager Raj Rajaratnam.

Mr. Gupta, 63, who ran the consulting firm McKinsey & Company and served as a major adviser to the philanthropic efforts of Bill Gates and Bill Clinton, is the most prominent figure to face prison in the government’s sweeping crackdown on insider trading. The court also ordered Mr. Gupta to pay a $5 million fine.

“He is a good man,” Judge Jed S. Rakoff said of Mr. Gupta on Wednesday. “But the history of this country and the history of the world is full of examples of good men who did bad things.”

This story was posted in The New York Times just after the markets closed in New York yesterday...and I thank Roy Stephens for sharing it with us. The link is here.

The Argentine stock market Merval index fell the most in eleven months following on President Cristina Fernandez plans to overhaul securities rules and force insurers to spend more on industrial and infrastructure projects.

The benchmark dropped 3.6% to 2.368.96 at the close of Tuesday trading in Buenos Aires, its steepest decline since November 2011.

A bill will be sent to Congress that replaces self- regulation of issuers and brokers with a greater role for the regulatory agency known as CNV. The proposal would also make trading cheaper, interconnect markets and eliminate the requirement for brokers to be stakeholders in exchanges, Economy Minister Hernan Lorenzino said Monday in televised comments, next to President Cristina Fernandez.

“We want to generate a big change in line with major global markets and the expansion of channels that the general public can access,” the minister said. “We are going to propose that the markets themselves operate as corporations and have the obligation to propagate their activities”.

This story showed up on the mercopress.com Internet site early yesterday morning...and I thank Casey Research's own Louis James for bringing it to my attention. The link is here.

The EU-IMF Troika in charge of Spain's €60bn (£48bn) bank rescue is to demand much tougher action by the country's authorities to clean up toxic debts, risking a clash that could deter Madrid from requesting a full sovereign bail-out.

BNM Mare Nostrum, and other mid-tier "Group 2" banks such as Popular, Caja 3, and Liberbank, have little chance of tapping the markets to cover most of their capital deficits, according to Troika officials.

They are also losing patience with the glacial pace of cuts at Bankia and other nationalised lenders such as Catalunya-Caixa and Banco Valencia, according to the Spanish newspaper El Confidencial.

Brussels fears a repeat of the fiasco at Bankia, which had to be rescued just weeks after its recapitalisation plans had been approved. "We have had too many bad experiences with financial restructuring in Spain to be sure the plans will work this time," said one official.

This Ambrose Evans-Pritchard offering was posted on The Telegraph's website late on Tuesday evening BST...and I thank Roy Stephens for his second story in today's column. The link is here.

When it comes to Greece's future in the euro zone, both sides in the dispute over additional austerity measures -- both Athens and Brussels -- have done their best to appear unbending. Brussels has insisted that the Greek government under Prime Minister Antonis Samaras pass additional billions in belt-tightening measures to qualify for further aid, while Samaras has said that his country needs more time to get its budget in order.

But lately there have been signs that Europe might soften its position. Most recently, German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble said on Tuesday that he considered it likely "that we can come to agreement on a policy that makes sense for Greece."

Now, German daily Süddeutsche Zeitung is reporting that Greece's international creditors have agreed to grant the heavily indebted country two more years to reduce its budget deficit below the 3 percent maximum allowed by European Union rules. While not citing sources beyond a draft version of a "Memorandum of Understanding," the paper also reports that Athens will additionally be given a breather on deadlines for labor market reform, energy policy reform and privatization efforts.

This story was posted on the German website spiegel.de yesterday...and it's Roy's second offering in a row...and his third in today's column. The link is here.

A "renminbi bloc" has been formed in East Asia, as nations in the region abandon the US dollar and peg their currency to the Chinese yuan — a major signal of China's successful bid to internationalize its currency, a research report has said.

The Peterson Institute for International Economics, or PIIE, said in its latest research that China has moved closer to its long-term goal for the renminbi to become a global reserve currency.

Since the global financial crisis, the report said, more and more nations, especially emerging economies, see the yuan as the main reference currency when setting their exchange rate.

And now seven out of 10 economies in the region — including South Korea, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand — track the renminbi more closely than they do the US dollar. Only three economies in the group — Hong Kong, Vietnam, and Mongolia — still have currencies following the dollar more closely than the renminbi, said the report, posted on the institute's website.

This story showed up on the chinadaily.com.cn Internet site just after midnight local time on Wednesday...and I thank Marshall Angeles for bringing it to our attention. The link is here.

The first blog is with Nigel Farage...and it's entitled "Nigel Farage - We are Headed to a 'One World Government'". Next is Rick Rule. His blog is headlined "Central Planners Greatest Fear, Possible Surprises & Gold". The third blog is with Caesar Bryan...and it bears the title "Currency Wars Continue to Rage & This is Positive for Gold" The audio interview is with Dr. Stephen Leeb...and it's all about gold.

Gold Fields Ltd., the world’s fourth-biggest gold producer, said it fired 8,500 striking workers at its KDC East mine in South Africa after they failed to heed an ultimatum to return to work.

The fired workers can appeal, Willie Jacobsz, a company spokesman, said in a phone interview today.

Illegal mining strikes began in South Africa at Lonmin Plc’s Marikana platinum mine on Aug. 10 and have spread to gold, iron ore and chrome mines as workers bypassed labor unions to demand higher pay.

This 3-paragraph Bloomberg story was posted on their website mid-morning on Tuesday...and you've just read the whole thing. I thank Washington state reader for finding it for us...and the link to the hard copy is here.

Writing from Hong Kong for MarketWatch yesterday, Tyche Group Ltd. Associate Director Martin W. Hennecke seems to have been following GATA's work closely.

Hennecke writes: "It is an open secret among precious metals analysts and traders that the gold and silver markets are being heavily manipulated, mostly to the downside; that is, their prices are being suppressed by various Western financial entities in what should be a scandal much bigger than the Libor rigging scheme."

But, Hennecke notes, China knows all about the market rigging and is exploiting it to obtain discounted metal. Martin's commentary was posted on the marketwatch.com Internet site yesterday...and I thank Chris Powell for providing the headline and wordsmithing the introduction. The link is here.

Sprott's Charles Oliver says it's a great time to be heading up a precious metals fund. Gold and silver companies are trading at spectacular valuations, quantitative easings by the governments of the world are poised to strengthen the metals' prices even further, and more bargains could be had soon if investors dump stocks to avoid taxes. In this interview with The Gold Report, Oliver, manager of the Sprott Gold and Precious Minerals Fund, talks about the momentum building for gold and silver and shares the names of undervalued opportunities.

This rather longish interview was posted over on theaureport.com Internet site yesterday...and is certainly worth reading if you have the time. The link is here.

Here's a 25:20 minute interview with Rick Rule. Casey Research's own Louis James does the honours...and I hope you can find the time to watch this very informative video interview. It was the entire contents of yesterday's edition of the Casey Daily Dispatch...and the link is here.

It's strange what you encounter when you try to take a serious look at the gold policy of central banks and their agents, the bullion banks.

Some observers, including the Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee (GATA), estimate that Western central banks have on hand nowhere near as much gold as they claim. These observers suspect that much Western central bank gold has been sold or leased largely surreptitiously to restrain the gold price over the last two decades.

Here is the explanation provided to me in an interview by the Canadian financial analyst and fund manager Marshall Auerback when I asked: Do you think that the Western central banks and the International Monetary Fund really have in their vaults the gold they say they have?

Marshall Auerback: "In a strict accounting sense they might, but it might be irrelevant. I suspect that the central banks have not been selling much gold over the past few years since the inception of the Washington Agreement on Gold, but I think they have still been leasing considerable amounts into the gold market. From a flow standpoint, it's irrelevant whether the gold is sold or lent, as it still appears as supply in the market.

This essay by German financial journalist, Lars Schall, was posted in this rather longish GATA release yesterday...and it's worth reading. The link is here.

German financial journalist Lars Schall, whose questioning of Western central banks about their secret activity in the gold market was called to your attention today -- was interviewed about the German gold reserve and the secrecy around it last week on Max Keiser's "On the Edge" television program on PressTV.

I borrowed "all of the above" from a GATA release yesterday. The video interview with Lars and Max is 23 minutes long...and is posted on the youtube.com Internet site here.

The first thing to understand when you're investing in the resource sector is that all major markets are now manipulated, mostly surreptitiously, by governments. There are a few reasons for this explosion of manipulation but the big ones are that the world economy has grown terribly unstable in recent years (in large part because of smaller manipulations by governments) and because an international currency war has broken out.

The gold and silver markets are the most manipulated of all because they involve currencies that compete with government currencies and because gold is a primary determinant not just of the value of currencies but also of interest rates and the value of government bonds. The gold market particularly is the key to all other markets.

This market rigging isn't farfetched or wild conspiracy theory stuff. For starters, in the United States it's the law. In 1934 the United States enacted the Gold Reserve Act specifically to create the Exchange Stabilization Fund within the Treasury Department and authorize it to trade in gold and related financial instruments. As it has been amended, the Gold Reserve Act now allows the ESF to trade not just in gold but in any financial instruments and to do so entirely in secret, exempt from answering to Congress or anyone else.

These above three paragraphs are from the beginning of GATA secretary treasurer Chris Powell's speech at the New Orleans Investment Conference yesterday. The entire speech is a must read, of course. It's posted on the gata.org Internet site...and the link is here.

Germany withdrew two-thirds of its vast holdings of gold from Bank of England vaults shortly after the launch of the euro more than a decade ago, according to a confidential report that emerged on Wednesday.

The revelation came as Germany's budget watchdog demanded an on-site probe of the country's remaining gold reserves in London, Paris, and New York to verify whether the metal really exists.

The country has 3,396 tons of gold worth E143 billion (E116 billion), the world's second-largest holding after the United States. Nearly all of it was shifted to vaults abroad during the Cold War in case of a Soviet attack.

Roughly 66 percent is held at the New York Federal Reserve, 21 percent at the Bank of England, and 8 percent at the Bank of France. The German Court of Auditors told legislators in a redacted report that the gold had "never been verified physically" and ordered the Bundesbank to secure access to the storage sites.

As I said the other day, the rest of the story about Germany's gold remains to be told. Ambrose Evans-Pritchard read us Chapter 2 in his commentary last night. This is a really big deal and, without doubt, there are more revelations to come...and not just from Germany, either. This story was posted on the telegraph.co.uk Internet site yesterday evening British Summer Time...and it's an absolute must read as well. I thank Nick Laird for being the first person through the door with this story..and the link is here.

Appended is another example of the idiot journalism the planet is up against -- a rambling and practically unconscious discourse about the German federal auditors office's call for an inventory of the country's gold reserves, held at the Bank of England, the Bank of France, and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

The author, CNBC Senior Editor John Carney, asserts that it doesn't matter whether Germany's gold exists provided that everyone just pretends and acts as if it exists: "As long as the Fed says it is there, it is as good as there for all practical purposes to which it might be put. It can be sold, leased out, used as collateral, employed to extinguish liabilities, and counted as bank capital just the same whether it exists or not."

How about trying to put such questions to them yourself, Mr. Carney?

Even The Telegraph's Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, who has a bit more wit and experience than Carney, failed Journalism 101 tonight with his report about the controversy over the German gold reserves.

Evans-Pritchard acknowledged that the withdrawal of much of the German gold from the Bank of England was a "mystery," but did he pick up the telephone and question Bank of England Governor Mervyn King or Bundesbank President Jens Weidmann about it? King and Weidmann surely could explain the "mystery" and, as he represents an influential news organization, Evans-Pritchard surely could have gotten them to come to the phone at least to be quoted with an embarrassing refusal to explain.

But no; instead Evans-Pritchard telephoned a gold mining company chairman, Peter Hambro, who of course could only speculate on the mystery.

Wow! Chris Powell is an unhappy camper...and rightfully so. His day job is senior editor at the Journal Enquirer in Manchester, Connecticut. He certainly doesn't practice journalism this way...and is less than amused when others don't live up to even the minimum standards of their profession. The link to this must read GATA release is here.

Two days ago we reported that the German Court of Auditors demanded that the German Central Bank, the Bundesbank, verify and audit its official gold holdings consisting of 3,396 tonnes, held mostly offshore, namely New York, London and Paris, at least according to official documents. It also called for repatriation of 150 tonnes in the next three years to perform a quality inspection of the tungsten gold.

Today, in a surprising development, via The Telegraph we learn that none other than the same Bundesbank which is causing endless nightmares for all the other broke European nations due to its insistence for sound money, decided to voluntarily pull two thirds of its gold holdings held by the Bank of England. According to a confidential report referenced by The Telegraph, Buba reclaimed 940 tonnes, reducing its BOE holdings from 1,440 in 2000 to 500 in 2001 allegedly "because storage costs were too high."

This is about as idiotic an excuse as the Fed cancelling its reporting of M3 in 2006 because "the costs of collecting the underlying data outweigh the benefits." So why did Buba repatriate its gold? Ambrose Evans-Pritchard has an idea.

The good folks over at Zero Hedge were all over this story like white on rice last night...and what is written here is a must read as well. I thank reader Jeffrey Lewis for sending it our way...and the link is here.