Consumers will have to dig deeper into their pockets next year to pay for costlier health care, more expensive grocery bills and higher taxes, an extra drag on the country's already slow-moving economy.

The additional outlays look set to test the resilience of consumers, whose spending accounts for around two-thirds of the U.S. economy.

"We think it's going to be a difficult six to nine months," said Scott Hoyt, senior director of consumer economics for Moody's Analytics. "If anything, conditions are likely to get worse, particularly at the start of the year."

This story was posted on the CNBC Internet site at noon Eastern time yesterday...and I thank West Virginia reader Elliot Simon for our first story of the day. The link is here.

Today's third-quarter GDP figures are widely expected to show the UK economy emerging from its double-dip recession – indeed the Prime Minister virtually confirmed it in PMQ's yesterday. Unfortunately, this totemic piece of good news doesn't really reflect the underlying reality, or the degree to which paying for the excesses of the past through tax increases, spending cuts, unemployment and erosion in real wages is eating into living standards. These are suffering much more severely than the raw output data suggest.

This is no doubt what Sir Mervyn King, Governor of the Bank of England, had in mind when he warned this week that the next generation may have to live under the shadow of today's economic correction "for a long time to come".

The Governor is still as reluctant as ever to concede the central bank's own culpability in the crisis – no mention of that in this week's speech - but it is hard to disagree with the thrust of his comments – that though the policy response may have smoothed the adjustment, it can't eradicate it, and it may now have reached the limits of its capacity to do even that.

Jeremy Warner, the associate editor at The Telegraph, points out the obvious...that money printing has already gone as far as it can go...and "helicopter money" is all that's left. This editorial was posted on their website on Wednesday evening BST...and I thank Roy Stephens for sending it. The link is here.

Data from the European Central Bank show that the tentative rebound in the money supply over the summer may have stalled again in September.

The broad M3 gauge -- watched by experts as an early warning signal for the economy a year or so ahead -- shrank by €30bn and is now down by €143bn since April. This is highly unusual.

The narrow M1 gauge watched for signals of activity six months head has held up better but also contracted in September, falling by €16bn.

"The message is clear," said Lars Christensen from Danske Bank. "The ECB needs to stop obsessing about fiscal issues and do real quantitative easing (QE) if it wants to stop the eurozone going the way of Japan."

This Ambrose Evans-Pritchard offering was posted on the telegraph.co.uk Internet site last evening BST...and my thanks go out to reader David Ball for finding it for us. The link is here.

Greece says it has been granted an extra two years to meet austerity targets. The EU and IMF deny it. According to press reports, Athens needs an extra 20 billion euros in aid. It is difficult to determine exactly what might come next for the country, but commentators say it is clear that Europe is at a crossroads.

What is going on in the never-ending negotiations between Greece and its international creditors? That depends largely on who you ask. If you ask Greek Finance Minister Yannis Stournaras, Athens on Wednesday was given an additional two years to reach its budgetary target of reducing new lending below the EU-mandated maximum of 3 percent. Instead of 2014, Greece would have a new deadline of 2016.

European newspapers on Wednesday were full of reports that a draft "Memorandum of Understanding" included the two-year delay. Furthermore, Germany's business daily Handelsblatt, citing an unnamed senior euro-zone source, reported that Greece would need an additional €16 billion to €20 billion in aid. The sum was consistent with previous reports, including one in SPIEGEL in late September, on how much a two-year delay might cost.

This story showed up on the German website spiegel.de yesterday...and I thank Roy Stephens for sending it. The link is here.

Life in Greece has been turned on its head since the debt crisis took hold. But in few areas has the change been more striking than in health care. Until recently, Greece had a typical European health system, with employers and individuals contributing to a fund that with government assistance financed universal care. People who lost their jobs received health care and unemployment benefits for a year, but were still treated by hospitals if they could not afford to pay even after the benefits expired.

Things changed in July 2011, when Greece signed a supplemental loan agreement with international lenders to ward off financial collapse. Now, as stipulated in the deal, Greeks must pay all costs out of pocket after their benefits expire.

About half of Greece’s 1.2 million long-term unemployed lack health insurance, a number that is expected to rise sharply in a country with an unemployment rate of 25 percent and a moribund economy, said Savas Robolis, director of the Labor Institute of the General Confederation of Greek Workers. A new $17.5 billion austerity package of budget cuts and tax increases, agreed upon Wednesday with Greece’s international lenders, will make matters only worse, most economists say.

This 2-page story was posted on The New York Times website on Wednesday...and is another offering from Roy Stephens. The link is here.

The deputies - centre-left MEP Maria Badia, Greens Ana Miranda and Raul Romeva i Rueda and Liberal Ramon Tremosa - wrote to EU justice commissioner Vivianne Reding on 22 October.

The letter says: "We are writing to you to convey our deep concern over a series of threats of the use of military force against the Catalan population ... In these circumstances, the European Union should intervene preventatively to guarantee that the resolution of the Catalan conflict be resolved in a peaceful, democratic manner."

It notes that politicians from the centre-right People's Party of Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy have spoken of article 8 of Spain's constitution, which says the army can be used to protect Spanish sovereignty.

It adds the commission should: "Make a public statement insisting on the withdrawal from the public debate of any military threat or use of force as a way of resolving this political conflict."

This short story showed up on the euobserver.com Internet site early yesterday morning local time...and it's Roy Stephens final offering in today's column. The link is here.

Jérôme Kerviel, the most spectacular rogue trader in financial history, today lost his appeal and was jailed for three years and ordered to repay €4.9bn to his former employer.

Kerviel, 35, claimed during appeal hearings in June that the French bank Société Générale tacitly approved his risky trades and exploited the collapse of his position in 2008 to “bury” its own losses in the US sub-prime debacle.

The Paris appeal court today ruled that Mr Kerviel was solely responsible for the €4.9billion loss – the biggest in trading history – because he had evaded internal controls to make colossal, one-way bets of up to €50billion on European stock-market futures.

Mr Kerviel, now earning €30,000 a year in a computer company, is expected to seek leave to appeal to France’s highest court, the Cour de Cassation. In theory, even if he handed over all his after-tax earnings, it would take him around 300,000 years to repay his losses to SocGen.

This item, filed from Paris on Wednesday, was posted on the independent.co.uk Internet site...and I thank London, U.K. reader Tariq Khan for sharing it with us. The link is here.

GoldMoney founder and GATA consultant James Turk, whose 2001 commentary first posted at his Free Gold Money Report Internet site, "Behind Closed Doors" -- and republished at GATA's Internet site -- marshaled the evidence that the United States had swapped gold with the German Bundesbank for market-rigging purposes, told King World News yesterday that all the German gold vaulted abroad is gone, leased into the market, for 11 years.

The KWN blog...and James Turk's "Behind Closed Doors" essay about Germany's gold are both must reads. Both are embedded in this GATA release from yesterday...and the link is here.

This blog is with Citi analyst Tom Fitzpatrick...and it's headlined "What To Expect With Gold Assaulting $1,700 & Silver At $32". The audio interview is with Nigel Farage.

Almost 300 "concerned Netherlands citizens" have joined the German initiative for insight about the gold reserves.

In a petition the citizens committee demands "full openness on the quantity and storage location of the Netherlands' physical gold, and on the extent and nature of the gold claims."

In Germany a lot of uneasiness has risen about the quantity, value, and quality of the gold reserves, which have not been audited in many years at various storage locations. Led by the tabloid newspaper Bild, German news media are wondering whether the 3.4-million kilograms of ingots are really there (valued at about E150 billion).

The Netherlands faces similar uneasiness about the position of its gold treasure -- 612,000 kilograms with of a value of about E25 billion. The gold, in part located at De Nederlandse Bank in Amsterdam (about 10 percent), is also located at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, in Ottawa, and London.

The complete translation of this story from Dutch to English is posted on the gata.org Internet site...and the link is here.

Financial market provocateur Max Keiser, whose interview with Bundesbank officials in Frankfurt four years ago raised the issue of the foreign vaulting of most of the German gold reserve, revisits the newly controversial issue today on his program, "The Keiser Report," on the Russia Today network with his sidekick commentator, Stacy Herbert.

They discuss the German government auditors office's calls for an audit of the gold reserve and the possibility that the gold is, to put it nicely...oversubscribed. Keiser also interviews market analyst Dominic Frisby about the issue. GATA figures heavily in the discussion. It's 26 minutes long...and posted at the Russia Today Internet site. I thank Chris Powell for the headline...plus the two introductory paragraphs. The link is here...and it's well worth watching!

Brazil increased its gold reserves for the first time since December 2008 at a time when investors raised holdings in exchange-traded products to a record.

Brazil’s holdings expanded 1.7 tons last month to 35.3 tons, data on the International Monetary Fund’s website showed. Turkey’s holdings increased 6.8 tons and Ukraine added 0.3 ton. Brazil’s central bank doesn’t comment on the policy of its reserve composition, it said in an e-mail.

Central banks have been expanding reserves after the metal climbed the past 11 years and investors held a record tons in bullion-backed exchange-traded products this month, data compiled by Bloomberg show. Nations bought 254.2 tons in the first half of 2012 and may add close to 500 tons for the year, the London-based World Gold Council said in August.

I plucked this Bloomberg story out of a GATA release yesterday...and the link is here.

High above the cliff tops and the beach bars, up a winding mountain road, in a borrowed house on someone else's ranch, an unusual criminal is waiting for his fate.

His name is Bernard von NotHaus and he is a professed "monetary architect" and a maker of custom coins found guilty last spring of counterfeiting charges for minting and distributing a form of private money called the Liberty Dollar.

Described by some as "the Rosa Parks of the constitutional currency movement," Mr. von NotHaus managed over the last decade to get more than 60 million real dollars' worth of his precious metal-backed currency into circulation across the country -- so much, and with such deep penetration, that the prosecutor overseeing his case accused him of "domestic terrorism" for using them to undermine the government.

Of course, if you ask him what caused him to be living here in exile, waiting with the rabbits for his sentence to be rendered, he will give a different account of what occurred.

This essay showed up on The New York Times website on Wednesday...and it's another little something that I found in a GATA release yesterday. It's a must read for sure...and the link is here.

Reflecting on today's profile in The New York Times story posted above -- about Liberty Dollar founder (and now supposed terrorist and felon) Bernard von NotHaus -- the New York Sun has another telling observation:

"The case throws into sharp relief an astonishing irony -- that a man who issued money that has sharply appreciated in value, is facing the rest of his life in prison, while the officials who issue the official Federal Reserve notes...the value of which has, in four years, plunged in half...to less than a 1,750th of an ounce of gold, are walking around free."

The Sun's editorial is headlined "The Rosa Parks of the Dollar"...and is another must read in my opinion. I found 'all of the above' in another GATA release...and the link to this very short read, is here.

The Perth Mint has called in the Federal Police after being shown evidence that its gold bars are being counterfeited.

"There are some poor people out there who have gone and bought these products thinking they've got a bargain and have actually been ripped off," Ron Currie from the Perth Mint said.

At Wenzhou, in China's south east, a suspicious discovery is made after taking a tour of one factory that makes medals and badges - there are thousands of samples.

On the front is stamped "Perth Mint Australia", on the back are kangaroos - a close copy of the actual design used by the mint.

This story showed up on the au.new.yahoo.com Internet site on Monday...and the embedded video is worth watching as well. I thank Washington state reader S.A. for bringing it to our attention...and the link is here.

Silver demand in China, the world’s second-largest user, is set to jump as much as 10 percent next year to a record as investors look to preserve wealth, according to Beijing Antaike Information Development Co.

Consumption may climb to 7,700 metric tons after gaining 6 percent to 8 percent in 2012, Shi Heqing, an analyst at Beijing Antaike, said in an interview on Oct. 22. About 33 percent of the country’s demand comes from jewelry and coins, with the rest from industrial use in photography, solar and electrical appliances, according to Antaike, which has studied metals for two decades.

Investors in China are buying more silver as the second- largest economy slowed for a seventh quarter, the Shanghai Composite Index is heading for a third straight annual drop and property curbs are limiting prices. Silver climbed 15 percent this year and holdings by exchange traded funds gained 6.5 percent this year after touching 592 million ounces last week.

“Chinese investors want hard assets such as silver, especially when it’s cheaper than gold and requires less funding,” Shi said. “Many producers and investors have hoarded the precious metal in the form of ingots or unwrought silver.”

This Bloomberg story was filed from Beijing...and was posted on their Internet site very early on Thursday morning Mountain Daylight Time. It certainly falls into the must read category as well...and I thank Bill Busser for providing the last story in today's column. The link is here.