I had several readers sent me photos of the aftereffects of the super storm...but the ones that were in posted on the dailymail.co.uk Internet site yesterday were the best. I thank Australian reader Nick Laird for sending me these photos that were posted in a British newspaper of the disaster in New York. The World Wide Web is an amazing place! The link is here.

S&P lowered the country's rating to B- from B, deep into junk bond territory, and appended a negative outlook on the rating, a warning that another rating cut could come within a year if conditions in the Argentine economy worsen.

S&P said the New York appeals court ruling against Buenos Aires on the treatment of some of its debt, along with other recent debt-related actions by the Argentine government, "highlight the increasing challenges the government will likely continue to face to design its economic and debt management policy".

The agency also said it thought policies put in place since the October 2011 presidential election "could, over time, increase the risk of a deterioration in the country's macroeconomic framework, put pressure on its external liquidity, and weaken its medium-term growth prospects".

Another bond default is obviously in Argentina's future somewhere. I thank Roy Stephens for sending it. It's from the telegraph.co.uk Internet site...this one posted very late yesterday evening GMT...and the link is here.

UBS bankers in London were turned away from their offices on Tuesday and handed a letter putting them on "special leave", just hours after the Swiss bank unveiled a radical restructuring to axe 10,000 jobs.

It was only when the UBS bankers had their passes refused that they realised they could be out of a job. Instead of being allowed into the bank’s City headquarters the traders were whisked to special offices on the fourth floor where they were handed an envelope containing details of the redundancy process.

“They said we would be getting two weeks paid leave and then we will be told what is to happen. I expect we’ll just get a call from human resources or lawyers telling us how much we are worth. We won’t be able to talk to our bosses.”

This story was posted on the telegraph.co.uk Internet site early yesterday evening GMT...and I thank Donald Sinclair for sliding it into my in-box just minutes before I hit the 'send' button on today's column. It's a must read in my opinion...and the link is here.

The economy, which only emerged from the last recession at the end of 2010, has now contracted for five straight quarters, data from the National Statistics Institute showed on Tuesday.

The downturn has had a devastating impact on the job market where the unemployment rate hit a new high of 25.1pc between July and September.

The fall in output in the three months to the end of September was slightly less than the central bank's estimate last week of a 0.4pc contraction, though Estefania Ponte at Cortal Consors said that any suggestion that that marked an upturn was "a mirage".

"It does not mean the economy is doing better, but only shows the families have brought forward purchases ahead of the VAT [Value Added Tax - Ed] hike," she added.

This story was posted on the telegraph.co.uk Internet site yesterday morning GMT...and I thank Roy Stephens for his second story in a row. The link is here.

It rained blue paper in the Hungarian parliament in Budapest on Monday evening, when members of the green liberal party Politics Can Be Different (LMP) threw slips of paper at the government benches in a reference to the infamous "blue-ballot" rigged elections of August 1947. Back then, activists from the Hungarian Communist Party (MKP) exploited a system of blue chits to travel round casting votes in dozens of different places, allowing the MKP to gain a majority.

The Hungarian opposition fears a similar fraud might occur under Viktor Orbán's ultra-conservative nationalist government. His ruling Fidesz party (Alliance of Young Democrats) used its two-thirds majority in parliament to amend the constitution to allow citizens to vote in elections only if they register in advance either in person or electronically.

Opposition parties and activists see the move as an attempt to keep poorer voters who are unlikely to be Fidesz supporters away from the ballot boxes. They also accuse the government of paving the way for election fraud.

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

President Francois Hollande is pushing through legislation to increase taxes on beer by 160pc to help fund struggling social programmes as France tries to contain a budget deficit hit hard by the economic crisis.

The tax would affect local brews and the 30pc of imported beer the French drink, AP reported.

The change means the price of a beer will increase by about 20pc in bars and supermarkets, said Jacqueline Lariven, spokeswoman for the French brewer's federation Brasseurs de France.

The Brewers of Europe trade group called the measure a "kick in the teeth", especially since brewers have seen beer production plummet by 6pc and consumption by 8pc in the EU since the region's economic crisis began in 2008.

This is Roy's fourth story in a row in today's column. It was posted on The Telegraph's website early yesterday evening GMT...and the link is here.

India’s central bank resisted calls from Finance Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram for lower interest rates, prompting him to say the government will revive economic expansion by itself if necessary.

Governor Duvvuri Subbarao kept the repurchase rate at 8 percent to damp price increases, while reducing the cash reserve ratio to 4.25 percent from 4.5 percent to support lending, the Reserve Bank of India said in Mumbai yesterday. Borrowing costs have remained unchanged since a 50 basis-point cut in April.

Chidambaram called for cheaper credit earlier this month to back a government push to spur growth, and pledged on Oct. 29 to contain the budget deficit as officials try to increase scope for a rate cut. While the monetary authority signaled it may ease policy in January-to-March as inflation cools, the finance minister said boosting the economy is already a key task.

“Growth is as much a challenge as inflation,” Chidambaram told reporters in New Delhi after the Reserve Bank’s decision. “If government has to walk alone to face the challenge of growth, then we’ll walk alone.”

This Bloomberg story, filed from Mumbai and New Delhi, was posted on their website during the lunch hour Mountain time yesterday...and I thank West Virginia reader Elliot Simon for sharing it with us. The link is here.

The Hong Kong Monetary Authority sold its own currency for the fifth time in less than two weeks to preserve a 29-year-old peg to the U.S. dollar.

The central bank added HK$2.71 billion ($350 million) to the banking system in Hong Kong yesterday as the currency reached the upper limit of its trading band, according to a spokeswoman for the HKMA, who declined to be identified because of her organization’s policy. That followed a $603 million intervention on Oct. 19, the first time since 2009, and a combined $1.25 billion on Oct. 23.

Funds are flowing into Hong Kong after the U.S., Europe and Japan introduced policies to stimulate their economies and data signal China’s growth slowdown is abating. Last month, the Federal Reserve unveiled a third round of quantitative easing and Europe announced bond-buying plans, spurring capital inflows into emerging markets. The Bank of Japan (8301) expanded its asset- purchase program for the second time in two months yesterday.

The HKMA said it expects net inflows into the currency will continue “for a period of time,” according to an e-mailed statement yesterday. “We will remain closely vigilant of the situation and to maintain the exchange rate stability in accordance with the currency board mechanism,” it said.

This Bloomberg story was filed from Hong Kong on Monday...and was posted on their website late last night Mountain time. It's Elliot Simon's second story in a row...and the link is here.

Ms Gillard has committed to 25 far-reaching goals over the next 13 years designed to tighten links with Asia and ensure that Australians are able to exploit the region's "staggering" growth.

The measures, outlined in a report by a government-appointed taskforce, include offering thousands of scholarships to Asian students, new diplomatic posts across the region and requiring that a third of all company directors and senior civil servants have a "deep knowledge" of Asia. In addition, every schoolchild will be able to learn one of four "priority" languages: Chinese, Hindi, Japanese and Indonesian.

Ms Gillard said the "unstoppable" rise of Asia and its massive new urban middle class was "a transformation as profound as any that have defined Australia throughout our history".

This story showed up on The Telegraph's website early on Monday morning GMT...and I thank Federico Schiavio for sending it our way. The link is here.

The first is with James Turk...and it's headlined "2nd time Germany's Gold has Gone Missing from the Fed". Next is Richard Russell...and it bears the title "Big News for Silver, But a Frankenstorm in Stocks". And lastly is the blog with John Hathaway and Bill Haines that's entitled "Is this the Black Swan that will make Gold Skyrocket". The audio interview is with James Turk.

Peter Grant, market analyst for Centennial Precious Metals in Denver, notes the production and supply constraints for gold that are likely to support the gold price. Perhaps his most fascinating detail comes when he quotes geopolitical analyst Jim Rickards as saying that China, which is commandeering the entire production of domestic gold mines, is buying gold mines in Western Australia "faster than lawyers can write the contracts."

I thank Chris Powell for the headline...and the above paragraph of introduction. Grant's commentary is headlined "Supply Issues Offer Additional Underpinnings to Gold" and it's posted at Centennial's Internet site, USAGold.com, here.

Jim Sinclair tonight dismisses concerns about gold confiscation and makes an important point about the confiscation undertaken by the U.S. government in 1933. Sinclair writes:

"In the 1930s gold was to the monetary system what 'quantitative easing' is today -- a means of increasing the supply of money for Federal Reserve and Treasury Department discretionary use. The secretary of the treasury and President Roosevelt set the gold price higher arbitrarily at their daily breakfast -- higher because, to create money then, the system required a higher value of gold to have more money outstanding. This is why Roosevelt ordered the confiscation of gold -- to unfold his type of monetary stimulation, his QE. This is what confiscationphiles simply do not know."

There's lots more reading...and links...in this GATA release from late last night. It's posted on the gata.org Internet site...and the link to all this, is here.

In the commentary appended here, the German magazine Der Spiegel snickered a lot about concerns for the security of Germany's gold reserves vaulted abroad without ever posing the crucial questions:

1) Does the Bundesbank have gold swap arrangements with any agency of the United States government or any other government?

2) Have such gold swap arrangements ever been implemented and, if so, how and why?

3) Exactly what are the "strategic activities" facilitated by the Bundesbank's placement of the German gold reserves abroad, "strategic activities" admitted by the Bundesbank to GATA consultant Rob Kirby in August 2009 and to the German journalist Lars Schall in December 2010?

The link to the spiegel.de story is embedded in this GATA release from yesterday...and I thank Roy Stephens for bringing it to our attention. It's well worth reading...and the link is here.