I have a couple of days worth of stories for you in this column today... and you can pick and chose whatever is of interest to you.

The European debt crisis is now going viral. With Ireland now a ward of the IMF for generations to come, the contagion has spread to two other members of the PIIGS family. Here's a story from The Telegraph that Roy Stephens sent along that's headlined "Spain and Portugal under fire as bond spreads hit record". The link is here.

Roy has another story on the Euro crisis... this one being specific to only one country... Portugal. It's a piece out of Wednesday's issue of the German website spiegel.de... and it's headlined "Unions Shut Down Portugal Over Planned Cuts". The link is here.

Here's a Bloomberg story from reader Wesley Legrand. The cost of protecting against defaults on senior notes of European banks is soaring on speculation bondholders will be forced to take losses as governments try to share the burden of taxpayer-funded bailouts. The headline reads "Swaps Soar on 'Sacrosanct' Senior Europe Debt: Credit Markets"... and the link is here.

Reader 'David in California' has three offerings for us today. The first is this zerohedge.com piece that's headlined "It's Official: There Is Not Enough Money To Bail Out Spain". It's a bit of read... but the graph at the end of the story is worth trip... and the link is here.

But into this European madness steps a voice of reason that cuts to the chase of what is really going on. That voice of truth belongs to Nigel Farage... a British politician and leader of the UK Independence Party... and a current Member of the European Parliament. His speech runs about three and a half minutes, but in it, he rips European Union president Van Rompuy [and all his 'wannabe globalist fascist' friends] a new one. This speech occurred at the end of October, but could just has well been given yesterday. I thank reader 'David in California' for sharing this must watch youtube.com video with us... and the link is here.

On an entirely different topic, the next offering for you today is this GATA release from yesterday which Chris Powell headlined "China and Russia Drop the Dollar in Bilateral Trade". It's an item posted yesterday over at the chinadaily.com.cn website... and the link is here.

While on the subject of Russia, here's another story from the German website spiegel.de. This one's courtesy of Roy Stephens and bears the headline "From Lisbon to Vladivostok: Putin Envisions a Russia-EU Free Trade Zone". It's a 2-minute read... and the link is here.

Eric King over at King World News has a short blog posted that features John Williams of shadowstats.com fame. The headline is spot on... "Solvency Crisis in the Banking System". This is, as James Turk has pointed out many times in the past, is not a banking system liquidity problem... it's a banking system solvency problem. That's what John Williams talks about here. The blog is very much worth your time... and the link is here.

I have lots of precious metals-related stories for you today.

The first item comes from legendary market analyst Mark Hulbert. It's a piece that was posted over at the marketwatch.com website... and is headlined "Juniors vs. seniors: Secondary gold-mining companies have been trouncing the majors". Hulbert comments that despite the cries from many pundits that the gold market has got ahead of itself recently... "if you were avoiding the gold market right now out of concern that it’s overheated, you may want to rethink your reticence." Amen to that! I thank reader U.D. for sending me this story... and the link is here.

'David in California' provides the next gold-related story. It's a Reuters piece from Hanoi that's posted over at malaysia.news.yahoo.com... and the headline reads "More gold imports may pressure Vietnam's currency". Several months ago, all gold imports into the country were halted, but Vietnam's central bank has granted more quotas to import gold by year-end, in a bid to cool domestic gold prices, as inflation is becoming a serious problem over there. Along with inflation, gold smuggling was on the rise as well. The story doesn't mention what weight of gold is involved, but I'm sure we'll find out as time passes... and the link to the story is here.

Here's a very interesting Bloomberg piece that I found embedded in a GATA release yesterday. The headline is an eye-opener... "PBOC Researcher Calls on U.S. to Sell Gold, People's Daily Says". The first paragraph reads as follows... "The U.S. should cut its government spending and sell some gold reserves to balance its budget and fund its recovery, the People's Daily overseas edition reported, citing Xia Bin, an adviser to the People’s Bank of China." The shoe is certainly on the other foot, now... and the link to this very short story is here.

Here's another story that ended up as a GATA release yesterday. It's from yesterday's edition of The New York Times that's headlined "Gold Fever: Pondering the Causes". The piece runs about two pages... and the link is here.

The next item is your very heavy reading for the day. It's written by my friend Reg Howe... a name that strikes fear in the hearts of the top brass at Kinross. It's his commentary on the latest gold and silver derivatives report. I don't completely understand everything in this report... so don't be discouraged if he loses you in quite a few places... and the graphs don't help much either. The GATA headline reads "Reg Howe: Three years of contraction and concentration in gold derivatives". Chris Powell's preamble to the story may help you understand more of what Reg has written... and the link is here.

Here's a King World News blog with Sprott Asset Management's John Embry. It's embedded in a GATA release with an excellent preamble by Chris Powell, which is also worth the read... and the link to the blog... headlined "Embry expects a mania in precious metal mining shares"... is here.

Here's another King World News blog that Eric slid into my in-box late last night. It's an interview with former founder and CEO of Goldcorp, Rob McEwen. Rob is currently chairman and CEO of US Gold. The headline reads "Rob McEwen - Gold Mania, Then a Re-Writing of the System". The link is here.

Lastly today, silver analyst Ted Butler has another commentary published in the public domain... and I'm just going to steal Chris Powell's preamble from his GATA dispatch late on Wednesday. "James Cook, proprietor of Investment Rarities, has done a comprehensive interview about silver market manipulation with the dean of silver market analysts, Ted Butler, whose long campaign against the manipulation has begun to bear fruit. The interview has been posted over at silverseek.com... and is headlined 'Interview with Theodore Butler'." The link to this must read interview is here.