Golden Minerals Company

The German parliament has voted in favor of the controversial leveraging of the euro rescue fund by a large majority, with 503 out of 596 members of parliament backing the motion, 89 opposing it and four abstaining. The outcome is expected to strengthen Chancellor Angela Merkel at a summit on the debt crisis in Brussels on Wednesday night.

The leveraging, intended to boost the firepower of the €440 billion rescue fund, is part of a package of measures designed to tackle the debt crisis and protect the single currency. Other steps are expected to include a Greek debt cut of up to 60 percent and a plan to recapitalize European banks to shield them from the resulting write-downs of their bond holdings.

This Roy Stephens offering was posted at the German website spiegel.de yesterday...and the link is here.

Alone among EU leaders, Chancellor Angela Merkel went to last night's summit in Brussels with an iron-clad mandate. It is a remarkable moment. Never before – to my knowledge – has a national parliament demanded and held a prior vote on an EU summit accord.

Had this principle been established a long time ago, we might have avoided much of the relentless Treaty creep and EU aggrandizement advanced by secret deals at the Bâtiment Justus Lipsius. Thank you Germany.

Thank you too, judges of the Verfassungsgericht, for giving the Bundestag a veto on EU encroachments on fiscal sovereignty. The court is seemingly the only tribunal willing and able to defend the liberties of European citizens against EU over-reach, and is therefore my supreme court too even as a British citizen.

This story from The Telegraph yesterday is another Roy Stephens offering...and the link is here.

EU leaders are anxiously awaiting the verdict of the financial markets after the latest attempt to solve the euro crisis reached deadlock.

Crucial talks with private creditors over the losses they would take on Greek government bonds ran into a roadblock after a second euro summit in four days had earlier endorsed plans to recapitalise Europe's weaker banks by €106.5bn.

Proposals to increase the €440bn bailout fund's firepower "several fold" or closer to €1trn according to a draft statement, were also put on hold.

The man leading the Greek "haircut" talks on behalf of the banks and insurance companies, Charles Dellara of the Institute for International Finance (IIF), said there was "no agreement on any element of a deal," raising the threat of a default by Greece. The banks have offered to accept write-downs of 40% but the EU, led by German chancellor Angela Merkel, insists on at least 50% – and perhaps up to 60%.

This story was posted very late last night in The Guardian...and I thank Roy Stephens for sending it along. The link is here.

The world's biggest banks have threatened to disrupt Europe’s plan for Greece to default on its debt, a move which raises the stakes as EU leaders seek a deal tonight to settle the sovereign debt crisis.

With only hours to go before the leaders gather for an emergency summit, the banks have warned that they will not go along with Europe’s proposal for a “voluntary” initiative to write off “60 per cent or more” of Greece’s national debt.

This story showed up in the Irish Times yesterday...and I thank Roy once again for sharing this story with us. The link is here.

Italian deputies exchanged blows in parliament today as tensions over a tough economic reform programme came to a head.

At least two deputies from the Northern League, a member of the ruling centre-right coalition, fought with members from the opposition FLI party of speaker Gianfranco Fini. Two deputies grabbed each other by the throat as other parliamentarians rushed to separate them.

The parliamentary sitting was suspended for several minutes after the fight, which broke out because of sarcastic remarks on television by Fini alleging that the wife of League leader Umberto Bossi had retired at 39.

This is another Roy Stephens offering...and another story from the Irish Times yesterday. The link is here.

European leaders, in a significant step toward resolving the euro zone financial crisis, early Thursday morning obtained an agreement from banks to take a 50 percent loss on the face value of their Greek debt.

The accord was reached just before 4 a.m. after difficult bargaining. The severe reduction would bring Greek debt down by 2020 to 120 percent of that nation’s gross domestic product, a figure still enormous but more sustainable for an economy driven into recession by austerity measures.

The leaders agreed on Wednesday on a plan to force the Continent’s banks to raise new capital to insulate them from potential sovereign debt defaults. But there was little detail on how the Europeans would enlarge their bailout fund to achieve their goal of $1.4 trillion to better protect Italy and Spain.

This New York Times story was posted just before midnight Eastern time. This is the news that will greet the markets when they open both in Europe and North America. It's another article courtesy of Roy Stephens...and the link is here.

The author of the Gloom, Boom & Doom newsletter, in a CNBC interview, said "money-printing" central banks such as the US Federal Reserve will keep prices elevated for risky assets like stocks.

"When you print money everything goes up at different times, different asset classes," Faber said in a live interview. "I think that stocks may still continue to go up, and I would rather own equities than government bonds for the next 10 years."

Printing money is the way global governments will evade debt crises such as the one that is gripping Europe now, he said.

Besides the text, there are a couple of very worthwhile video interviews as well. I thank Nitin Agrawal for sending this cnbc.com story our way...and the link is here.

Investors in India appear to be moving out of cash and into gold and silver. As poorly performing equities hit valuations, analysts and traders insist there is an acceleration in the investing community to asset switch into precious metals.

Traders said revival of buying by stockists and jewellers at existing lower levels was meant to meet seasonal demand and the festival of lights coming up next week, while reports of a firming trend in the Asian region had mainly pushed up both gold and silver prices.

``People feel more safe investing in bullion, which might not be that rocky as compared to stocks,'' said Pradeep Jumla, bullion trader with an investment firm here.

This story was filed from Mumbai last Friday...and is posted over at the mineweb.com website. This is Roy Stephens last offering of the day...and the link is here.

“I make it very clear I’m in gold & silver. I was just primarily in gold and now I’m hedging with silver. I’ve been following gold since 1978 on a daily basis. I remember very well that collapse of gold in 1980 and this is nothing like it. This is not a collapse as I see it, this is not a bubble that’s bursting. A number of things were different back then from what is happening now...this is a global game."

Eric sent me this King World News blog yesterday morning...and the link is here.

This is a very interesting posting that was included in yesterday's edition of Casey Daily Dispatch. Jeff relays a conversation that took place between a friend's son and himself. This is very much worth the read...and I hope you get the point that Jeff is making. The link is here.

Industrialist Hugo Salinas Price, president of the Mexican Civic Association for Silver, told King World News yesterday that there is extensive support in the Mexican Congress for remonetizing silver but that several congressional leaders doing the bidding of the Mexican central bank...and are blocking the legislation.

Salinas Price also suspects that the regime of the Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi was overthrown by Western powers because he was contemplating an African currency backed by gold. An excerpt from the interview is posted at the King World News website...and is an absolute must read. I thank Chris Powell for writing this introduction on my behalf...and the link is here.

During the Babylonian reign of King Nebuchadnezzar, 2,500 years ago, an ounce of gold (it is said) purchased 350 loaves of bread. The same ounce of gold still bought 350 loaves (at $2 a loaf) in the 1980s (when gold sold for $700 an ounce).

This is superficially interesting but, by itself, means little. What about every other product in the Babylonian supermarket? As a matter of fact, an ounce of gold today does buy 800 loaves (at $2 a loaf). This is a better performance than paper. In 1900 one dollar bought 14 loaves of bread; in 2010, it bought 16 slices from one 20-slice loaf.

This most excellent story was in Canada's Globe and Mail newspaper on Tuesday...and I borrowed it from a GATA release yesterday. It, too, is a must read...and the link is here.

The gold market is now consolidating following its stunning two-month US$400-an-ounce rally that started at the beginning of July.

This consolidation is to be expect. In fact, it's healthy.

Yet, some of he price action is so remarkable counterintuitive that there's little doubt that the western central banks are intervening as conditions on the global economic and financial front continue to deteriorate at an alarming rate.

This story was printed in the October edition of Investor's Digest of Canada...and is posted over at the sprott.com website. I thank Australian reader Wesley Legrand for bringing it to my attention. It's another must read, or course...and the link is here.