Golden Minerals Company

CEO Vikram Pandit, speaking at the Goldman Sachs Financial Services Conference, said the bank would record a $400 million charge in the quarter for severance and other expenses related to the layoffs.

The cuts are equal to about 2 percent of Citi's workforce of 267,000 employees at the end of third quarter 2011.

Pandit said the cuts would be completed over "the next few quarters" and would come from a range of businesses.

Citi joins other banks worldwide that have cut more than 120,000 jobs as regulations have imposed tighter industry rules and the economy remains weak.

This Reuters story was posted early Tuesday evening...and it's an article that I borrowed from yesterday's King Report. The link is here.

Jim Rogers is bearish...and is short just about everything except commodities...which he holds big long positions in. He speaks the obvious when he says that you can't borrow your way out of debt. Gold and silver are his favourites...but silver comes out number one!

This 6:26 CNBC video is courtesy of Nitin Agrawal...and it's posted over at youtube.com. It's well worth watching...and the link is here.

If you think that running together Europe’s old rescue fund (EFSF) with the new one (ESM) to double firepower to €880bn is a reassuring move – as some analysts apparently do – you should have your head examined.

The idea of combining the two is an admission that attempts to leverage the fund to €1 trillion plus have essentially failed. The clever ruse by German finance minister Wolfgang Schauble to circumvent the €211bn limit on guarantees imposed by the Bundestag has run into investor scorn.

That Bundestag ceiling remains – and those of us who watched the debate know how emotional it was – so how on earth can Germany’s share be bumped up in this fashion to over €400bn? No wonder a "senior German official" has rubbished the plan today in irate language.

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard's contempt is more than obvious in this rant in yesterday's edition of The Telegraph. It's Roy Stephens first offering of the day...and the link is here.

On paper the idea looks great: a fully-loaded €940bn fund created by a powerful combination of the impressively named European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) and the European Stability Mechanism (ESM)...and there could be additional backing from International Monetary Fund (IMF) to boot.

Wunderbar! Magnifique! This is the “comprehensive” plan we’ve been waiting for.

Except that’s the point: it’s still only a plan. And, even by eurozone standards, a very sketchy one. The idea was circulated yesterday in a paper by the Herman Van Rompuy, president of Europe. It has key flaws.

First off, it’s Van Rompuy’s proposal, not Germany or France’s. Van Rompuy is a bit like the bail-out funds - impressively titled and important, but lacking real power.

LOL!!! A better description of Van Rompuy I have not seen anywhere...and I'm sure that Nigel Farage would agree! This is another story that showed up in The Telegraph yesterday...and I thank Roy Stephens once again for sending it along...and the link is here.

European Union leaders will be gathering in Brussels today and tomorrow for one of the most anticipated EU summits ever. Some say that the very survival of the common currency is at stake. But even as Germany's Angela Merkel will be focused on stricter budget rules, several other proposals are also on the table. Spiegel Online provides an overview.

[But] as the summit approaches, however, that scenario is looking increasingly optimistic. Some might say naïve. Indeed, with Standard & Poor's raising the specter of a downgrade for 15 of 17 euro-zone countries along with the euro backstop fund, the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF), the pressure is greater than ever to push through a package of measures that will deeply impress investors.

This very long read was posted over at the German website spiegel.de yesterday...and is Roy Stephens third offering in a row. The link is here.

The Bank of France faces surging debts to Germany's Bundesbank and fellow central banks in the EMU system as foreign investors pull large sums out of French accounts.

French lenders lost €100bn (£86bn) in short-term deposits in September alone, mostly due to precautionary moves by US money market funds and Asian investors afraid of France's exposure to Italy. "There were huge net capital outflows," said Eric Dor from the IESEG School of Management in Lille.

Liabilities jumped suddenly in late July, rising from €10bn to €98bn by September. Ireland's central bank owes €118bn, Spain's €108bn and Italy's €89bn. Mr. Dor said there had been an exodus from distressed states into German, Dutch and Luxembourg banks.

This story was filed late Tuesday night in The Telegraph...and is another story that I borrowed from yesterday's King Report. The link is here.

Pity the European bond trader.

Once the master of a booming euro zone universe spanning Greece, Italy and Germany, he now presides over a shrunken, fear-struck bond market — and might well lose his job by the end of the year.

Panic that the default of a euro zone economy might lead to a crackup of the monetary union has turned European bonds, once freely traded and viewed as risk-free, into semi-poisonous hot potatoes that in some cases trade only by appointment.

This story, posted in yesterday's edition of The New York Times, was sent to me by reader Phil Barlett...and is your first must read of the day. The link is here.

It seems that popular anger at the banker minority will no longer be confined to tent-based vigils in public parks. In Germany, someone just escalated a bit, to quite a bit. The irony, in this case, is that the package was addressed from the ECB. If it weren't for a potentially sensitive topic, the amusing implications could be severe.

An abbreviated version of this Reuters story is posted over at zerohedge.com...and I thank Australian reader Wesley Legrand for sharing it with us. The link is here.

GoldMoney founder and GATA consultant James Turk told King World News yesterday that the European banking system nearly collapsed last week under the weight of withdrawals, that national over-indebtedness is always followed by currency devaluation, and that gold and silver still seem to him to be poised for a breakout.

This is part of the introduction that Chris Powell wrote for this blog that's posted in this GATA release...and I'll leave the rest to him. The link to this must read is here.

Proving once again that when it comes to fudging numbers, Japan (which previously was best known for changing the minimum legal radiation absorption dose on a daily basis following the Fukushima disaster, anyone remember that?) is leaps and bounds ahead of even China and the US.

This short one-paragraph read is posted over at zerohedge.com...and is another offering from Wesley Legrand. The link is here.

Interviewed this week by MineWeb's Geoff Candy, Hinde Capital CEO Ben Davies talks about central bank intervention in the gold market and gold's re-establishment as money, preferably trading freely rather than as part of a gold standard. Audio as well as text of the interview are posted.

I borrowed this story and the short introduction from a GATA release that Chris posted late last night. I haven't had the time to listen to it yet, but it's probably worth your while...and the link is here.

"'It's hard to understand,' said one New York-based bullion banker."

No, it's not hard at all to understand in the context of the need of governments, central banks, bullion banks, and commercial banks to suppress the gold price during a crisis.

This story was posted in the Financial Times yesterday...and is posted in the clear in this GATA release. It's a must read...and the link is here.

It has been a while since the Marc Faber graced Zero Hedge. It is time to remedy that. Providing his traditional dose of snark, tragedy and realism, the Gloom, Boom and Doom report author spoke to Bloomberg TV, and when asked what his outlook for the euro is, dispensed the following pearl: "I have a very special stock tip for you. The symbol is g-o-l-d. That is what I prefer to hold.

This 7:17 interview is imbedded in this zerohedge.com story...and is Wesley Legrand's final offering in today's column, for which I thank him. It's well worth your time...and the link is here.

Reader EWF sent me this excellent COT work he did in silver. Fuller says that..."I read your column every day and it's great. I thought you might be interested in the 8 COT charts I created to supplement Ted Butler's analysis."

I was.

"Multiyear extremes matter when it comes to the Commitments of Traders report. We look for extreme levels of bullishness or bearishness across all three classes of traders. The most bullish COT configuration occurs when the commercials are bullish and the speculators are bearish. This is currently the case in silver." - EWF

This analysis is for the last COT report...for positions held as of Tuesday, November 29th. This is certainly worth a few minutes of your time...and it's posted over at his website ewfresearch.com. The link is here.

I posted the Hathaway blog in this column yesterday...and Eric slid the now-edited audio version into my in-box late last night. The link is here.

A curious library caretaker in the Bavarian city of Passau has discovered a treasure trove of ancient silver coins and medals that went overlooked for more than two centuries. The surprise find is reportedly worth as much as six figures.

Janitor Tanja Höls had often passed by an unassuming wooden box stowed away in an archive in Passau's historic state library, but it wasn't until about two weeks ago that curiosity got the best of her and she was decided take a look inside.

What she found were dozens of coins, most of them made of silver. "I had no idea that I'd found a treasure," the 43-year-old told the German news agency DAPD on Wednesday. But when she told the head of the library in the Bavarian city what she had seen, he soon realized their value.

This story was posted over at spiegel.de yesterday...and I thank Roy Stephens for sharing it with us. The gallery of nine photos is worth the trip all by itself. It's a very interesting read...and the link is here.

Financial letter writer Ron Hera interviewed Hugo Salinas Price, president of the Mexican Civic Association for Silver and a speaker at GATA's Gold Rush 2011 conference in London in August, about his plan for remonetizing the silver ounce Libertad coin in Mexico and the plan's prospects in Mexico's Congress.

I stole the above introductory paragraph from a GATA release...and I thank reader Matthew Nel for being the first one through the door with this story yesterday. The interview is headlined "Hugo Salinas Price: What Every Politician Needs to Know about Silver" and it's posted over at the silverseek.com website...and the link is here.

Nick Barisheff, CEO at Bullion Management Group Inc. sees the paper markets creating opportunities for precious metals investors. Nick also believes that $10,000 gold is coming sooner than you think.

Nick has focused on the world of precious metals and the advantages of investing in gold, silver, and platinum bullion for the past decade.

This 25-minute audio interview was done with Jim Puplava about ten days ago. It's posted over at his financialsense.com website...and the link is here.

Eric Sprott was interviewed on the CTV network here in Canada earlier this week...and it was all about gold. In the interview, Eric mentioned that Canada sold all its gold about ten years ago. In actual fact it was way before then, as it started when Brian Mulroney was the Prime Minister of Canada, Margaret Thatcher was the Prime Minister of England...and Ronald Reagan was in the White House.

This must watch 4:52 video arrived in my in-box in the wee hours of this morning...and I thank reader 'Rocky R' for sending it along. The link to the youtube.com video is here.

I received this zerohedge.com piece just before midnight last night courtesy of Nick Laird.

It's very long, very involved...and, if true, the word "Apocalyptic" would certainly apply.

This is a monster read...and don't be surprised if you can't quite grasp it all, as I couldn't either. But I don't think it's the parts that you don't understand that will scare the hell out of you. I would think that we'll find out in pretty short order if any or all of this is true.

As I said, it's a zerohedge.com posting...and the link is here.