My first story today is from yesterday's edition of The New York Times...and is courtesy of reader Phil Barlett.

A drumbeat of disappointing data about consumer behavior, factory sales and weak hiring in recent weeks has prompted economists to ratchet down their 2011 economic forecasts to as little as half what they expected at the beginning of the year.

“The likelihood of a negative surprise is bigger than the likelihood of a positive surprise,” said Jerry A. Webman, chief economist at Oppenheimer Funds.

This is a 2-page read...and the link is here.

Bank of Italy Governor Mario Draghi was appointed as the next president of the European Central Bank, avoiding a delay that risked complicating the handling of the sovereign-debt crisis.

Draghi’s appointment was approved at a summit of European Union leaders in Brussels today, an EU spokesman said. The 63-year-old Italian will take over from Jean-Claude Trichet as the head of the Frankfurt-based ECB, beginning an eight-year term on Nov. 1st.

This is a short Matt Taibbi blog that's posted over at rollingstone.com...and the link is here.

Security forces opened fire as thousands of anti-government protesters took to Syria's streets in a weekly ritual of defiance and demands for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's ousting.

Activists said at least 15 people were killed and many more injured in demonstrations following Friday prayers.

People had barely come out of Ibn Affan Mosque in the Damascus suburb of Al Qusweh, chanting for a toppling of the regime when security forces, apparently without warning, opened fire on the crowd killing, six people and wounding 15, Mohammed Suliman, a human rights activist, told Al Jazeera.

This is a story posted over at aljazeera.com yesterday...and the 1:35 minute video clip imbedded in the article is worth looking at as well. I thank Roy Stephens for the story...and the link is here.

Jamil Saeb stared intently into the bluish light of his laptop screen, feverishly editing video as antigovernment chants rose up the hillside from the makeshift refugee camp on the valley floor below.

There have been few outside witnesses to the three-month popular uprising against the Assad family’s 40-year rule of Syria, which has unfolded behind a rolling Internet blackout and efforts to bar foreign journalists from the country. The world has depended largely on online videos of both protests and the government’s violent crackdown, which activists say has left more than 10,000 jailed and over 1,300 dead.

For many, their cameras started to roll at the dawn of the protest movement in mid-March. Mr. Saeb used to record protests and uploaded the video using a dial-up modem. That was until he lost Internet service several weeks ago when the government cut it off in Jisr al-Shoughour and the surrounding countryside, he said.

He and the others then moved to the border zone. Here, people are as likely to speak Turkish as Arabic, and cell phones are as likely to pick up a signal from Turkcell as from Syriatel, a telecom giant owned until recently by a cousin of President Bashar al-Assad, which cut off mobile Internet 3G service here weeks ago.

This very interesting New York Times story is one that I've been saving since last weekend...and it's another Roy Stephens offering. The link is here.

Central banks around the world have started buying gold and this tells the world they believe it has value and it is an important asset to back up their currencies and their economies, Michael Haynes, CEO American Precious Metals Exchange, told CNBC.

This short cnbc.com story was sent to me by Florida reader Donna Badach...and the link is here.

This is the opening Statement by U.S. Rep. Ron Paul, Committee on Financial Services, Subcommittee on Domestic Monetary Policy and Technology Hearing on HR 1495, the Gold Reserve Transparency Act...Thursday, June 23, 2011

Ron's speech is imbedded in a GATA release yesterday...and it's well worth the read. The link is here.

Along with Chris Powell's personal account of the above hearings that I posted yesterday, there are also two more stories on this important event. The link to the CNN story is here...and the report from the Mineweb is here. Both were posted as GATA releases yesterday...and both are must reads...especially the CNN story. It bears the headline "Ron Paul worries Fort Knox gold is gone".

On Friday, Business Insider reported a remark apparently made by bond trader Bill Gross of Pimco suggesting realization that market intervention, by or under the influence of government to suppress inflation indicators, extends to silver.

I stole this preamble from a GATA release yesterday...but the first one through the door with this story was reader 'David in California'...and the link to this very short item is here.

Panel makers consume about 11 percent of the world’s supply of silver, the material in solar cells that conducts electricity. The metal has appreciated 74 percent to $35.30 a troy ounce on average so far this year from $20.24 last year.

Prices for solar cells have dropped about 27 percent this year and would be even lower if each panel didn’t require about 20 grams of silver, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance.

Roy Stephens sent me this must read Bloomberg story yesterday...and the link is here.

Eric King sent me this [and the interview below] in the wee hours of this morning. I haven't had a chance to listen to either one, but I'm sure both are worth your time. The link to the Ben Davies interview is here.

As you know, anytime Jim Rickards is talking...I'm listening. And, as I said yesterday, I'm looking forward to meeting him at the GATA Conference in London during the first week of August. The link to the interview is here.

Here's a James Turk offering posted over at his goldmoney.com website.

Sir Isaac Newton invented the gold standard circa 1700. The gold standard undoubtedly ranks as one of his greatest achievements given that it became the backbone of the British Empire.

The pound was “as good as gold”, as the saying went, and the pound banknote was accepted around the globe as a substitute for gold itself – but not always. The paper-pound was willingly accepted until there was a banking or financial crisis, which meant the quality of the currency and the reliability of banks became questioned.

At those moments – which occurred with surprising frequency – there was a rush to gold because of its safe haven attributes.

This is an excellent read...and I thank reader 'Charleston Voice' for sharing it with us...and the link is here.

Gold may gain as concern about Europe's debt woes and sustained record-low interest rates in the U.S. spur demand for the metal as an alternative investment, a survey found.

Twelve of 16 traders, investors and analysts surveyed by Bloomberg, or 75 percent, said bullion will rise next week. Two predicted lower prices and two were neutral.

Well, dear reader, the gold [and silver] prices will rise as soon as JPMorgan is through doing what it's doing...and not one minute before. The Greek crisis didn't matter one iota when the 'drive by shooting' occurred on May 1st...and JPMorgan's high frequency traders did the dirty late Sunday night on that date.

Interest rates don't matter, the dollars machinations don't matter...and neither does the price of tea of China. It only matters what JPMorgan et al are up to...and if they are on the short side of the trade during the next rally. If it wasn't for them, gold and silver prices would have gone to the moon years ago.

I thank Roy Stephens for this Bloomberg piece...and the link is here.

This is your long read of the day...and it was sent to me by reader U.D. earlier this week.

It's a piece by PFP Wealth Management out of London...and it was posted on their website on June 20th. Here's a snippet...

"The inflationary resolution is impossible within the Euro zone, in no small part because the Bundesbank rightly nurses the collective German race memory of hyperinflation nearly a century ago. So painful debt deflation mixed with the inconsistent application of austerity, spiced with the sporadic threat of outright default, seems to lie ahead for Europe. The US, on the other hand, seems more interested in the inflationary outcome, if monetary and currency policy (if any) are any judge. Hardly an auspicious investment landscape for the bulls."

This 5-page commentary is a must read from one end to the other...and the link is here.

This last item of the day has nothing to do with gold, silver...or finance of any kind...but it's a topic that's near and dear to my heart.

I used to work for NASA at the rocket range in Churchill, Manitoba back in the late 1960s...and this is the sort of high-altitude research we were doing at the time. As a radio operator in those days, what was going on with the sun determined how well we could communicate with the outside world when I was living in the High Arctic. When the sun was acting up, our communication system just sat their useless for days on end...except for line-of-site VHF.

This story is one that I found posted over at spaceweather.com...an Internet site I visit daily. It's an extremely interesting read [at least it was for me] and the link is here.