The theme: Repent. Haunting images of fanatical serial killers warning, “The End is Near, Repent!” That message seared my brain as the “Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse” rode into “Dexter’s” dark world, the Miami Metro Police cable TV series. Now duty calls Dexter, CSI blood splatter expert by day, serial avenger by night.

Yes, the Four Horsemen, again. The perfect biblical metaphor for today’s bizarre world, where irrational ideologies prey on us, driving America deep into a dark world we’ve seen before: Goethe’s Faust, Dorian Gray, Dante’s Inferno.

Yes folks, I am mad as hell. The America I believed in when I volunteered for the Marine Corps, went to Korea, that America has been hijacked by an irrational, dark force that’s consuming our political system. We saw this coming a few years ago reviewing Jack Bogle’s warnings in “The Battle for the Soul of Capitalism.” Buffett called that one: “There’s class warfare, all right. But it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.”

Today that toxic mind-set is a metaphor visible everywhere, in images like Dexter’s Four Horsemen, visions of America descending into a self-created Inferno. America’s an out-of-control addict...and doesn’t care who gets hurts

Paul Farrell over at marketwatch.com pulls out all the stops on this one...and I thank Florida reader Donna Badach for sending along this most excellent offering. It's well worth the read...and the link is here.

And we hate the rich? Come on. Success is the national religion, and almost everyone is a believer. Americans love winners. But that's just the problem. These guys on Wall Street are not winning – they're cheating. And as much as we love the self-made success story, we hate the cheater that much more.

We cheer for people who hit their own home runs in this country– not shortcut-chasing juicers like Bonds and McGwire, Blankfein and Dimon.

That's why it's so obnoxious when people say the protesters are just sore losers who are jealous of these smart guys in suits who beat them at the game of life. This isn't disappointment at having lost. It's anger because those other guys didn't really win. And people now want the score overturned.

Matt Taibbi is at the top of his game in this longish blog posted over at Rolling Stone magazine yesterday morning. It's your first absolute must read of the day...and I thank Randall Reinwasser for sharing it with us. The link is here.

A move by the United States government to seize the main subsidiary of American mortgage insurer PMI Group, along with the broader struggles in the US housing market, have put hundreds of millions worth of collateralised debt obligations (CDOs), distributed exclusively in Australia, on the brink of collapse, according to a report by the Australian Financial Review.

The issue came to a peak yesterday when it became increasingly likely that three CDOs in particular-- Torquay, Scarborough and a portion of the Parkes CDO, would collapse, an event that would cost Australian investors up to $250 million.

This is the thin edge of the wedge...which will get much thicker world-wide the rate that things are going now. This story, posted over at the businessspectator.com.au website yesterday, was sent to me by Nick Laird...and the link is here.

David Cameron was shocked last night by the biggest ever Conservative revolt over Europe as more than 80 Conservative MPs defied his orders and backed a referendum on Britain’s membership of the European Union.

In all, about half of all Conservatives outside the “payroll vote” of ministers and their aides scorned Mr. Cameron’s authority. Rebel leaders warned that the Prime Minister faced a protracted “war” with his own party over the European issue.

The call for a referendum was defeated only because Labour and Liberal Democrat MPs also opposed it.

This story, posted late Monday night in The Telegraph, is Roy Stephens first offering of the day...and the link is here.

[Yesterday morning], as the Conservative Party surveyed the fissure at its heart, the first question must be: was it worth it? For many, the answer is no. Mr. Cameron, they argue, did not need to pick this fight. Had he allowed a free vote on a legitimate issue requested in an online petition, then honour and democracy would have been satisfied. Approval for a referendum in 2013 on whether Britain should be in Europe, out of it, or haggling over the terms of its membership, would not have been binding.

Had Mr. Cameron accepted this reasonable argument, his critics claim, he would have slept more easily last night. Instead, he chose to unleash forces that may yet make John Major’s “bastards” seem like angels of mercy. The days when Mrs. Thatcher could wear a sweater featuring knitted Euro-flags and demand a “big Yes vote for Europe” in the 1975 referendum on Britain’s membership of the Common Market, seem distant – as does the memory of Douglas Hurd, another ardent pro-European, describing the formation of that alliance between Europhiles of Left and Right as “like tip-toeing into a brothel”.

This is another Roy Stephens offering...this one from yesterday's edition of The Telegraph...and the link is here.

Chancellor Merkel's conservatives have bowed to pressure for a full vote in parliament on Wednesday over controversial plans to boost the euro rescue fund. Broad backing would help Chancellor Angela Merkel in EU talks on rescuing the euro, but it's a risky gambit, given the unknown number of rebels in her ranks.

While Germany's share of guarantees in the enlarged fund, known as the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF), is set to remain unchanged, there are fears that the leveraging plan might make an actual payout of that money more likely, said Volker Kauder parliamentary group leader of Merkel's conservative Christian Democrats (CDU) and their Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU).

This story was posted over at the German website spiegel.de yesterday...and is another offering from Roy Stephens. The link is here.

The marathon of European Union meetings in recent days has made one thing abundantly clear to the Italians: Their country's leadership is no longer taken seriously. Worse still, the government of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has become cause for bemusement for German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy.

Indeed, Italian dailies on Monday were full of observations about Merkel's "condescending smile" and Sarkozy's pointed comments when discussing Rome's debt situation during a Sunday press conference in Brussels. Internet videos of the two rolling their eyes and smiling at one another made the rounds as well.

It is "insulting to be equated with Greece," wrote the Italian daily La Stampa. "We are the sick man of Europe because our government is incapable of action and has been unable to introduce reforms or measures to promote growth."

An excellent example of the pots calling the kettle, black. This story was also posted over at spiegel.de yesterday...and, once again, I thank Roy Stephens for sending it our way. The link is here.

The 27 finance ministers, including Chancellor George Osborne, were due to meet this morning to prepare an "ambitious and comprehensive response" to the problems stalking the eurozone.

However, while European heads of state are still due to meet as scheduled at 6pm, the cancellation of the finance ministers' meeting implied a detailed solution remained elusive.

The leaders are expected to announce an agreement that will increase the size of the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) to €1 trillion; produce a fresh Greek bail-out that includes a bigger hit for bondholders; and commit to inject €110bn into Europe's banks.

It's obvious that this can is getting harder to kick down the road with each passing day. This news item was posted late last night on The Telegraph's website...and is another offering from Roy. The link is here.

Whatever grand plan leaders come up with to solve the eurozone debt crisis, it will create as many problems as it solves.

"You don’t like the euro, so why do you want to be in our meetings?” asked the French President of David Cameron on the weekend, adding for good measure that he had “had enough” of British interference. The language may have been undiplomatic, but Mr. Sarkozy did rather put his finger on the nub of the problem Britain faces in responding to the eurozone debt crisis.

So far the Coalition government has gone along with Europe’s pained march towards fiscal union, even though this runs counter to the euro-sceptic instincts of its Conservative hierarchy.

There are, essentially, two justifications for their approach. One is that the apparent alternative of disorderly default and break-up would almost certainly plunge Europe, and very possibly the rest of the world too, into prolonged depression.

This is another story that was filed over at The Telegraph late last night...and is Roy Stephens final offering of the day. The link is here.

The European Union is doomed to fail because the divide between the northern and southern countries is just too great, former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan told CNBC in a recent interview.

"At the outset of the creation of the euro in 1999, it was expected that the southern eurozone economies would behave like those in the north; the Italians would behave like Germans. They didn’t," Greenspan said. "Instead, northern Europe fell into subsidizing southern Europe’s excess consumption, that is, its current account deficits."

"The effect of the divergent cultures in the eurozone has been grossly underestimated," he added. "The only way to have several currencies from divergent nations lumped together is if they are culturally close, such as Germany, the Netherlands and Austria. If they aren’t, it simply can’t continue to work."

This CNBC story was posted shortly before midnight last night...and I thank West Virginia reader Elliot Simon for sending it along...and the link is here.

Here's a story that posted over at the German website bild.de on Monday. The original story was in German, of course...but the English version presented here has been run through "Google translate"...and, needless to say, it's more than a little rough around the edges.

Despite that fact, the message comes through loud and clear...and the photo speaks volumes as well. I thank reader 'David in California' for sharing it with us...and the link is here.

Scott Garber and his three partners have been opening gold-buying stores at the rate of more than one a week since they started their business three years ago.

Thanks to the rising price of gold and recession-battered Americans eager to trade jewelry for cash, the stores are on a pace to generate a total of $175 million in revenue this year, almost quadruple the $45 million in sales in 2010, Garber said. The price of gold, heading for its 11th straight annual gain, has jumped 20 percent this year, outperforming global equity markets, industrial commodities and Treasuries. Gold futures for December delivery reached a four-week high yesterday before closing at $1,700.40 an ounce, up 2.9 percent for the day.

“The higher gold goes and the more publicity you get, the more it drives business into the store,” Garber, a 30-year-old University of Chicago Booth School of Business dropout, said in a telephone interview.

This Bloomberg story, filed very late last night in New York, was sent to me by Russian reader Alex Lvov...and I thank him on your behalf. The link is here.

Eric sent me this very interesting King World News blog yesterday afternoon. It's certainly worth the read...and the link is here.

I guess Dennis was somewhat surprised, as were many people, by the commentary that showed up in the Financial Times about our rather humble little organization. Since The Gartman Letter is subscriber protected, Chris Powell has posted the pertinent parts in this GATA release. It's a short read, which I feel is worth your time..and the link is here.

The precious metals are moving up again as investors realize that only unprecedented money creation will resolve Europe's bankruptcy, Sprott Asset Management's John Embry told King World News yesterday. Massive demand for real metal is overwhelming the price suppression scheme much as it did in the last days of the London Gold Pool in 1968, Embry says.

An excerpt from the interview is posted at the KWN website. I thank Chris Powell for wordsmithing the above introduction...and the link to this absolute must read blog, is here.

In an extensive preamble to this KWN blog, Chris Powell states in the opening paragraph that..."Tocqueville Gold Fund manager John Hathaway seems to have come over completely to the gold price manipulation camp."

Along with my good friend John Embry...anything that John Hathaway has to say is an absolute must read as well. The KWN headline reads "John Hathaway: Gold Stampede Now Imminent"...and the link to this GATA release is here.