My good friend Nomi Prins has a great new piece out that I just caught on Zero Hedge, chronicling 10 reasons why depositors should pull out of Bank of America.

Obviously Goldman, Sachs has become the great symbol of investment banking corruption, and other companies like AIG and Countrywide have become poster children for problems with businesses like insurance and mortgage-lending. But when it comes to commercial banking, Bank of America is as bad as it gets.

The markets, of course, have lately come to agree, as B of A has lately been downgraded again to just above junk status. The only reason the bank is not rated even lower than that is that it is Too Big To Fail. The whole world knows that if Bank of America implodes – whether because of the vast number of fraud suits it faces for mortgage securitization practices, or because of the time bomb of toxic assets on its balance sheets – the U.S. government will probably step in to one degree or another and save it.

This relatively short Matt Taibbi blog posted over at Rolling Stone magazine late yesterday morning, is Roy Stephens first offering of the day. It's well worth your time...and the link is here.

Here's a really incredible interview that Eric sent me at 3:14 a.m. Eastern time this morning, just as I was about to hit the send button on this column. I stuck it here, as it fits perfectly with the Matt Taibbi piece above. It's an absolute must listen...and the link is here.

Bill says that the current crisis is about seventy times larger than the S&L debacle, yet nobody has gone to jail over it. This 3:54 minute must watch youtube.com video was sent to me by reader Doug Beiers yesterday...and the link is here.

Here's a short 2-minute Bloomberg video clip that's well worth your time.

Credit-rating companies award higher rankings to debt issued by banks and corporations that pay them the most, according to a study by scholars at Indiana University, American University and Rice University.

Why am I not surprised? I thank Washington state reader S.A. for sending this along...and the link is here.

Goldman Sachs Group Inc has been hit with a new $1.07 billion lawsuit for having allegedly sold risky debt that it expected would tumble in value to an Australian hedge fund, causing that fund to become insolvent.

The lawsuit by the Basis Yield Alpha Fund alleges fraud, breach of contract and negligence, and seeks to recoup $67 million of losses plus $1 billion of punitive damages.

It was filed Thursday with a New York state court in Manhattan. Basis Yield was managed by Sydney-based Basis Capital Funds Management Ltd.

This is Washington state reader S.A.'s second offering in a row. It's a story posted over at the foxbusiness.com website...and the link is here.

The following is a letter released on October 17th by Lloyd Blankfein, the chairman of banking giant Goldman Sachs: Dear Investor:

Up until now, Goldman Sachs has been silent on the subject of the protest movement known as Occupy Wall Street. That does not mean, however, that it has not been very much on our minds. As thousands have gathered in Lower Manhattan, passionately expressing their deep discontent with the status quo, we have taken note of these protests. And we have asked ourselves this question:

How can we make money off them?

The answer is the newly launched Goldman Sachs Global Rage Fund, whose investment objective is to monetize the Occupy Wall Street protests as they spread around the world. At Goldman, we recognize that the capitalist system as we know it is circling the drain – but there’s plenty of money to be made on the way down.

I thank reader Nick Vrionis for sharing this touching human interest story with us. It's posted over at the borowitzreport.com website...and the link is here.

It has been called the largest airborne transfer of currency in the history of the world. But finding out what happened to all the money involved has become one of the biggest financial mysteries of all time.

Beginning in the very earliest days of the war in Iraq, the New York Federal Reserve shipped billions of dollars in physical cash to Baghdad to pay for the reopening of the government and restoration of basic services.

The money was packed onto pallets inside a heavily guarded New York Federal Reserve compound in East Rutherford, New Jersey, trucked to Andrews Air Force Base outside of Washington, and flown by military aircraft to Baghdad International Airport.

This 3-page essay posted over at the cnbc.com website on Tuesday, is your first big read of the day...and it's an incredible story. I thank West Virginia reader Elliot Simon for sharing it with us...and the link is here.

At first, the outraged members of the Occupy Wall Street movement in New York were mainly met with ridicule. They didn't seem to stand a chance and were judged incapable of going up against their adversaries, Wall Street's bankers and financial managers, either intellectually or in terms of economic knowledge.

"We are the 99 percent," is the continuing chant of the protestors, who are now in their seventh week of marching through the streets of Manhattan. And, surprisingly, they have hit upon the crux of America's problems with precisely this sentence. Indeed, they have given shape to a development in the country that has been growing more acute for decades, one that numerous academics and experts have tried to analyze elsewhere in lengthy books and essays. It's a development so profound and revolutionary that it has shaken the world's most powerful nation to its core.

Inequality in America is greater than it has been in almost a century. Those fortunate enough to belong to the 1 percent, made up of the super-rich, stand on one side of the divide; the remaining 99 percent on the other. Even for a country that has always accepted opposite extremes as part of its identity, the chasm has simply grown too vast.

This 3-page essay was posted at the German website spiegel.de yesterday...and is Roy Stephens second offering of the day. It's well worth your time...and the link is here.

The delivery of the 19 top-of-the-range executive cars has raised eyebrows at a time when the country is meant to be shaving billions off its public spending.

Opposition MPs said it was it was an outrageous indulgence at a time when the defence ministry is supposed to be reducing its budget by €2.5bn (£2.2bn) over the next three years.

The matter was raised in parliament by Emanuele Fiano, an MP from the opposition Democratic Party. "At a time when millions of Italians are being affected by a very serious economic crisis, is there good reason for the defence minister to feel it necessary to add 19 armoured Maseratis to the ministry's car park?" he said.

This story, posted over at The Telegraph yesterday afternoon, is Washington state reader S.A.'s third contribution to today's column...and the link is here.

The financial well-being of British families fell at the fastest rate in at least 14 years, according to data which underline how inflation and frozen wages are making life tough for many households.

Rising food prices, record gas bills landing on doormats and stubbornly high petrol prices has combined with steadily increasing unemployment and low wage growth to create a miserable few months for many. The eurozone crisis and plunging stock markets made matters worse, knocking confidence, according to Alliance Trust, which analyses a number of official data sources to compile its Financial Reality Index.

The sudden fall in economic confidence has been confirmed by many high street retailers, which have suggested that shoppers drastically cut back their spending after the summer.

I'm sure that's a trend just about everywhere in the western world at the moment. This is another Roy Stephens offering that was posted over at The Telegraph yesterday afternoon...and the link is here.

The report by Incomes Data Services (IDS) also said that chief executives' earnings rose by 43pc to £3.86m.

"Britain's economy may be struggling to return to pre-recession levels of output, but the same cannot be said of FTSE 100 directors' remuneration," said Steve Tatton, editor of the IDS report.

Total earnings include fixed pay, benefits, bonuses, value of long-term incentive plans and gains made on the exercise of any share options cashed in during the year.

As the old saying goes...the rich just get richer, and the poor just get poorer. This is another story from yesterday's edition of The Telegraph...and is Roy Stephens final offering of the day, for which I thank him. The link is here.

We’ve all grown so accustomed to using little round pieces of metal to buy things, it’s easy to forget that coins arrived quite late in the history of the world. For more than 2,000 years, states ran complex economies and international-trading networks without a coin to hand.

The Egyptians, for example, used a sophisticated system that measured value against standard weights of copper and gold. But as new states and new ways of organizing trade emerged about 3,000 years ago, coinage began to make an appearance. Paper money would not arrive for another couple of millenniums and credit cards, not until the 20th century.

The author of this piece, Neil MacGregor, is the director of the British Museum and a presenter on BBC television and radio. This is an excerpt from his new book, “A History of the World in 100 Objects". This Bloomberg piece from Tuesday is a very interesting read...and, in my opinion, is well worth your time. This is Washington state reader's fourth and final contribution to today's column...and the link is here.

Here's a GATA release that I've been saving from earlier this week, as it's a fairly long read...and for that reason, it wasn't suitable for posting on a weekday.

Chris Powell has written an extensive preamble to Macleod's address...and I consider it a must read. The link is here.

Here's another story that only fits on a weekend. Fortunately, this one was posted yesterday on the GATA website...and, as I am wont to do at times, I've stolen Chris Powell's preamble.

As you know, I have all the time in the world for whatever Jim Rickards has to say...and from what I've read of Turk's book review, it should be a best seller. The review is posted over that Free Gold Money Report Internet site...and the link is here.

The Royal Canadian Mint is pleased to announce its initial public offering of exchange-traded receipts (ETRs) under the mint's new Canadian Gold Reserves program. Each ETR provides evidence of ownership in physical gold bullion held in the custody of the mint at its facilities in Ottawa, Ontario. The Canadian Gold Reserves program marks the expansion of the mint's successful core bullion and refinery business.

"We believe that this new program will build on our reputation and continued success as a world-class custodian of precious metals," said Ian E. Bennett, president and CEO of the Royal Canadian Mint. "With the introduction of the Canadian Gold Reserves ETR program we hope that investors will see this as a convenient, efficient, and secure method for investing in and owning physical gold."

This Royal Canadian Mint press release was posted on their mint.ca website yesterday. I borrowed this story from a GATA release yesterday...and the link is here.

Hinde Capital CEO Ben Davies told King World News yesterday that gold and silver will be strongly supported by the inadequacy of the latest European bailout plan and by seasonal strength in metal demand. An excerpt from the interview is posted at the KWN website...and the link is here. The chart included in the blog makes it worth the trip all by itself.