The top regulator tasked with overseeing the bankrupt brokerage firm MF Global said Thursday that the search continued for more than $630 million in missing customer money, warning that the protection of client assets is essential to doing business on Wall Street.

Gary Gensler, chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, said his agency was investigating the firm, a powerhouse commodities brokerage run by a former New Jersey governor, Jon S. Corzine.

“The most troubling aspect about the MF Global situation is the shortfall of customer money at the firm. Segregation of customer funds is the core foundation of customer protection in the commodity futures and swaps markets,” he said in prepared testimony. “Segregation must be maintained at all times. Simply put, that’s every moment of every day, down to the nanosecond.”

I wonder how much this MF Global situation will slow down the CFTC's ongoing 3-year investigation into the silver price rigging scheme? Just asking. This story was posted over at The New York Times yesterday...and I thank Washington state reader S.A. for sending it along. The link is here.

The federal government’s debt increased by $203,368,715,583.63 in the month of October, according to the U.S. Treasury.

That equals about $650 per person for each of the 312,542,760 people the Census Bureau now estimates live in the United States.

At the end of September, the total national debt stood at $14,790,340,328,557.15, according to the Bureau of the Public Debt. By the end of October, it had risen to $14,993,709,044,140.78.

This story was posted over at the cnsnews.com website yesterday...and I thank reader 'David in California' for sharing it with us. The link is here.

Iran is attempting to engineer and test nuclear weapons at a series of banned production sites in defiance of United Nations sanctions, according to a report to be released next week.

The research by the UN’s watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, will add a substantial layer to seven years of investigations that is likely to inflame tensions in the Middle East.

Yukiya Amano, the organisation’s director-general, is unlikely to draw a definitive conclusion that Iran is making nuclear weapons, but according to Western diplomats the facts will make any other conclusion implausible.

Roy Stephens sent me this story out of Wednesday's edition of The Telegraph...and the link is here.

The UK and U.S. are drawing up plans to attack Iran amid growing tensions in the Middle East, it was claimed last night.

Barack Obama and David Cameron are preparing for war after reports that Iran now has enough enriched uranium for four nuclear weapons.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s hard-line regime in Tehran has been linked to three assassination plots on foreign soil, according to senior officials in Whitehall.

Iran has come sharply back into focus following the end of the Libya conflict...and the unrest has been inflamed by sabre-rattling from top politicians in Israel.

This story was posted over at The Daily Mail less than half an hour after the previous story on this issue was posted in The Telegraph. I thank reader 'h c' for bringing it to my attention...and the link is here.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is trying to rally support in his cabinet for an attack on Iran, according to government sources.

The country's defence minister Ehud Barak and the foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman are said to be among those backing a pre-emptive strike to neutralise Iran's nuclear ambitions.

But a narrow majority of ministers currently oppose the move, which could trigger a wave of regional retaliation.

The debate over possible Israeli military action has reached fever pitch in recent days with newspaper leader columns discussing the benefits and dangers of hitting Iran.

This story was posted over at sky.com on Wednesday. Is it just me, or are you hearing war drums as well? All this anti-Iran war rhetoric has just appeared out of nowhere now that Libya is no longer on the West's hit list. I borrowed this story from yesterday's King Report...and the link is here.

Amid growing fears of a government collapse in Athens, Prime Minister Giorgios Papandreou on Thursday scrapped plans for a bailout referendum and moved to start talks on a national unity government. He has, however, refused to step down, saying that new elections would mean a Greek exit from the euro zone.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel seems to have gotten her way yet again. Not even a day after she and French President Nicolas Sarkozy suspended aid payments to Greece pending the results of a bailout referendum called by the government in Athens, Prime Minister Giorgios Papandreou has backed away from his plan.

On Thursday, a government spokesman in Athens announced that Papandreou was ceding to demands that he enter into negotiations with the opposition on the formation of a cross-party caretaker government. Shortly thereafter, plans were scrapped to hold the controversial referendum, a decision confirmed by Greek Finance Minister Evangelos Venizelos.

Things are changing so fast in Europe that virtually every story I'm running in this column regarding European events risks the chance that it may be irrelevant by the time you clap eyes on it. This Roy Stephens offering was posted over at the German website spiegel.de yesterday...and the link is here.

G20 summit on eurozone crisis is dominated by news about Greeks, while IMF is given more cash and fears grow over Italy.

The G20 is planning to increase the crisis-fighting firepower of the International Monetary Fund after the start of its summit was dominated by the first open admission from EU leaders that it might be necessary for Greece to leave the eurozone if the single currency is to survive.

George Osborne said there was a "real sense of urgency" on a day that saw an emergency interest rate cut from the European Central Bank, backtracking from Greece over a referendum on its bailout conditions, and a recognition that the IMF may need extra resources to cope with a deteriorating global economy.

This story was posted in The Guardian early yesterday evening...and is another Roy Stephens offering...and the link is here.

Banks including BNP Paribas and ING are ditching billions of euros of euro zone government bonds, cutting their exposure to the region's trouble spots.

More lenders are expected to retreat as the euro zone crisis deepens and leaders raise the possibility of the exit of Greece from the bloc, further damaging prices.

"The market value of the debt of the countries most under scrutiny is likely to decline further as banks unload sovereign bonds," Charles Dallara, managing director of the Institute of International Finance, warned on Wednesday.

No surprises here, as everyone is looking for a safe haven these days. This Reuters story was posted on the cnbc.com website...and I thank West Virginia reader Elliot Simon for sending it my way...and the link is here.

As the essential Nathan Lewis, of Forbes and Gold: The Once and Future Money fame, once put it, “monetary interpretations of the [Great] Depression had fallen out of favor somewhat by the 1970s. It wasn’t until the 1980s, as a political drive for a gold-linked currency gathered force, that academics revived old notions about an unstable gold standard.”

Well, academics, you’d better dust off those old notions and start spiffing them up. Because the same individual who set your thoughts a-reeling in 1982 is making waves again in 2011.

This 2-page item posted in Forbes on Tuesday was sent to me by Nick Arnold...and the link is here.

Eric King sent me this blog early yesterday afternoon. It's an interesting read...and the link is here.

Jean says that..."Since I tend to look at gold as substitute currency, I am more interested in gold than I am in silver, but I recognize, I acknowledge the fact that maybe there is more money to be made in the future in silver than there is in gold."

This is another blog that Eric King sent me yesterday. It's posted over at the King World News website...and the link is here.

Denying a recent freedom-of-information request from a citizen of the United Kingdom, the Bank of England has insisted on secrecy for its swapping and leasing of gold from the national reserves.

Bank of England spokeswoman Jackie Keating wrote that the gold swap and leasing information is "market sensitive" and its disclosure "would allow enquirers to find out what gold transactions have been taking place." This, the bank's spokesman wrote, would impair the interests of both the British government and the bank's "private customers," to whom the bank "owes a duty of confidentiality."

This GATA release came out yesterday afternoon...and is well worth the read. The link is here.

Gold is said to be a hedge against inflation, deflation and all other nasty sorts of economic bugaboos. It looks like it may be a hedge against political incompetence too.

The price of gold has surged more than 7% in just the past week and a half. The yellow metal is now trading around $1,750 an ounce.

That's still a bit lower from the all-time high of about $1,924 from just a few months ago. But experts think that a new record could be in the cards soon if the debt melodrama in Europe continues.

This is an excellent main stream media story about gold that was posted over at money.cnn.com yesterday...and I thank reader Elliot Simon for sharing it with us. The link is here.

“I was at a meeting the other day where there was a commentary on Newmont Mining and the assumptions that had to be made to support the stock here. I won’t mention the name of the firm but the analysis was based on a drop in the gold price to $1,000 in five years.

That left the analyst with a target price on Newmont of $56 and I believe the stock is $68 today. If that analyst were to use the same methodology and assume a $1,700 price in five years, that same methodology would get Newmont to $200.

So these analysts are totally behind the curve. I would say there is a generation of sell-side analysts that are just going to be completely out to lunch on this whole thing.”

This KWN blog is a must read...and the link is here.

Gold figures heavily in an interview with financial writer Gerald Celente by economist Alasdair Macleod on behalf of the GoldMoney Foundation, for which he has become a senior fellow. Celente denies that gold is in a bubble and discusses the ridicule heaped on gold investors by the financial establishment. The interview is 38 minutes long and you can watch it at the GoldMoney Internet site. The link to this must watch video is here...and I thank Chris Powell for writing the introduction on my behalf.