Dear Clients, Industry Colleagues and Friends of Barnhardt Capital Management,

It is with regret and unflinching moral certainty that I announce that Barnhardt Capital Management has ceased operations. After six years of operating as an independent introducing brokerage, and eight years of employment as a broker before that, I found myself, this morning, for the first time since I was 20 years old, watching the futures and options markets open not as a participant, but as a mere spectator...but there was no possible way to continue given the inevitability of the collapse of the global financial markets, the overthrow of our government, and the resulting collapse in the rule of law. - Ann Barnhardt

This is an absolutely stunning letter...and a must read from one end to the other. I would also recommend that you distribute this article far and wide. The letter is posted over at zerohedge.com...and I thank reader Matthew Nel for being the first of many who sent me this piece. The link is here....and the link to he original letter posted at her website is here.

Trustee James Giddens for the MF Global bankruptcy filed a motion [on Wednesday] to return up to a 60% distribution to those former MFGI customers that had only cash in their accounts as of the commencement of this proceeding on Oct. 31, 2011. This release will only affect MFGI customers that were cash-only and did not have any positions on at the time of the bankruptcy. This is approximately 21,000 customers with a total of over $869 million in cash assets.

This 1-paragraph article...plus the link to the 13-page 'motion to release'...was sent to me by reader "Frances in Texas". It's posted over at the futuresmag.com website...and the link is here.

James L. Koutoulas has formalized his group advocating on behalf of former MF Global customers and brokers and given it a name: The Commodity Customer Coalition, which is more than 2,500 strong and growing. And on Monday Koutoulas filed an objection to JP Morgan’s interim order that he claims could put JP Morgan interests ahead of MF Global customers whose funds are still frozen by the liquidation trustee.

The objection states, “Were this Court to allow any party to have an interest superior to customer segregated funds, it would provide a loophole in the protections which are the bedrock of commodity trading. This Court should only provide for the use of Cash Collateral which protects customer funds as Congress, the CFTC, CME, and hundreds of thousands of commodity traders have, for over 100 years, believed to have been the case.”

This is another very short story posted over at the futuresmag.com website...and "Frances from Texas" sent me this one as well. The link is here.

MF Global's internal records indicate that the company moved segregated customer funds in transactions as large as hundreds of millions of dollars at a time, these people said. The money was transferred out of the unit that houses the assets of futures-trading customers and went into the accounts of MF Global's brokerage, people familiar with the situation said.

Such moves could violate regulations stipulating that commodities brokers can't mix customer funds with brokerage funds. Brokerage funds often are used to back proprietary-trading positions.

One has to ask why Jon Corzine isn't sitting in jail right now?

This story out of yesterday's edition of The Wall Street Journal is posted in the clear in this GATA release. The link is here.

The sale of the metals team of MF Global Holdings Ltd. is being conducted as a separate process from the sale of the U.S. brokerage firm's near 6% stake in the London Metal Exchange due to "a high level of interest," a person familiar with the matter said.

Given the interest, the process to sell the shares is unlikely to be conducted as a fire sale, the person said.

MF Global is the fourth-largest holder of LME shares, with 600,000 shares, or 5.9%, and is a category-one member of the exchange.

The rest of this story, posted in yesterday's edition of The Wall Street Journal, is subscriber protected...but the above few lines were sent to me by Washington state reader S.A....and the link to the 'subscriber protected' portion is here.

Up until now, fraudclosure and robosigning were both merely civil offenses, and as such the banks were actively doing all they could to bury any and all pending litigation under a large settlement umbrella, wash their hands of the whole affair and move on, with nobody in danger of actually walking the plank and certainly not in danger of going to jail. That has all changed as of now.

This zerohedge.com story was sent to me by reader Doug Beiers yesterday...and the link is here.

In 2010, when the Census survey was conducted, 21.6 percent of children across the country were poor, compared to 20 percent in 2009.

That was mainly due to a rise in the number of children living below the federal poverty threshold, defined as an annual income of $22,314 for a family of four, to 15.7 million from 14.7 million in 2009.

The figures reflect the overall state of the economy. The national poverty rate stands at 15.3 percent and the unemployment rate is at 9 percent some two years after the recession that began in 2007 officially ended.

This Reuters story from yesterday was sent to me by Roy Stephens...and the link is here.

Last week, a federal judge in Mississippi sentenced a mother of two named Anita McLemore to three years in federal prison for lying on a government application in order to obtain food stamps.

Apparently in this country you become ineligible to eat if you have a record of criminal drug offenses. States have the option of opting out of that federal ban, but Mississippi is not one of those states. Since McLemore had four drug convictions in her past, she was ineligible to receive food stamps, so she lied about her past in order to feed her two children.

The total "cost" of her fraud was $4,367. She has paid the money back. But paying the money back was not enough for federal Judge Henry Wingate.

This Matt Taibbi blog from yesterday is posted over at Rolling Stone magazine...and I thank Randall Reinwasser for sharing it with us...and the link is here.

Everyone in the world who pays any attention to the financial markets seems to know that the balance sheets of European banks are a joke. All you have to do is compare the stock prices of these companies with the book values on their balance sheets to see that.

On average the shares of the 32 companies in the Euro Stoxx Banks Index trade for about 44 percent of book value, or common shareholder equity, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Put another way, a typical large euro-area bank would have us believe its net assets are worth more than twice what the stock market says the bank is worth. The problem is the companies’ numbers can’t be trusted, and it’s been this way for years.

So imagine the surprise this week when UniCredit SpA, one of Italy’s largest lenders, had the fortitude to acknowledge that its asset values were in need of an 11-figure chopping. The truly unexpected part wasn’t that the bank experienced a loss of 10.6 billion euros ($14.3 billion) during the third quarter, but that its management chose to recognize these losses’ existence.

This most excellent op-ed piece showed up in Bloomberg on Wednesday...and is most definitely worth the read. I thank Washington state reader S.A. for sending it along...and the link is here.

The emergency administration, which is meant to govern Italy until elections are due in 2013, is made up of bankers, lawyers and university professors but not a single elected official – an extraordinary development for a Western democracy.

But it is a deal that much of the electorate and nearly all the mainstream parties have signed up to, in order to save Italy from the economic abyss by trimming the country's bloated bureaucracy, slashing its 1.9 trillion euro debt and unleashing its economic potential after years of stagnation.

Mr. Monti said that after talks with the country's big parties, he had decided that "the non-presence of politicians in the government would help it."

This very interesting story was posted in The Telegraph late on Wednesday night...and I thank reader Jason Hall for sending it my way. The link is here.

Italy's new government has announced far-reaching reforms in response to a European debt crisis that on Thursday pushed borrowing costs for France and Spain sharply higher, and brought tens of thousands of Greeks onto the streets of Athens.

Italy's new technocrat prime minister, Mario Monti, unveiled sweeping reforms to dig the country out of crisis and said Italians were confronting a "serious emergency."

In Athens, at least 50,000 Greeks joined a protest rally presenting the first public test for a new national unity government, also headed by an unelected figure, that must impose spending cuts and tax rises if Greece is to escape bankruptcy.

This Reuters story was posted yesterday evening...and I thank Roy Stephens for forwarding it. The link is here.

Beyond the government’s huge embarrassment at the German Bundestag getting sight of Irish budgetary proposals in advance of the Oireachtas is a new and harsh reality – when you are a programme country you no longer have full ownership or control of your destiny, or even your secrets.

The political context in Europe this week has been about future plans of a two-track euro zone and about European Union treaty changes that will lead to Ireland ceding more fiscal sovereignty. Yesterday gave critics of that process some tangible ammunition when a confidential document was leaked from a German parliamentary committee.

This story was filed early this morning over at the irishtimes.com website...and I thank Roy Stephens for sending it along. It's worth skimming...and the link is here.

The French propensity to blame Anglo-Saxon speculators, particularly those in London, whenever the politicians aren't getting their way, is well known. Never mind the fundamentals, if the economy hits choppy waters, it's London's financial markets that are invariably found to be the culprits.

As long as widening eurozone bond spreads were confined to the periphery, it was possible to blame lazy Greeks, feckless Italians and rotten government for the euro's travails. They'd brought it on themselves. But now the phenomenon has spread to the French core, and is even lapping at the edges of the mighty Germany itself, an older enemy has been identified – les speculateurs, lodged like pirates, in their offshore haven across the Channel.

Unfortunately, it's a mindset no longer confined to France. Never far from the surface, it has come to dominate eurozone thinking with regard to the UK. For many, Britain's non participation in the euro, and its strong association with the financial service industry, are seen as one and the same thing.

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

Nigel Farage needs no introduction: the famous Euroskeptic is one of very few men who has had the temerity to question, often in an abnormally high decibel fashion, the stupidity of the Eurozone leaders from day one. Now that he has been proven correct, he has every right to gloat, which he does to everyone's delightful amusement in the European parliament.

The 2:39 minute video is imbedded in a short piece over at zerohedge.com...and is an absolute must watch, especially the last thirty seconds where he really rips von Rompuy a new one.

This is Roy's last offering of the day...and the link is here.

That was James Turk, author and president of online bullion dealer Goldmoney, speaking at the Gold and Silver Summit in London in early August about a specific metal.

He went on. "In fact, it's the most bullish chart I've ever seen on the face of the planet."

What was he talking about? Silver.

This bullish piece about silver was written by Dominic Frisby...and was posted over a the moneyweek.com website on Wednesday. I thank reader Roham Jackson for sharing it with us...and the link is here.

A couple of days ago I posted the KWN blog of this interview. Eric slipped the audio version into my in-box very late last night. I haven't had time to listen to it, but it's probably well worth your time...and the link is here.

Here's an excellent commentary [with graphs to match] that BIG GOLD editor Jeff Clark posted in yesterday's edition of Casey's Daily Dispatch. It's well worth your time...and the link is here.

Gold demand rose 6 percent in the third quarter from a year earlier as Europe's debt crisis spurred investors to accumulate the metal as a protection of wealth and push prices to a record, the World Gold Council said.

Global demand gained to 1,053.9 metric tons worth a record $57.7 billion, the London-based industry group said today in a report. Investor purchases of exchange-traded funds and products, bars and coins outpaced a drop in jewelry demand and increase in recycled supplies, it said. Central bank demand for 2011 may be the most since at least 1970, council data show.

Central-bank and government-institution purchases jumped more than six-fold to 148.4 tons in the quarter, the council said. Central banks may buy 450 tons for this year, signaling about 100 tons will be bought in the fourth quarter, Grubb said. The total for 2011 at 450 tons would be the most for any year since at least 1970, according to the latest available data from the council. The third quarter was probably the most ever also, according to the data. The demand is centered on central banks in Latin America, central Asia and the Far East, Grubb said.

This must read Bloomberg story was filed from London early yesterday morning...and I thank Russian reader Alex Lvov for sharing it with us. The link is here.

Eric King dropped this Jim Rickards blog into my lap in the very wee hours of this morning. It, too, is a must read...and the link is here.