The notary who signed tens of thousands of false documents in a massive robo-signing scandal case was found dead in her home on Monday.

The notary, 43-year-old Tracy Lawrence, was supposed to be in court at 8:30 Monday morning for her sentencing hearing. When her attorney did not hear from her for more than an hour, Sr. Deputy Attorney General Robert Giunta asked for a bench warrant to be issued for Lawrence. The judge denied the request.

Police were sent to Lawrence's house to check on her after her lawyer expressed concern for her client's well-being. They found her body inside her home.

This story was filed from Las Vegas yesterday...and posted over at the mynews3.com website. I thank reader 'David in California' for bringing it to my attention. It's not overly long...and the link is here.

William K. Black, associate professor of economics and law at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, can’t understand why Paulson felt impelled to share the Treasury Department’s plan [regarding Fannie and Freddie] with fund managers.

“You just never ever do that as a government regulator -- transmit non-public market information to market participants,” says Black, who’s a former general counsel at the Federal Home Loan Bank of San Francisco. “There were no legitimate reasons for those disclosures.”

Janet Tavakoli, founder of Chicago-based financial consulting firm Tavakoli Structured Finance Inc., says the meeting fits a pattern.

“What is this but crony capitalism?” she asks. “Most people have had their fill of it.”

Reader Bob Fitzwilson sent me this Bloomberg story yesterday. You can file it under the category of 'What Else is New?'. The link is here.

American Airlines' parent company is seeking Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection as it seeks to unload massive debt built up by years of accelerating jet fuel prices and labor struggles.

Fort Worth, Texas-based AMR Corp., along with its regional affiliate AMR Eagle Holding Corp. said Tuesday that they filed voluntary petitions to reorganize.

American says it sought protection to reduce its costs and debt to remain competitive.

The airline says it will continue normal flight operations during the reorganization.

This AP story was filed from Fort Worth yesterday...and was picked up by news.yahoo.com...and I thank reader Scott Pluschau for sending it to me. The link is here.

The agency lowered by one notch its long-term credit ratings on some of the biggest and best-known banks in the United States, including Bank of America, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan Chase. The action, the result of S.&P. applying new standards to 37 financial firms around the world, prompted a downgrade of 15 banks. Among the eight largest banks in the United States under review by S.&P., only Boston-based State Street was spared.

This story was posted over at the dealbook.nytimes.com website yesterday...and I thank reader Phil Barlett for sending it along. The link is here.

About $200 million in customer money that vanished from MF Global is believed to have surfaced at JPMorgan Chase in Britain, according to people briefed on the matter. The discovery could be the most significant breakthrough in a month-long hunt for the missing funds.

During MF Global’s last chaotic days, the brokerage firm overdrew an account at JPMorgan, according to another person who is close to the matter. Some investigators now believe the firm used customer funds to patch at least some of the hole, which would have been a significant breach of federal law.

This story was filed late on Monday evening over at the dealbook.nytimes.com website...and it's Phil Barlett's second offering of the day. The link is here.

Iranian protesters shouting “Death to England” stormed the British Embassy compound and a diplomatic residence in Tehran on Tuesday, tearing down the British flag, smashing windows, defacing walls and briefly detaining six staff members in what appeared to be a state-sponsored protest against Britain’s tough new economic sanctions against Iran.

The attack was the most serious diplomatic breach since the traumatic assault on the United States Embassy after Iran’s Islamic Revolution in 1979. Britain’s foreign secretary, William Hague, expressed outrage over the attack, saying Britain held Iran’s government responsible and promising “other, further, and serious consequences.”

This rather longish New York Times story filed from Cairo yesterday, is Roy Stephens first offering of the day...and the link is here.

Italy auctioned €7.49bn of three and ten year bonds this morning. It had hoped to sell between €5bn and €8bn.

Yields on three-year bonds rose to 7.89pc, up 2.96pc on last month.

It was the third time in a week that Italy had to pay more than 7pc to auction debt.

This story was filed in The Telegraph yesterday morning about his time...and is Roy Stephens second offering of the day. The link is here.

With the euro on the brink, all eyes are on Germany. Romano Prodi, a former Italian prime minister and the ex-president of the European Commission, says in a SPIEGEL interview that Germany, as the most powerful country on the Continent, must finally step up and show the courage to resolve the debt crisis.

SPIEGEL: Do you, like European Commission President José Manuel Barroso, support the introduction of euro bonds in order to steer Europe out of the crisis?

Prodi: The European Central Bank needs to play a proper role in the crisis and euro bonds also need to be issued. Together with my colleague, I proposed bonds that are to be guaranteed by the state's gold reserves and other funds.

SPIEGEL: And what effect would these measures have?

Prodi: Think about one thing: Why is it that nobody attacks the dollar? Looking at the United States budget, the dollar is in a much worse situation than the euro. The debt state of California is much worse off than the Greek one. But the dollar is defended, also by the Fed. That makes the dollar a big, strong dog. And nobody bites a big dog.

The mention of gold-backed bonds for the second time in the last two weeks really caught my attention in this article that was posted over at the German website spiegel.de yesterday. It's another Roy Stephens offering...and it's your first must read of the day. The link is here.

There is mounting speculation that the euro zone will break apart, or even that the single currency will be abandoned altogether. It often sounds as if such scenarios wouldn't be so bad for Germany. In fact the consequences would be catastrophic for Europe and for its largest economy.

Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski made a dramatic appeal to Germany on Monday to prevent a collapse of the currency union, saying: "We are standing on the edge of a precipice."

German investors are jettisoning derivatives on a large scale because they have lost confidence in the instruments. For the first time, it appears, people across Europe regard the downfall of the euro as a real possibility.

This is another story that as posted over at spiegel.de yesterday...and it's also Roy Stephens last offering of the day. The link is here.

The crisis in the euro area is turning into a panic and dragging the zone into recession. The risk that the currency disintegrates within weeks is alarmingly high

First Greece; then Ireland and Portugal; then Italy and Spain. Month by month, the crisis in the euro area has crept from the vulnerable periphery of the currency zone towards its core, helped by denial, misdiagnosis and procrastination by the euro-zone’s policymakers. Recently Belgian and French government bonds have been in the financial markets’ bad books. Investors are even sniffy about German bonds: an auction of ten-year Bunds on November 23rd shifted only €3.6 billion-worth ($4.8 billion) of the €6 billion-worth on offer.

Worse, there are signs that the euro zone’s economy is heading for recession, if it is not there already. Industrial orders in the euro zone fell by 6.4% in September, the steepest decline since the dark days of December 2008. A closely watched index of euro-zone sentiment, based on surveys of purchasing managers in manufacturing and services, is also signalling contraction, with a reading of 47.2: anything below 50 suggests activity is shrinking. The European Commission’s index of consumer confidence fell in November for the fifth month in a row.

Now an even bigger calamity is looking likelier. The intensifying financial pressure raises the chances of a disorderly default by a government, a run of retail deposits on banks short of cash, or a revolt against austerity that would mark the start of the break-up of the euro zone.

This long read appeared in the latest edition of The Economist...and was posted on their website on November 26th. Washington state reader S.A. was the first reader through the door with this piece...and it's well worth the read if you have the time. The link is here.

Mr. Schauble said eurozone finance ministers, who are meeting in Brussels, could not agree on the terms of the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF). He told Germany’s Handelsblatt that although Europe needed a fund “capable of action”, plans for the EFSF were too “intricate and complex” for investors to understand.

The finance ministers, who were meeting ahead of a full Ecofin summit today, acknowledged the €440bn (£376bn) fund would not win support to leverage it up to €1 trillion. Its capacity would be between €500bn and €700bn instead – a total that is unlikely to be big enough to rescue Spain and Italy.

This short story was posted in The Telegraph just before midnight London time...and I thank Washington state reader once again for sending it our way. The link is here.

Gold mining stocks are trading at their cheapest level in at least nine years even as the industry’s profits are estimated to almost double this year and bullion trades close to its historic high.

The benchmark NYSE Arca Gold BUGS Index (HUI) that includes Barrick Gold Corp., Newmont Mining Corp. and AngloGold Ashanti Ltd. ended last week at 17 times earnings, the lowest since at least November 2002 and below a five-year average of 37 times. The gold index’s 16 members will increase combined per-share earnings 94 percent this year, according to estimates compiled by Bloomberg.

“When you look back in history, you will say this was a buying opportunity,” said John Wong, a portfolio manager at CQS Group’s New City Investment Managers in London and lead manager of the $200 million Golden Prospect Precious Metals Ltd., a fund holding gold and silver stocks. “It’s like a coiled spring.”

I plucked this Bloomberg story from a GATA release late last night...and it's a must read. The link is here.

Sprott Asset Management's John Embry told King World News yesterday that he's trying to get investors to remember the fundamental factors favoring gold and silver, which is hard enough even before contemplating the washout in mining shares. But like GoldMoney's James Turk, Embry envisions silver's doubling rather quickly.

I thank Chris Powell for providing the title...and the above paragraph. The link to the KWN blog is here.

As we approach the end of 2011, the silver spot price has admittedly endured a tougher road than we would have expected. And let’s be honest – what investment firm on earth has pounded the table on silver harder than we have? After the orchestrated silver sell-off in May 2011 [please see June 2011 MAAG article entitled, "Caveat Venditor"], silver promptly rose back to US$40/oz where it consolidated nicely, only to drop back below US$30 within a two week span in late September.1 The September sell-off was partly due to the market’s disappointment over Bernanke’s Operation Twist, which sounded interesting but didn’t involve any real money printing. Like the May sell-off before it, however, it was also exacerbated by a seemingly needless 21% margin rate hike by the CME on September 23rd, followed by a 20% margin hike by the Shanghai Gold Exchange – the CME’s counterpart in China, three days later.

The paper markets still dictate the spot market for physical gold and silver. When we talk about the "paper market", we’re referring to any paper contract that claims to have an underlying link to the price of gold or silver, and we’re referring to contracts that are almost always levered. It’s highly questionable today whether the paper market has any true link to the physical market for gold and silver, and the futures market is the most obvious and influential "paper market" offender. When the futures exchanges like the CME hike margin rates unexpectedly, it’s usually under the pretense of protecting the "integrity of the exchange" by increasing the collateral (money) required to hold a position, both for the long (future buyer) and the short (future seller). When they unexpectedly raise margin requirements two days after silver has already declined by 22%, however, who do you think that margin increase hurts the most? The long buyer, or the short seller? By raising the margin requirement at the very moment the long contracts have already received an initial margin call (because the price of silver has dropped), they end up doubling the longs’ pain – essentially forcing them to sell their contracts. This in turn creates even more downward price pressure, and ends up exacerbating the very risks the margin hikes were allegedly designed to address.

Ever since Eric Sprott cottoned on to the work of silver analyst Ted Butler, he grasped the silver price management situation in an instant. Eric's a really smart guy, but this ain't rocket science...it's elementary school arithmetic, along with a basic understanding of what the Commitment of Traders Report is all about.

Eric has a few coins to rub together...so he took action...and his silver trust PSLV was born. He's been at it ever since. His latest commentary [probably mostly written by his co-author, David Baker] is a call to arms to the world's silver producers. We should also consider it a call to arms for us as well, so I would suggest that you add the gift of silver to your Christmas list this year...and don't forget to buy some for yourself.

This longish absolute must read essay is posted over at the sprott.com website. I thank Australian reader Wesley Legrand for being the first one through the door with this piece...and the link is here.