More than $1 billion of client money is still missing at failed brokerage MF Global, according to the bankruptcy trustee's latest estimate. At Thursday's hearing of the Senate Agriculture Committee, the company's principal regulator will try to explain how his agency failed to provide the most basic protection for financial consumers.

Gary Gensler, chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), has a lot of explaining to do. Segregating customer money and protecting client accounts from being raided by an unscrupulous broker, is even more important in the futures industry than it is in other markets. In the world of stocks and bonds regulated by the Securities and Exchange Commission, it's terrible when client funds go missing, but at least the average investor has a backstop in the Securities Investor Protection Corp., which provides insurance up to $500,000. There is nothing like it in the futures industry, so if they do nothing else CFTC regulators have to make sure that nobody is digging into the customer cookie jar.

This must read story from yesterday's edition of The Wall Street Journal...and it's printed in the clear in this GATA release. I thank Washington state reader S.A. for bringing it to my attention...and the link is here.

Here is a 7-minute CNBC video from yesterday about the MF Global hearings referred to in the first story in today's column. All three commentators are less than kind to Mr. Gensler...and it's very much worth watching. I thank West Virginia reader Elliot Simon for sending me this video clip...and the link is here.

Here's an interview that Ann gave with Jim Puplava over at financialsense.com yesterday. I thank Cris Sheridan for alerting me to this interview. It runs for about 33 minutes. I haven't had the time to listen to it myself, but I'll be doing that later today. The link is here.

Here's a Reuters story from yesterday that's written by columnist Felix Salmon. It bears the headlined "Hank Paulson's Inside Job". Part of this story is found in a Bloomberg piece that I ran in this column on Tuesday...but this Reuters piece connects all the dots.

What on earth did Hank Paulson think his job was in the summer of 2008? As far as most of us were concerned, he was secretary of the U.S. Treasury, answerable to the American people and the president. But at the same time, in secret meetings, Paulson was hanging out with his old Goldman Sachs buddies, giving them invaluable information about what he was thinking in his new job.

Paulson was giving inside tips to Wall Street in general, and to Goldman types in particular: exactly the kind of behavior that "Government Sachs" conspiracy theorists have been speculating about for years. Turns out they were right.

This Reuters piece from November 29th is well worth your time...and it's imbedded in this GATA release. The link is here.

Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley filed the lawsuit [yesterday] against the three banks, as well as Wells Fargo & Co. and Ally Financial Inc., in state court in Boston. She accused the banks of engaging in unfair and deceptive trade practices in violation of state law.

“The stakes could not be higher at this stage of the game,” Coakley said at a press conference in Boston. “The foreclosure crisis continues to be at the root of the economic mess that we find ourselves in and our inability to turn it around.”

State attorneys general across the U.S. have been negotiating a possible settlement with the five banks that would resolve a probe into foreclosure practices that began more than a year ago following disclosures that faulty documents were being used to seize homes.

This Bloomberg story from yesterday is Elliot Simon's second offering in today's column...and the link is here.

Interviewed by King World News yesterday, Paul Brodsky of QB Asset Management says the world financial system has become entirely a matter of maintaining the solvency of a few big international banks, for whom all countries and peoples are slaves.

I thank Eric for sending me the blog...and Chris Powell for writing the introduction. This short piece is well worth your while...and the link is here.

The Federal Reserve and other banks announced Wednesday that they were engaging in a co-ordinated action to provide liquidity to Europe's credit markets.

What essentially happened is that the Fed cut the interest rate it charges the European Central Bank to borrow dollars.

The ECB wants the dollars so it can lend them out to European banks, which have been having trouble borrowing dollars at affordable rates due to fears about their financial health.

It’s worth taking a moment to see what actually happens with these swap facilities because they can create the illusion we’re sending boatloads of dollars overseas and the ECB is sending us boatloads full of euros.

This easy-to-understand explanation of making money out of nothing is a must read if you know little or nothing about how to operate the keyboard on your computer...which is how it all happens. I thank reader Howard Brown for sending me this cnbc.com story from Wednesday...and the link is here.

Global stock markets on Wednesday were euphoric after the major central banks around the world made it easier for banks to access dollars. But the euro-zone debt crisis rages on nonetheless. At the most, say German commentators, Wednesday's move merely buys some time -- but not much.

On the one hand, Wednesday's coordinated effort taken by central banks around the world provided a needed shot in the arm to uneasy global stock markets. It was a clear message that the European Central Bank, the US Federal Reserve, the Bank of England and the central banks of Canada, Japan and Switzerland were not going to leave the global economy in the lurch.

On the other hand, however, Wednesday's announcement is a clear sign that the problems facing the global financial system are serious. The last time such a measure became necessary was in October 2008, at the height of the financial crisis that erupted in the wake of the collapse of investment bank Lehman Brothers. Indeed, European Central Bank President Mario Draghi warned on Thursday that the ongoing debt crisis rocking the euro zone may spill over into the real economy. "Downside risks to the economic outlook have increased."

This story was posted over at the German website spiegel.de yesterday...and I thank Roy Stephens for sharing it with us. The link is here.

The Bank of England Governor Sir Mervyn King urges banks to brace themselves for a potential eurozone collapse amid fears that Britain is caught in a second credit crunch.

Sir Mervyn said financial systems around the world are vulnerable to the eurozone debt crisis and its underlying causes - but warned a resolution was "beyond the control" of any UK authority.

It certainly is, Sir Mervyn, as it's the end of the current financial an monetary system as we know it...and there's not a damn thing that anyone can do about it. As you say, it's "beyond the control" of any UK authority...or any other authority, for that matter.

I thank Roy Stephens for this 2:48 minute video that was posted over at The Telegraph yesterday. It's a must watch for sure...and the link is here.

I had just finished editing this column at 4:30 a.m. Eastern time when Eric King slid this Nigel Farage blog into my in-box...and I thought that this was the perfect spot for it. Here's a short quote...“I think the fact the central banks acted overnight in a coordinated manner that they did tells you that things are probably much worse than any of us know. I think what it tells you is that there must be, there just have to be some very, very major banks that are teetering on the edge of collapse.”

I would agree...and the link to this King World News blog is here.

“It’s not even a theory; it is a theology.” So Nouriel Roubini, with his best Strangelovian inflection, describes the gold standard to Yahoo Finance’s The Daily Ticker, and in doing so displays shocking ignorance of the gold standard and either the work of Ben Bernanke or a presumption that the rest of the world is ignorant.

Professor Roubini launched an amusing 16 hour War via Twitter, tweeting against Tangent Capital Management’s James Rickards and his Currency Wars: The Making of the Next Global Crisis. But in prosecuting that war Prof. Roubini steps on a landmine. He attempts to refute Rickards by reference, in part, to the writings of one Ben Bernanke.

Whatever one thinks of Bernanke, this is the intellectual equivalent of an unforced error. As this writer has previously noted, then-Professor Ben Bernanke observed, in an NBER Working Paper written with Harold James, that the sustained deflation that was the precipitating factor of the Great Depression was not the fault of the gold standard, but was “the result of a mismanaged international gold standard.”

Rickards couldn't buy this kind of publicity. Writer Ralph Benko skewers Roubini in this piece posted over at Forbes on Monday...and I thank Nick Arnold for sending it my way...and the link is here.

Rick had this to say about the Sprott’s letter, “I think it’s brilliant and I think the silver producers ought to listen, in particular some of the small silver producers where Eric owns more of the company than their senior managers do. The fact is that silver producers are being asked by their shareholders to have a view on the silver price, not merely to have a view about their salaries and options. I hope...and in fact suspect...that the mining company managements will pass this IQ test which Eric has proposed to them.”

This King World News blog from yesterday is well worth your time...and the link is here.

Idaho-based Coeur d’Alene Mines would at a future point consider holding some of its reserves in silver, as an alternative to keeping all of its money in the bank, CEO Mitchell Krebs told Mining Weekly Online on Wednesday.

Asked to comment on the idea, Krebs was not dismissive.

“It would provide additional leverage to investors. If we are bullish on silver and gold as companies, one of the underlying themes there is the weakening US dollar, in our case,” he said in an interview in Toronto.

“It’s an idea that’s consistent with why we feel good about silver and gold prices.”

However, Krebs, who took over as CEO of the TSX- and NYSE-listed company in July, said Coeur would first have to build up what he called a “sufficient cash cushion” before it would consider holding some of it in precious metals. The firm ended the September quarter with $208-million in the bank.

This "sufficient cash cushion" is all b.s. of course, as silver is money. $50 million is nothing when you have this kind of cash position...plus cash flow. You can convert cash to physical...a vice versa...with a few phone calls. They could do it before the sun sets today if they really cared about their shareholders...which they [and most other silver companies] don't. And it's always been my opinion that this particular silver company [amongst a handful of others] is strong with the dark side of The Force...but I'd be happy to be proven wrong.

This story was posted over at the miningweekly.com website yesterday...and I thank reader 'David in California' for sharing it with us. I consider it a must read...and the link is here. The imbedded Reuters photo is worth the trip.

The Bank of Korea said Friday it has boosted the size of its gold holdings by $850 million in November, up about 39% from the prior month, bringing the value of its total reserves to $2.17 billion, according to a monthly reserves statement posted on its website. The central bank accumulated 15 metric tons in several purchases during the month, lifting its bullion holding to 54.4 tons, according to reports citing the central bank's head of reserve-investment strategy, Lee Jung. "Demand for gold is increasing as a hedge against global inflation amid the persistent sovereign-debt crisis in Europe," Lee was cited as saying by Dow Jones Newswires. The November additions marked the second such gold-buying move this year, according to BOK data.

This one-paragraph story was posted late last night on the marketwatch.com website...and you just read it. I thank reader 'David in California' once again...and the link to the hard copy is here.