Confidential whistleblower documents that helped spark a massive state and federal investigation into how Bank of New York Mellon Corp charged pension funds for currency exchange, provide a rare window into how a bank insider aided a lawsuit against the bank.

The information provided by whistleblower Grant Wilson, who worked at BNY Mellon, included a detailed analysis of how the bank allegedly provided "fictitious" foreign-currency costs for pension funds.

The analysis included a step-by-step guide to how currencies were traded and internal profits generated by the bank, according to documents seen by Reuters. A memo detailing fellow employees also was provided.

This Reuters story was picked up by finance.yahoo.com late yesterday afternoon...and is Elliot Simon's first contribution to today's column. It's a must read for sure...and the link is here.

A federal appeals court granted an emergency ruling late Tuesday that temporarily halted proceedings in the Security and Exchange Commission's case against Citigroup. The decision will allow the court to consider an appeal of a lower court’s decision to throw out a $285 million fraud settlement between the commission and Citigroup.

The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, based in New York, ruled that further action in the case would be delayed until at least Jan. 17, giving it time to rule on whether it would grant an expedited hearing of the appeal and whether the two sides should have to simultaneously prepare for a trial.

Judge Jed S. Rakoff of Federal District Court in Manhattan threw out the settlement in November and ordered the agency and Citigroup to prepare for a trial in July. Although Citigroup and the S.E.C. have jointly appealed Judge Rakoff’s decision, he said the underlying case should proceed, with the two sides continuing to prepare for court hearings in the case.

This story appeared in Tuesday's edition of The New York Times...and I thank Phil Barlett for sending it along. The link is here.

The Fed is using what is termed a "temporary U.S. dollar liquidity swap arrangement" with the European Central Bank (ECB). There are similar arrangements with the central banks of Canada, England, Switzerland, and Japan. Simply put, the Fed trades or "swaps" dollars for euros. The Fed is compensated by payment of an interest rate (currently 50 basis points, or one-half of 1%) above the overnight index swap rate. The ECB, which guarantees to return the dollars at an exchange rate fixed at the time the original swap is made, then lends the dollars to European banks of its choosing.

Why are the Fed and the ECB doing this? The Fed could, after all, lend directly to U.S. branches of foreign banks. It did a great deal of lending to foreign banks under various special credit facilities in the aftermath of Lehman's collapse in the fall of 2008. Or the ECB could lend euros to banks and they could purchase dollars in foreign-exchange markets. The world is, after all, awash in dollars.

The two central banks are engaging in this roundabout procedure because each needs a fig leaf. The Fed was embarrassed by the revelations of its prior largess with foreign banks. It does not want the debt of foreign banks on its books. A currency swap with the ECB is not technically a loan.

This story showed up in The Wall Street Journal yesterday...and is posted in the clear in this GATA release...and the link is here.

World War II’s Battle for Cassino leveled the Italian town and its hilltop abbey. Now, the 33,000 residents are digging out from the rubble left by Wall Street.

Six decades after U.S.-led forces ousted the Nazis from Cassino, a new generation is grappling with the fallout from the debts of postwar rebuilding -- borrowings that grew because of a derivative that backfired. Soaring costs forced Cassino, 80 miles southeast of Rome, to settle an interest-rate swap with JPMorgan Chase & Co. in 2009, leaving the town unable to pay for daycare for 60 infants and services for the poor.

It sounds like JPMorgan pulled a "Jefferson County" in Cassino, Italy...and I'm sure there are lots more example of this floating around that we haven't heard of yet. I thank Australian reader Wesley Legrand for digging up this businessweek.com story from late last night...and it's certainly worth the read...and the link is here.

Argentina was used as a testing ground by the global power elite to learn how a full-scale financial, monetary, banking and economic collapse can be controlled and its social consequences suitably engineered to ensure that, with time: (a) the bankers came out unharmed, (b) “democratic order” is re-instated and the new government imposes another sovereign debt mega-swap, balance their numbers, and calm the people down (or else!), and (c) put big smiles back on bankster faces…Business as usual!

The lessons learned in Argentina in 2001/3 are today being used in Greece, Ireland, Spain, Italy, Iceland, the UK and the US.

So, “Occupy Wall Street” demonstrators, lend me your ears! You haven’t got a chance! The global money masters already made their financial war game exercise in Argentina.

This is a very interesting article is posted over at the asalbuchi.com.ar website. I consider it a must read...and I thank Roy Stephens for sharing it with us. The link is here.

The UK jobs market in 2012 is set to be in a worse state than at any time in the past two decades, with a “serious risk” of a surge in redundancies, a bitter analysis has warned.

Workers face another year of the severe pay restraint that has characterised the economy since 2008, with companies set for a continued “productivity pause” as they batten down the hatches, the body said.

In a further bleak outlook for the year ahead, a separate report from Totaljobs, the jobs site, warns vacancies will plummet in the first half – particularly among entry-level jobs – causing youth unemployment to rise further beyond the 1 million barrier.

This joyful bit of reading was posted in The Telegraph yesterday morning...and is another Roy Stephens offering. The link is here.

Six weeks after forming a transitional government to overcome its crisis, Greece is still failing to deliver its promised reforms. The cabinet of Prime Minister Lucas Papademos is deeply divided and has lost the public's confidence. Even the most urgent measures have ground to a halt.

The president of Greece's SEV business federation, Dimitris Daskalopoulos, recently invited journalists to his imposing neoclassical headquarters in Athens. He straightened his tie, leaned forward and with a grim expression spoke into half a dozen microphones arrayed in front of him. "Now the issue is simply whether we remain in Europe or not. The governing parties have an obligation to work together honestly to finally banish the nightmare of a return to the drachma. If this government doesn't get it right, Greece will go hungry."

His dramatic appeal was ignored, once again. The Socialist PASOK party, the conservative-liberal New Democracy party and the far-right LAOS party formed a transitional government six weeks ago under non-partisan former central banker Lucas Papademos. They vowed to avert a looming state bankruptcy. But they remain as divided as ever.

This story was posted at the German website spiegel.de yesterday...and is another Roy Stephens offering. The link is here.

The European debt crisis will dominate 2012. Forget resolutions: leaders will take the embattled eurozone to the edge of the political and economic abyss before deciding to resolve the crisis.

While the leaders wrangle without resolution, sovereign states will crack on. Spain and Italy will reassure markets with their tough austerity plans but on the streets they will face dangerous civil unrest.

It will be the revolts, a sort of Mediterranean Spring, rather than the continued financial traumas, that will eventually goad leaders into action.

This story was posted in The Telegraph early yesterday afternoon...and is Roy Stephens final story in today's column. The link is here.

A senior Iranian official on Tuesday delivered a sharp threat in response to economic sanctions being readied by the United States, saying his country would retaliate against any crackdown by blocking all oil shipments through the Strait of Hormuz, a vital artery for transporting about one-fifth of the world’s oil supply.

The declaration by Iran's first vice president, Mohammad-Reza Rahimi, came as President Obama prepares to sign legislation that, if fully implemented, could substantially reduce Iran’s oil revenue in a bid to deter it from pursuing a nuclear weapons program.

This story appeared in the Tuesday edition of The New York Times...and I thank Phil Barlett for sending it along. The link is here.

Afghanistan's government signed a deal Wednesday with China's state-owned National Petroleum Corporation, allowing it to become the first foreign company to exploit the country's oil and natural gas reserves.

The contract, which covers the northeastern provinces of Sari Pul and Faryab, is the first of several such blocks to be put on the market in coming months, Afghan Minister of Mines Wahidullah Shahrani said during the signing ceremony.

Afghanistan has been seeking to find ways to exploit some of its mineral wealth to offset the loss of revenues when foreign aid and spending drops when international combat troops leave by the end of 2014. The government has been keen to develop an oil-extraction and refining capability for the landlocked nation, which is entirely reliant on fuel imports from neighboring Iran and Central Asian nations.

This AP story was picked up by finance.yahoo.com yesterday...and I thank West Virginia reader Elliot Simon for bringing it to my attention. The link is here.

A few weeks ago, some senior officials at Bank of Tokyo Mitsubishi spotted a fascinating fact: For the first time the volume of Japanese government bonds sitting on the bank's balance sheet swelled above corporate and consumer loans.

Welcome to a key theme of 2012. During the past four decades, it was widely assumed in the Western world that the main role of banks and asset managers was to provide funding to the private sector, rather than act as a piggy bank for the state. But now that assumption -- like so many of the other ideas that dominated before 2007 -- is quietly crumbling. And not just in Japan.

And as Chris Powell adds at the beginning of this story..."Suppressing the gold price is a crucial piece of the "financial repression" cited here, as a rising gold price would advertise the theft perpetrated by government bonds paying a negative interest rate."

This Financial Times story from December 22nd is posted in the clear in this GATA release...and the link is here.

Gold has been among the best investments in 2011.

Shares of gold miners? Among the worst.

Gold is up 12% this year but shares of gold miners have fallen almost 16%. Smaller gold miners are down almost 40%, based on the returns of leading exchange-traded funds tracking those stocks.

The surprising gulf has caused pain for some of the biggest names on Wall Street -- including John Paulson, George Soros, David Einhorn, Seth Klarman, and Thomas Kaplan -- many of whom piled into gold shares over the past year, sometimes by shifting away from gold itself.

This story from yesterday's edition of The Wall Street Journal is posted in the clear in another GATA release...and the link to that is here.

Gold fell, capping the longest slump since October 2009, and silver tumbled to a three-month low as Europe’s deepening debt crisis drove commodities and stocks lower.

This Bloomberg story was posted over at the businessweek.com website yesterday...and if you believe these reasons why gold and silver 'fell' all of a sudden starting at 9:00 a.m. Eastern time yesterday, then I have some swamp land that I want to sell you real cheap.

I thank Elliot Simon for sending me this piece...and it's worth running through, just for [dis]information purposes only. The link is here.

The United States Mint said on Wednesday it has enough American Eagle gold and silver bullion coins to meet demand and does not expect to allocate them in early 2012.

Sales of the U.S. gold and silver bullion coins have slowed in the fourth quarter as precious metals prices retreated from record highs, bucking a trend earlier this year when investors flocked to physical gold and silver as safe havens.

"As we plan on having sufficient quantities of all coins available, we do not anticipate having to allocate the initial release," U.S. Mint spokesman Michael White said in a note.

This short Reuters piece was posted on their website yesterday afternoon...and I thank Scott Pluschau for sending it along. The link is here.

In yesterday's column I posted a KWN blog that featured Jim Turk. Eric King sent me the audio interview, which is now posted on his website...and the link is here.

Sprott Asset Management's John Embry told King World News that the fundamentals supporting gold and silver as insurance against monetary debasement remain in place, that Asian demand for the metals is strong, that the market manipulators have an easy time pushing futures prices down during the holiday week, and that he expects 2012 to bring lots more "quantitative easing" and sharply rising metal prices.

This is a must read...and I thank Chris Powell for providing the preamble. The link to the KWN blog is here.

Tocqueville Gold Fund manager John Hathaway today commented to King World News about indicators of a bottom in gold, including "panic liquidation."

“The action is what you would expect in a thin market like this, the moves are exaggerated. The people that have shorts on, which has been the right trade for the last several months, they are just pushing it to the limit (on the downside) to make their year. Obviously it’s uncomfortable to see this kind of action, but, to some extent, you have to look at the context in which you see it.”

“I think it’s games being played and you can always play games in thin markets. The bigger picture is, first of all, we are in a bottoming process for the stocks and the metal. Sentiment is rock bottom. I think we are seeing a number of different things that are indicative of a bottom."

Like John Embry, everything that John Hathaway has to say is a must read as well...and this blog is no exception. The link is here.