Instead of looking out for MF investors – and customers who are still waiting for their money – it looks like regulators and the bankruptcy trustees are busy suppressing information. Instead of full transparency, regulators and the trustees are holding onto crucial details that might tell us all who was asleep at the wheel when the broker/dealer and futures commission merchant (FCM) headed over the cliff.

Bob English, an independent trader and contributing editor to the blog, Economic Policy Journal, published a post Monday morning that raises serious questions about the Securities and Exchange Commission’s program of regulation for broker/dealers and, in particular, the agency’s role in keeping the truth from the public about what went wrong at MF Global. We’re also being kept from the truth about other broker/dealers who may be putting risky trades on their books or whose controls over segregation of customer assets may be weak or non-existent.

Like I told Dr. Dave Janda in my radio interview on Sunday...all of Wall Street is a criminal organization, including the 'regulators'.

Reader 'David in California' sent me this story that was posted over at the forbes.com website yesterday...and the link is here.

The authorities have fallen silent lately about a possible settlement over foreclosure abuses at big mortgages servicing companies.

The talks began in earnest last March, and people keep whispering that a deal is nigh. But last week, a spokesman for Shaun Donovan, the secretary of Housing and Urban Development and a lead negotiator, said that there was nothing new to report.

That’s probably not a terrible thing. After all, no deal is better than a bad deal. State and federal authorities jumped into these talks without conducting serious investigations into foreclosure shenanigans. Why strike a deal — one that would, say, shield banks from new litigation over toxic loans, flawed securitizations and the mess at MERS, the registry that has made such a jumble of land records — without knowing what happened?

If you're caught up in the mortgage fraud web in the U.S...this Gretchen Morgenson story in the Sunday edition of The New York Times is a must read...and the link is here.

Economist and former banker Alasdair Macleod, who spoke at GATA's London conference last August, examines "financial repression" today in his new essay at GoldMoney. "Financial repression" involves various forms of market rigging by government, and while it appears to have worked for a while just after World War II, Macleod is doubtful about its prospects today. His commentary is headlined "Financial Repression" and it's posted at the goldmoney.com website.

I borrowed this commentary from a GATA release on Sunday...and I thank Chris for writing the preamble. The story is must read...and the link is here.

No sooner had Alasdair posted his comments regarding the BIS paper on 'financial repression' when an article showed up in a Reuters column on Sunday saying that this was, all in all, a wonderful idea.

As Chris Powell added in the GATA dispatch where the story was imbedded..."Gold price suppression [and silver - Ed] can't quite yet be mentioned in this propaganda, but it fits perfectly. Indeed, it's the keystone of the operation."

That is indeed the case...and I suppose that a little strychnine in your drinking water wouldn't do you any harm, either. The link to this must read Reuters story is here.

The good doctor was kind enough to interview me on his Operation Freedom radio program over at WAAM 1600 All-Talk radio out of Ann Arbor, Michigan on Sunday afternoon. It lasts about twenty-five minutes...and the link to the mp3 file is here.

Iran and Russia have replaced the U.S. dollar with their own currencies in their trade ties, a senior Iranian diplomat announced on Saturday.

Speaking to FNA, Tehran's ambassador to Moscow, Seyed Reza Sajjadi said that the proposal for replacing the dollar with the ruble and rial was raised by Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in a meeting with his Iranian counterpart, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, in Astana on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization meeting.

"Since then we have acted on this basis and a part of our interactions is done in ruble now," Sajjadi stated, adding that many Iranian traders are using the ruble for their trade deals.

This story was posted by the FARS News Agency on Saturday...which I plucked from Chris Powell's GATA release. The link is here.

The year was 1984 and Lord Lawson received a telephone call at 6am on October 1 informing him that the Governor of the Bank of England wanted to see him "before the markets opened".

At the duly arranged meeting some 90 minutes later, Lord Lawson was informed that Johnson Matthey Bankers (JMB) was on the brink of collapse. The Bank would need to take JMB over or face a possible run on the bank's parent company, Johnson Matthey, a key player in the London bullion market. Sir Robin Leigh-Pemberton, the Governor, explained that there was no alternative as all other options – a private sector rescue – had been exhausted. JMB, he explained, had a very bad loan book. Losses could total £100m and the Treasury (and hence the taxpayer) was in line to make up any shortfall in funding that could not be provided by the Bank.

Lord Lawson had a few minutes to make a decision. "If the news itself was unpalatable, the very late stage at which I was informed made it even worse," Lord Lawson wrote. "As a result I was being given only a few minutes to decide whether or not to give an open-ended guarantee of taxpayers' money in support of a rescue about whose wisdom I was far from convinced."

Anyone who owns a decent amount of silver and/or gold probably has a few J&M bars in their stash. This is how JMB vanished off the face of the earth...although what's left of the company still pours 100 oz. silver bars out of their refining facility in Salt Lake City.

This story appeared in the Saturday edition of The Telegraph...and is Roy Stephens first offering of the day. It's well worth the read...and the link is here.

Swiss National Bank Chairman Philipp Hildebrand resigned with immediate effect today, saying he could not prove he had been unaware of a controversial currency trade made by his wife and wanted to protect the integrity of the central bank.

Hildebrand's decision to relinquish one of the top 10 central banking jobs in the world came as Swiss parliamentarians met to discuss the scandal, which erupted last week after Sarasin bank sacked an employee who leaked details of the trade to a political opponent of the central banker.

Until now, Hildebrand had resisted calls to step down, saying he learned of his wife's trade the day only after she made it and rejecting claims by Swiss magazine Weltwoche that he had personally authorised the currency deal.

I stole this Reuters story from another GATA release on Monday...and the link is here.

Berlin appears to be losing influence at the European Central Bank. Leading economist Hans-Werner Sinn, 63, believes that Germany has been 'pushed to the margins' at the institution and that its hard-line positions on monetary policy are a thing of the past.

This very short interview was posted on the German website spiegel.de yesterday...and is Roy Stephens second offering in this column. It's worth a minute of your time...as that's how long it will take to read it. The link is here.

Blue-chip names like Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer, and Peugeot are among firms bailing out Europe's ailing banks in a reversal of the established roles of clients and lenders.

One source with knowledge of the so-called repo deals, or short-term secured lending, said the two U.S. pharmaceutical groups and French car maker were the latest to sign up for them.

Europe's banks are struggling to secure the cash to fund their day-to-day business and have largely stopped lending to each other for fear Europe's sovereign debt could land any of their peers in trouble.

You have to wonder how stupid these companies are, because if the banks don't trust each other, why should these companies? Just asking.

This Reuters story from yesterday is courtesy of West Virginia reader Elliot Simon...and the link is here.

The outlook for cash-strapped Greece is looking increasingly bleak. Government reforms are behind target, and negotiations with private creditors over voluntary debt relief are stalled. A disorderly default could be just weeks away.

At least the backdrop to the heated exchange was glamorous. The venue for the mid-December conference, which was hosted by the US Chamber of Commerce, was the Hotel InterContinental in Athens. Poul Thomsen, wearing a purple tie, was standing on the floor of the ballroom. Thomsen, the International Monetary Fund's envoy for Greece, summarized the country's reform efforts to date in harsh terms. "Reforms are running behind schedule in most areas," he said. There was no longer even a pretense of hope. When Thomsen predicted that the economy would shrink in 2012, someone in the room shouted angrily: "Your troika is destroying us!"

Two years after the crisis began, the Greek tragedy is reaching a new climax. The economic data are distressing, the reforms are progressing very slowly...and now negotiations with private lenders on a voluntary write-down of Greek government bonds appear to be on the rocks.

But the Greek government and the so-called troika, consisting of the European Union, the IMF and the ECB, are determined to stick to their current strategy. IMF envoy Thomsen plans to return to Athens next week, and he is already starting to ramp up the pressure. In light of the country's gloomy economic outlook, the troika wants to revise the benchmark figures for the restructuring program approved in October.

This is another story posted over at spiegel.de yesterday...for which I thank Roy Stephens once again. It's well worth your time...and the link is here.

Unemployment in Greece is now 18 percent, rising to 35 percent for young people between the ages of 15 and 29 — up from 12 percent and 24 percent, respectively, in late 2010. But the agricultural sector has been one of the few to show gains since the crisis hit, adding 32,000 jobs between 2008 and 2010 — most of them taken by Greeks, not migrant workers from abroad, according to a study released this fall by the Pan-Hellenic Confederation of Agricultural Associations.

Nikos Gavalas and Alexandra Tricha, both 31 and trained as agriculturalists, were frustrated working on poorly paying, short-term contracts in Athens, where jobs are scarce and the cost of living is high. So last year, they decided to start a new project: growing edible snails for export.

As Greece’s blighted economy plunges further into the abyss, the couple are joining with an exodus of Greeks who are fleeing to the countryside and looking to the nation’s rich rural past as a guide to the future. They acknowledge that it is a peculiar undertaking, with more manual labor than they, as college graduates, ever imagined doing. But in a country starved by austerity even as it teeters on the brink of default, it seemed as good a gamble as any.

This story was posted in The New York Times on Sunday...and is another Roy Stephens offering. It's an interesting read...and the link is here.

GoldMoney founder and GATA consultant James Turk, interviewed by King World News yesterday, warns against the explosion of anti-gold propaganda now coming from central planners, market manipulators, and government agents. Currency debasement remains inevitable, Turk says, and that means higher precious metals prices.

The introductory paragraph is courtesy of Chris Powell...and the link to the KWN blog is here.

Here's a GATA release from yesterday...and I'll let Chris Powell do the honours, as his preamble to the story is extensive. Both the preamble and imbedded story are must reads. It was posted over at the gata.org website on Saturday...and the link is here.

Notwithstanding how good current relations may be between the Netherlands and the U.S., once global investor confidence waned on the American dollar, the Dutch could still lose the gold reserves it placed in full trust in various strategic vaults in the US. Call it perhaps survivor's instinct.

Gold experts in the Netherlands advised the federal government it should start facilitating the repatriation of its gold reserves from the U.S. , as well as from Great Britain and Canada, after the Dutch central bank (DNB) confirmed a Dutch newspaper report by the de Volkskrant that revealed much of the country's reserves of the yellow metal are not within the country.

Dutch gold experts all the more got restless when American commentator Jim Richards, according to the Radio Netherlands Worldwide, said the US government has the power to confiscate whatever foreign gold reserves it holds in the event global interest on the dollar decelerated, still owing to the global fiscal crisis that had shaken the fiscal stability of the much developed economies.

This 3-paragraph story was posted on the ibtimes.com website yesterday...so you've already read the entire thing...and the link to the hard copy is here.

Well, if you don't subscribe to CR's free publication Casey's Daily Dispatch then you have to put yesterday's commentary on your must read list. Both Louis James and Jeff Clark have more than a few things to say about the gold market.

"Some investors are frustrated and a few are worried that gold seems stuck in a rut. This stall in price has happened before, of course, but since 2001 it's always eventually powered to a new high. Unless one thinks the gold bull market is over, it's natural to wonder how long might we have to wait before seeing another new high."

"Absent some sort of global shock that sparks another rush into gold (easily possible in today's climate), I think the answer may lie in examining the size and length of past corrections and how long it took gold to reach new highs afterward."

As I said, it's a must read...and the link is here.

Bron Suchecki over at The Perth Mint has a comment about Jeff Clark's article posted above. In it he states..."I agree with Jeff Clark from Casey Research, who says investors should not “confuse short-term volatility with long-term forces” and stay the course. In this article I discuss the short-term factors Jeff identifies, and also analyse the recent decline in Indian consumer demand, another significant issue in the gold market."

This blog, posted over a the perthmintbullion.com website, is a must read as well...and the link is here.

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. is staying “overweight” on commodities as a rebound in demand revives speculation of shortages, with gold a favorite for 2012 as investors seek a hedge against Europe's debt crisis.

Gold futures traded on the Comex in New York may climb to $1,940 an ounce in 12 months as U.S. interest rates and inflation are expected to remain low, Jeffrey Currie, head of commodities research, said at the company’s Strategy Conference 2012 in London today, repeating the bank’s December forecast.

Morgan Stanley also named gold among its top picks in a report e-mailed today, saying bullion may average a record $2,200 an ounce. Gold prices are unlikely to move higher than $1,940 unless there is a “much weaker real rate environment” driven by inflation, which is not embedded in Goldman’s forecast, Currie said.

This Bloomberg story was sent to me by Washington state reader S.A. yesterday...and the link is here.

Mining entrepreneur Rob McEwen sure didn't sound discouraged in his interview with King World News yesterday. McEwen, founder of gold monster Goldcorp and now CEO of U.S. Gold, says money printing will carry the precious metals into an investment mania. An excerpt from the interview is posted at the King World News website...and the link is here.

Silver market analyst Ted Butler explains why silver market manipulation would be easier to prove than Bart Chilton of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission may think, and he wonders why the commission's latest investigation of the silver market has gone on for 3 1/2 years without result.

The contents of this GATA release...along with the Bart Chilton interview over at the financialsense.com website, imbedded in Ted's commentary...are all absolute must reads and must listens...and I urge you to give these commentaries the time that they richly deserve.

The link to the GATA release is here.