Even as government officials prepare to unveil new standards this week for how banks treat millions of Americans facing foreclosure, housing advocates and homeowners are skeptical the rules will be able to do something past efforts have not: provide a beleaguered borrower with one individual to help them navigate the mortgage maze.

While the entire process of seeking a mortgage modification is complicated and time-consuming, few elements are as maddening as the inability to get through to a representative at the bank, or being asked for the same documents again and again.

So the promise of a single point of contact has emerged as a crucial element in the much-ballyhooed $26 billion settlement reached earlier this month involving state attorneys general, the federal government and the five biggest mortgage servicers. These rules will apply nationwide and come with commitments of strong enforcement by federal and state authorities, but they carry a familiar ring for those experienced in the foreclosure process.

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

Three charts that perhaps will calm the nominal euphoria as Dow 13,000 screams across the screens. Since May 2008, the Dow is unchanged in price and down 50% in 'real' gold terms. The picture is just as disheartening from the start of 2011 and 2012. Next stop Dow 20,000 and Gold 20,000?

From May 2008, the Dow priced in Gold is down 50% while we have nominally recovered unchanged. From the start of 2011. The Dow is up 11.35% while in real terms it is down 12.4%...and from the beginning of this year, the Dow is up 4.8% while in gold 'real' terms, it is down 4.25%.

This short zerohedge.com piece from yesterday is another Phil Barlett offering. The charts are certainly worth the trip...and the link is here.

The Volcker Rule, and its limitations on bank trading, may have the unintended effect of dividing the world back into investment banks and commercial banks. The unusual twist here is that Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley may end up stuck on the wrong side of the fence, treated under the law as commercial banks instead of the investment banks they once were.

The backdrop to this issue is that it is increasingly clear that banks are simply unable to make as much money from proprietary and other trading businesses as they did before the financial crisis. Take Goldman Sachs. In 2007, Goldman had revenue of $7.6 billion from traditional investment banking, but $31.2 billion in revenue from trading-related operations. Last year, Goldman had just $17.3 billion in revenue related to trading operations.

This is a trend likely to accelerate. Under the Dodd-Frank regulatory overhaul, derivatives are to be traded on central clearing agencies rather than between investment banks as before the financial crisis. Heightened bank capital requirements prevent warehousing large amounts of securities and increase the cost of financing. Then there is the Volcker Rule, which is likely to substantially reduce much of the banks’ profits from their trading businesses.

This is the third story in a row from The New York Times...and the third in a row from Phil Barlett. The link is here.

Yesterday, without much fanfare, US debt to GDP ratio hit 101% with the latest issuance of $32 billion in 2 Year Bonds. If the moment when this ratio went from double to triple digits is still fresh in readers minds, is because it is: total debt hit and surpassed the most recently revised Q4 GDP on January 30, or just three weeks ago.

Said otherwise, it has taken the US 21 days to add a full percentage point to this most critical of debt sustainability ratios: but fear not, with just under $1 trillion in new debt issuance on deck in the next 9 months, we will be at 110% in no time.

This short piece was posted over at zerohedge.com yesterday...and I thank Australian reader Wesley Legrand for bringing it to my attention. It's worth the read...and the graphs are great. The link is here.

Greece may have dodged a default with its last-minute bailout deal, but longer-term doubts over its ability to repay its staggering debts remain, raising questions about whether even more rescue money will eventually be needed.

European leaders were to sign off on Greece’s second bailout of about 130 billion euros ($172 billion) at their summit meeting in Brussels next week — subject to Greece’s taking immediate steps to put into effect the deep structural changes that they agreed to.

Greece must also persuade, if not actually force, its private sector bondholders to accept a higher-than-expected loss of more than 70 percent on their holdings to reduce Greece’s debt stock by the targeted amount of 100 billion euros.

This is another Phil Barlett offering from The New York Times yesterday...and the link is here.

Nick Dunbar, author of The Devil's Derivatives, reveals how the country turned to investment bank Goldman Sachs for help getting around the deficit rules in order to join the Eurozone.

In his report for BBC's Newsnight, some of those who did the deal, talk publicly for the first time.

This 10-minute video was posted over at bbc.co.uk website on Monday. I thank reader 'T. Unger' for sending this my way...and it's well worth watching. The link is here.

There are many uncertainties in Greece today: whether the country can remain in the euro zone, whether the €130 billion ($171.8 billion) second bailout package will sufficiently reduce the insolvent country's staggering debt load, and whether the Greeks will ever implement the reforms their international creditors are demanding of them. At the moment, only one thing seems predictable: that nothing will remain the same. "Everything is changing, and everything is frightening," writes the newspaper Kathimerini.

Only with great difficulty was the transitional government of Prime Minister Lucas Papademos able to commit last week to the reforms that the European Union, the European Central Bank (ECB) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) had demanded -- and its commitment came at a high political price. The nationalist right-wing Popular Orthodox Rally (LAOS) withdrew from the government, and the heads of the two large traditional parties, the Panhellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK) and the conservative Nea Dimokratia (ND), or New Democracy, saw 43 of their members resign or be expelled from their respective parties.

The lesson can be summed up with two words: "panta rhei," or everything flows. No political commentary these days describes the situation in Greece as clearly as these words from ancient Greece.

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

With its massive austerity measures, Portugal has become the poster child of the troika of the EU, ECB and IMF. But the country is still stuck in a deep recession and it is unclear how it will return to growth. It may need to rely on European loans for years to come.

Nothing is sacred to Pedro Passos Coelho, not even Carnival. Portugal's prime minister expects government employees at their desks and working on Entrudo, the traditional high point of the country's Carnival celebrations, which falls on this Tuesday.

This is "not the time to talk about tradition," the conservative head of state has commanded those of his citizens who see the move as an attack on their culture. Rather, he says, they should stop "whining" about austerity measures. It's time, the prime minister adds, to break free of old structures and to change "lazy and sometimes self-involved patterns of behavior."

Fans of Carnival celebrations are not the only ones affected -- churchgoers and nationalists will have to make bitter sacrifices as well. In response to this national state of emergency, the Portuguese government plans to do away with four public holidays. Corpus Christi and Assumption are to be crossed off the calendar without a replacement, and public holidays celebrating Portugal's first republic and the 1640 end to its union with Spain can no longer be commemorated, as is customary, with family celebrations and an extended siesta.

Portugal, like Greece, is dead meat as well. I consider this 2-page story on Portugal a must read...and it's another Roy Stephens offering from yesterday's edition of spiegel.de. The link is here.

Europe's central planners have resorted to the ECB doing a massive counterfeiting scheme in an attempt to bailout insolvent nations.

This has never worked from Hungary, to Bosnia, to Argentina, to Weimar Germany. Inflation can never bail you out of insolvency. Because central bankers around the world believe that inflation is equivalent to growth, they are going to persist on this monetization of insolvent debt.

All of your developed countries from Japan, to Europe and America are in a condition of insolvency. As I said, central bankers are trying to monetize this debt away. It will never work, it has never worked and it cannot work...

This blog was posted over at King World News yesterday...and the link is here.

Here's another blog that Eric King sent my way yesterday. It's posted over at the KWN website as well...and the link to that is here.

Here's the last King World News offering of the day. Eric sent me this blog yesterday afternoon...and the link is here.

This audio interview with Nick Barisheff runs for an hour, so you may want to top up your coffee before you hit the 'play' button. It was posted over at the voiceamerica.com website on Monday...and the link is here.

This 2-page offering from Sprott Asset Management's chief investment strategist, John Embry, was posted in the February edition of the Investor's Digest of Canada...and I thank Australian reader Wesley Legrand for bringing it to my attention. It is, of course, a must read...and it's posted over at the sprott.com website. The link is here.