Last month, Glenn Neasham, an independent insurance agent, was ordered to spend 90 days in jail on a felony-theft conviction for selling a complex annuity to an 83-year-old woman who prosecutors alleged had shown signs of dementia.

The agent's conviction, by a state-court jury in Lake County, Calif., is sending shivers down the spines of Mr. Neasham's peers across the country. They can't recall another case where an agent was sent behind bars for selling an annuity.

Agents "who steal from vulnerable seniors will not get away with their shameful tricks," Steve Poizner, the state's then-insurance commissioner, said in a statement in 2010 when Mr. Neasham was arrested.

Mr. Neasham, 52 years old, maintains the woman appeared fine and wasn't confused at the time of the 2008 transaction and that he acted appropriately. His lawyer has filed notice of appeal, and a bail hearing is scheduled for this week.

This Wall Street Journal story showed up on their website on Sunday...and I thank Casey Research's own Alex Daley for sending it along. The link is here.

"If this were the last debt ceiling increase you could ask for, the final one, and you had to make it large enough for all current and future obligations, what would the request need to be?" Congressman Trey Gowdy (R-SC) asked Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner at a Capitol Hill hearing on Wednesday.

"I don’t know how to answer that question," Geithner said to Gowdy.

After being prodded by the Congressman, Geithner eventually told him, "it would be a lot."

“It would make you uncomfortable," he added. Also listen for "I'll have to get you that in writing" then not 30 seconds later say "he can NOT provide that in writing."

I bet it would be a lot...and no surprise that he won't provide it in writing! This 3:09 minute youtube.com video clip was posted over at the realclearpolitics.com website yesterday...and I thank reader Brian Doyal for bringing it to our attention. The link is here.

Now that inflation is beginning to pick up, it is vital to distinguish between what is real and what is just an illusion caused by inflation. If one does not, one might very well come away with the impression that the economy is shifting into higher gear when, in fact, it is not.

Take retail sales, for example. On the surface they are encouraging, since February’s sales gain was the most in five months. And since retail sales are one-half of consumers’ spending, which in turn makes up two-thirds of overall economic activity, one might be tempted to conclude that the worst is over.

One would be wrong. First of all, these are dollar figures, adjusted for the time of year but not for inflation. Second, most of the rise reflected a 6% surge in gasoline prices.

This marketwatch.com story was posted on their Internet site on Tuesday...and I lifted it from yesterday's King Report. The link is here.

Goldman Sachs Group Inc lost its bid to dismiss a lawsuit accusing it of defrauding investors by selling risky debt linked to subprime mortgages that it planned to bet against.

The decision by U.S. District Judge Victor Marrero in New York keeps alive a hedge fund's claims over a $2 billion offering of collateralized debt obligations, amid intense scrutiny over Goldman's activities before and after the 2008 financial crisis.

Marrero said the hedge fund Dodona I LLC may pursue nearly all its claims against Goldman, including that the Wall Street bank recklessly or intentionally sold the Hudson Mezzanine Funding CDOs to offload subprime risk on unsuspecting investors.

Roy Stephens sent me this Reuters piece that was posted on their website last evening...and the link is here.

A council of U.S. financial regulators should speed up Dodd-Frank Act rules needed to limit speculation on oil, natural gas, and other commodities, Bart Chilton, a member of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission said.

The CFTC and Securities and Exchange Commission, having delayed adopting regulations stemming from the 2010 financial-regulation overhaul, should consider asking the Financial Stability Oversight Council to complete the regulation defining which derivatives are swaps, Chilton said in a speech prepared for his appearance today before the Exchequer Club of Washington. The speculation limits rely on the definition.

The speculation limits are among the most controversial requirements in Dodd-Frank and spurred more than 13,000 comments to the CFTC from supporters such as Delta Air Lines Inc. and opponents such as Barclays Plc's Barclays Capital. CFTC commissioners voted 3-2 at an Oct. 18 meeting to approve the final regulation, with Jill E. Sommers and Scott O'Malia, both Republicans, voting in opposition.

A huge chunk of those 13,000 comments were about position limits in the Comex futures market in silver. This Bloomberg story was one I found posted in a GATA release yesterday. It's well worth reading...and the link is here.

Here's something you don't see every day...an interview with The Telegraph's Ambrose Evans-Pritchard. The interview runs 31:13...and the link pops up on the screen during the 1:47 introduction.

It's posted over at the mcalvanyweeklycommentary.com Internet site...and I thank reader Dennis Meredith for sharing this interview with us. I haven't heard it yet, but once I've finished this column, I'll be listening...and I would suggest you do the same. The link is here.

This documentary film obviously covers the big key issues that the mainstream bulls, bankers and politicians always conveniently fail to address... which they can continue doing for a time, until these issues destroy them, and the system.

It features some big guns with proven track records; Peter Schiff, Eric Sprott, James Turk, Bill Murphy, Alasdair Macleod, Jim Puplava, G. Edward Griffin, Mike Maloney, James G. Rickards, Adam Fergusson MEP, Dimitri Speck.

The link to the 2-minute must watch trailer, posted at youtube.com, is here...and the link to the film's website is here. I thank Australian reader Wesley Legrand for bringing it to our attention.

The Treasury said on Wednesday there were no plans to add to gold reserves, after Chancellor George Osborne said in a presentation of the budget that he would take the opportunity to rebuild the country's reserves.

"What the Chancellor is talking about here is rebuilding the official reserves, so it's not gold-specific. It's just over financing the deficit this year by 6 billion pounds ($9.51 billion) in 2012-13 to build up the official reserves," a Treasury spokesman said.

Osborne said in presenting the country's budget for fiscal 2012-2013: "We are also taking the opportunity to rebuild Britain's reserves, which had fallen to historically low levels. I can confirm our gold holdings have risen in value to 11 billion pounds."

I dug this short Reuters piece out of a GATA release yesterday. It's posted over at the uk.news.yahoo.com website. It's worth your time...and the link is here.

Deutsche Bank plans to open a new precious metals vault in London next year, seeking to cash in on booming investor demand for physical gold and silver, the Financial Times reported on Tuesday.

In London, centre of the global bullion market, vault space is running low even as the growth in exchange-traded funds backed by physical precious metals has led to a steep rise in demand for vaults.

A growing number of banks and logistics companies are rushing to break into the market. Clients are looking to diversify where they place their physical holdings of precious metals, the paper quoted Raymond Key, Deutsche's global head of metals trading, as saying.

The new vault will be built and managed by G4S, the logistics company, the paper reported, citing Deutsche Bank.

This Reuters story, filed from Singapore on Tuesday morning, was sent to me by reader Norbert Wangnick...and the link is here.

Replying to Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke's lecture on Tuesday at George Washington University defending central banking against a gold standard, the New York Sun asks concisely: "The question is why, if the Federal Reserve and the system of fiat money are so superior to sound money, has our country been in such a pickle these past few years?"

The Sun notes that the Fed's enabling legislation back in 1913 declared explicitly that its purpose was not to supplant gold-backed money, and adds: "Why Mr. Bernanke leaves this history out of his lecture one can but surmise. He also leaves out the fact that under the Federal Reserve System the dollar has lost something like 85 percent of its value. Nor does he mention the sheer drama of the collapse of the dollar on his watch."

It's a brilliant editorial, headlined "Bernanke 101"...and I thank Chris Powell for writing the introduction. It's posted at the New York Sun's Internet site...and the link is here.

The first is a Richard Russell blog entitled "Silver now outpacing Gold and Fed Frightened". The second is the must listen audio interview with John Hathaway. I posted the KWN blog of this in this column yesterday. The third one is a Peter Schiff blog that's headlined "Gold, Oil & the Fed's Greatest Fear"...and lastly is the audio interview with John Embry from his blog in this column yesterday. It's a must listen as well.

Talking back last night to Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke's lecture at George Washington University, and with particular expertise, is GoldMoney founder, Free Gold Money Report editor, and GATA consultant James Turk, who throws Austrian economics at Bernanke pretty hard, perhaps harder still because he is a graduate of that university.

I borrowed the headlined and preamble from a GATA release last night. Turk's longish commentary is headlined "Bernanke Goes to College"...and it's posted at the fgmr.com Internet site. The link is here.

There was a time when catching the silver "whack-a-mole" algo, or process, or intervention, or manipulation, or whatever one wants to call it, in action...was a myth: an urban legend, perpetuated by silver conspiracy theorists.

Until today, that is.

Courtesy of Nanex we now have direct evidence of just what the reflexive market (in which derivative products such as ETFs influence underlying assets) goes to town by taking silver to the woodshed at a whopping 75,000 times per second!

Frankly, we don't know about you, but when someone is willing to bend the laws of relativity, just to get a cheaper price in silver, to perpetuate a failing monetary system or for any other reason, we quietly step aside.

These are the high-frequency traders in the silver market that Ted Butler has been going on about for ages now...and now their actions in the silver market are stripped bare for all to see.

I received this incredible zerohedge.com story from reader U.D. last night...and it ended up as a GATA release shortly thereafter. Chris Powell really tears the cover off the ball in his scathing editorial/introduction. Powell's comments and the Zero Hedge piece...posted at the gata.org website...are linked here. His headline reads "The CFTC has already done all it can about silver -- and everything else". I must admit that I only understand the contents of the graphs in their broadest form...but the message is crystal clear..."There are no markets anymore, only interventions."