Jon S. Corzine, MF Global Holding Ltd. chief executive officer, gave “direct instructions” to transfer $200 million from a customer fund account to meet an overdraft in a brokerage account with JPMorgan Chase & Co., according to a memo written by congressional investigators.

Edith O’Brien, a treasurer for the firm, said in an e-mail quoted in the memo that the transfer was “Per JC’s direct instructions,” according to a copy of the memo obtained by Bloomberg News. The e-mail, dated Oct. 28, was sent three days before the company collapsed, the memo says. The memo does not indicate whether that phrase was the full text of the e-mail or an excerpt.

O’Brien’s internal e-mail was sent as the New York-based broker found intraday credit lines limited by JPMorgan, the firm’s clearing bank as well as one of its custodian banks for segregated customer funds, according to the memo, which was prepared for a March 28 House Financial Services subcommittee hearing on the firm’s collapse. O’Brien is scheduled to testify at the hearing after being subpoenaed this week.

Well, I wonder if Jon is finally about to do the perp walk? The first one through the door with this Bloomberg story was Edmonton reader B.E.O...and the link is here.

The amount Americans owe on student loans is far higher than earlier estimates and could lead some consumers to postpone buying homes, potentially slowing the housing recovery, U.S. officials said Wednesday.

Total student debt outstanding appears to have surpassed $1 trillion late last year, said officials at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a federal agency created in the wake of the financial crisis. That would be roughly 16% higher than an estimate earlier this year by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

The new figure—released Wednesday at a banking conference in Austin, Texas—is a preliminary finding from a study of student debt that the bureau plans to release this summer. Bureau officials said the estimate is based on a survey of private lenders, as opposed to other estimates that rely on a sampling of consumer credit reports.

I borrowed this Wall Street Journal story from yesterday's King Report...and the link is here.

There is still not enough spending and investment to sustain the economic recovery, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said Thursday.

Bernanke said consumer demand remains weak relative to its level before the Great Recession. He noted that other contributors to economic growth — including borrowing and trade — have declined.

"Consumer spending has not ... recovered. It's still quite weak relative to where it was before the crisis," Bernanke said in the second of four lectures he is giving to George Washington University students this month. "We lack a source of demand to keep the economy growing."

This moneynews.com story from Thursday was sent to me by West Virginia reader Elliot Simon...and the link is here.

In a somewhat sad and shocking slap of reality to the face of our 'recovery' and 'freedom-based-debt-holdings', today's press-release-of-the-day (since we still haven't heard from BATS) goes to Sturm, Ruger (the 4th largest gun-maker in the US) who after receiving orders for over one million units in Q1 has temporarily suspended the acceptance of new orders.

This Zero Hedge story from yesterday was sent to me by Australian reader Wesley Legrand...and the link is here.

Under cover of its multiplicity of fabricated wars on drugs, terror, tax evasion, and organized crime, the US government has long been waging a hidden war on cash. One symptom of the war is that the largest denomination of US currency is the $100 note, whose ever-eroding purchasing power is far below the purchasing power of the €500 note. US currency used to be issued in denominations running up to $10,000 (including also $500; $1,000; $5,000 notes). There was even a $100,000 note issued for transactions among Federal Reserve banks. The United States stopped printing large denomination notes in 1945 and officially discontinued their issuance in 1969, when the Fed began removing them from circulation. Since then the largest currency note available to the general public has a face value of $100. But since 1969, the inflationary monetary policy of the Fed has caused the US dollar to depreciate by over 80 percent, so that a $100 note in 2010 possessed a purchasing power of only $16.83 in 1969 dollars. That is less purchasing power than a $20 bill in 1969!

Despite this enormous depreciation, the Federal Reserve has steadfastly refused to issue notes of larger denomination. This has made large cash transactions extremely inconvenient and has forced the American public to make much greater use than is optimal of electronic-payment methods. Of course, this is precisely the intent of the US government. The purpose of its ongoing breach of long-established laws regarding financial privacy is to make it easier to monitor the economic affairs and abrogate the financial privacy of its citizens, ostensibly to secure their safety from Colombian drug lords, Al Qaeda operatives, and tax cheats and other nefarious white-collar criminals.

This very interesting read was posted over at the mises.org website on Tuesday...and was sent to me by reader Dena Kline. It's worth reading if you have the time...and the link is here.

The spring air in the small, sand-dusted town has a soft haze to it, and clumps of green-gray sagebrush rustle in the breeze. Bluffdale sits in a bowl-shaped valley in the shadow of Utah’s Wasatch Range to the east and the Oquirrh Mountains to the west. It’s the heart of Mormon country, where religious pioneers first arrived more than 160 years ago. They came to escape the rest of the world, to understand the mysterious words sent down from their god as revealed on buried golden plates, and to practice what has become known as “the principle,” marriage to multiple wives.

But new pioneers have quietly begun moving into the area, secretive outsiders who say little and keep to themselves. Like the pious polygamists, they are focused on deciphering cryptic messages that only they have the power to understand. Just off Beef Hollow Road, less than a mile from brethren headquarters, thousands of hard-hatted construction workers in sweat-soaked T-shirts are laying the groundwork for the newcomers’ own temple and archive, a massive complex so large that it necessitated expanding the town’s boundaries. Once built, it will be more than five times the size of the US Capitol.

Rather than Bibles, prophets, and worshippers, this temple will be filled with servers, computer intelligence experts, and armed guards. And instead of listening for words flowing down from heaven, these newcomers will be secretly capturing, storing, and analyzing vast quantities of words and images hurtling through the world’s telecommunications networks. In the little town of Bluffdale, Big Love and Big Brother have become uneasy neighbors.

Under construction by contractors with top-secret clearances, the blandly named Utah Data Center is being built for the National Security Agency. A project of immense secrecy, it is the final piece in a complex puzzle assembled over the past decade. Its purpose: to intercept, decipher, analyze, and store vast swaths of the world’s communications as they zap down from satellites and zip through the underground and undersea cables of international, foreign, and domestic networks. The heavily fortified $2 billion center should be up and running in September 2013. Flowing through its servers and routers and stored in near-bottomless databases will be all forms of communication, including the complete contents of private emails, cell phone calls, and Google searches, as well as all sorts of personal data trails—parking receipts, travel itineraries, bookstore purchases, and other digital “pocket litter.” It is, in some measure, the realization of the “total information awareness” program created during the first term of the Bush administration—an effort that was killed by Congress in 2003 after it caused an outcry over its potential for invading Americans’ privacy.

This story was posted on the wired.com website on March 15th...and reader Roy Furr sent it to me this past Monday. It's a must read for sure...and the link is here.

A recent article regarding the National Security Agency’s new secret eavesdropping facility in Bluffdale, Utah has caught the attention of members of the House.

The article which was published last week by Wired explains how the NSA “will be secretly capturing, storing, and analyzing vast quantities of words and images hurtling through the world’s telecommunications networks.”

For Rep. Hank Johnson it’s the domestic part that is kind of tricky.

During the apparent pressing of Cyber Command Commander of the National Security Agency, Chief General Keith Alexander on Tuesday regarding the true capabilities on the National Security Agency, many skeptics doubt the alleged truth by the notorious agency.

Alexander denied all the questions regarding the NSA spying on Americans, and during the meeting Johnson asked, “Does the NSA have the capacity to find out who the parties are by the content of their email?”

This story was posted over at the Russia Today website on Thursday...and is another absolute must read. I thank Roy Stephens for his first offering of the day...and the link is here.

US army staff sergeant Robert Bales is accused of slaughtering 16 Afghan villagers, including nine children, and then burning some of the bodies. The massacre took place in two villages in the southern rural district of Panjwai. Though this horrific crime targeted Afghans on Afghan soil, Afghanistan will play no role in investigating the crime or bringing the perpetrator (or perpetrators) to justice. That is because the US almost immediately whisked the accused out of Afghanistan and brought him to an American army base in Fort Leavensworth, Kansas.

The rapid exclusion of Afghans from the process of trying the accused shooter has, predictably and understandably, exacerbated the growing anti-American anger in that country. It is hard to imagine any nation on the planet reacting any other way to being denied the ability to try suspects over crimes that take place on its soil. A Taliban commander quickly gave voice to that nationalistic fury, announcing: "We want this soldier to be prosecuted in Afghanistan. The Afghans should prosecute him."

This story was posted over at the alternet.org website on Wednesday. It's Roy Stephens second offering of the day...and well worth reading. The link is here.

Inhabitants of the communist bastion of Cuba have been getting a taste of the free market lately with the introduction of market reforms by President Raúl Castro. The Catholic Church is supporting his endeavor, and Pope Benedict's visit could boost efforts to open up the country.

In recent months, quiet reforms have been taking shape in Cuba under President Raúl Castro. Castro wants to combine the state-run economy with market-based reforms in the hope of transforming the country into a sort of Caribbean Vietnam. To reduce expense, the government recently laid off 500,000 employees. They are now permitted to open shops and handicraft business, sell real estate, cars and home-grown vegetables, among other businesses.

So far, Cubans' hopes that they might be allowed to travel abroad have been in vain since the regime has refused to amend its migration laws. Revolutionary veterans are still in charge in a country where the average age in the National Assembly is well over 70. And regime critics continue to be repressed.

In the economic sphere, however, things that were once unthinkable are suddenly possible. To reduce expenses, the government recently laid off 500,000 employees. They are now permitted to open shops and handicraft businesses, sell real estate, cars and home-grown vegetables, or -- as in the case of Perez -- drive their own rickshaws. Within a year, the number of very small businesses has doubled to almost 350,000. Nevertheless, these ventures are still a far cry from being genuine small businesses or even privately owned companies.

This story appeared over at the German website spiegel.de yesterday...and it's a very interesting read. I thank Roy for his third offering in today's column...and the link is here.

To see Günther rummaging through trash cans in Berlin, you might assume he was homeless. But the 61-year-old is actually one of a growing number of pensioners looking to earn extra cash through bottle recycling.

Significant numbers of financially destitute people are now resorting to collecting discarded glass and plastic bottles, which carry a redeemable cash deposit, as a means of supplementing their income. But whereas the majority of those collecting used to be the homeless, alcoholics and drug addicts, more recently it is Berlin's pensioners and long-term unemployed who are increasingly turning to the practice in order to make ends meet.

The number of pensioners resorting to bottle collecting has doubled in the last couple of years. Social experts are warning that the unhygienic practice is a symptom of an inadequate social system struggling to cope with the growing population of elderly residents in the German capital.

This is another interesting read from yesterday's edition of spiegel.de...and it's also another offering from Roy Stephens. The link is here.

Pimco CEO Mohamed El-Erian has warned that debt-ridden Portugal will become a second Greece and may also need a private-sector haircut. But he is exaggerating: Lisbon is forging ahead with its reform efforts, and the country has every chance of getting its finances under control.

In fact, it would seem there's a light at the end of the tunnel -- if it weren't for Mohamed El-Erian, CEO of Pimco.

Is it inevitable that Portugal will become a second Greece over the course of this year? "Yes, unfortunately that will be the case," El-Erian told SPIEGEL in an interview this week. The first bailout package for Portugal will prove insufficient, he believes, and the country will ask for more money, which in turn will likely trigger a debate over a Greek-style haircut involving the private sector. On the whole, El-Erian considers the situation "dramatic."

Those words carry weight, because El-Erian is not just anyone. Pimco is the world's largest bond investor and manages over $1.3 trillion. So in response, both Portugal's prime minister and those overseeing the EU bailout have felt a need to emphasize over the last few days that there will be no further aid, and that Portugal will save itself.

We'll see how this all turns out, dear reader, but if I had to be a dollar, I'd bet on El-Erian's scenario. This is another story from yesterday's edition of spiegel.de...and another story courtesy of Roy Stephens. The link is here.

On March 3, a few days before the start of the spring semester, Tsering Kyi, 20, emerged from a public toilet at the town’s produce market, her wispy frame bound in gasoline-soaked blankets that had been encircled with wire, relatives and local residents said.

In a flash she was a heap of flames, her fist raised defiantly, before falling to the ground, residents said. She died at the scene.

Over the past year 29 Tibetans, seven of them in the last three weeks, have chosen a similarly agonizing, self-annihilating protest against Chinese policies. Of those, 22 have died.

Beijing, alarmed about the threat to stability in a region seething with discontent over religious and cultural controls, has responded with an assortment of heavy-handed measures. Officials have described the self-immolators as outcasts and terrorists, blamed the pernicious influence of Tibetan exiles and flooded the region with checkpoints and paramilitary police officers in flak jackets.

This Roy Stephens offering was in the Thursday edition of The New York Times...and the link is here.

Nabucco - the alleged gas Holy Grail from the Caspian Sea to Europe, 4,000 kilometers from Turkey to Austria - is the perennial Pipelineistan soap opera.

Part of the gas to supply Nabucco may come from Azerbaijan. Another part might - a very problematic "might" - come from Turkmenistan. But every self-respecting energy analyst knows

Nabucco could only possibly work if it was supplied by natural gas from Iran. That will happen over Washington's collective dead body.

So, once again, the spineless European Union (EU) political "leadership" - once again acting like the poodles of choice - gloriously sabotaged what it has always billed as its most ambitious energy project; caved in to US pressure; and ultimately sacrificed its energy independence. And all this from people who never lose an opportunity to decry that Europe is a "gas hostage" to Russia's Gazprom.

This Pepe Escobar offering is a must read for all students of 'The Great Game'. It's another Roy Stephens offering of course...and it's posted over at the Asia Times website. The link is here.

The Apple flash crash is the talk of the day. The largest market capitalization company in the United States was demolished over a fat finger/algos/faulty exchange whatever you want to call it. The specific cause is being attributed to BATS, a high frequency trading system. An errant trade caused Apple's stock to spiral down over 9 percent causing circuit breaker rules to halt the trading of its stock. BATS - making its IPO today also had problems with their own shares. Shares of BATS were reportedly less than a penny a share for a short time before its stock trading was also halted.

With all the apparent attention to Apple and the accusations of who was responsible for the demolition over a few minutes, you have to wonder where all this attention is when silver gets demolished over a few minutes on a regular basis. Doesn't anyone care who is behind that?

This short piece, along with some great charts, showed up over at the silverdoctors.ca website yesterday...and it's Roy Stephens final offering of the day. It's worth the read...including the BATS link above...and the link is here. Reader Phil Barlett sent me the BATS story in the wee hours of the morning...and I thought I'd include it with this story.

Investors keen on gold showed frustration at underperforming funds that invest in mining firms as liquidations extended for more than four straight months, while money flowed into funds that invest in the underlying metal, data from Lipper showed.

Gold mining stocks have underperformed the metal over the last several years as companies struggled with rising costs and operational problems in far-flung locations, but the figures show an accelerating trend.

The net outflows from U.S. funds that invest in gold and precious metals mining companies such as Barrick Gold Corp and Newmont Mining Corp continued for the longest period since 2008.

This Reuters story was filed from London yesterday...and I plucked it from a GATA release...and the link is here.

The first blog is with Egon von Greyerz...and is headlined "Physical Gold Demand Enormous & Accelerating". The second blog is with Gabelli gold fund manager, Caesar Bryan...and it's entitled "Central Banks Aggressively Buying Gold". The last blog is with Art Cashin, who is director of floor operations for UBS. His blog is headlined "Expect Chaos in Markets if War with Iran Begins".

The Hong Kong Mercantile Exchange (HKMEx) plans to launch yuan-settled gold and copper futures by July, its president said on Friday, as it looks to tap growing interest in commodities from Chinese investors.

Albert Helmig also told reporters in Shanghai that the bourse would offer yuan-denominated contracts for other industrial metals in the next 12 months.

Appetite for investment in commodities has risen dramatically in China over the last few years on the back of galloping prices, which have also led to more hedging demand from some companies.

This very short Reuters piece was filed from Shanghai yesterday...and is another story I found in a GATA release yesterday. The link is here.

GoldMoney founder and GATA consultant James Turk writes that China's influence on the gold market is exploding because its domestic mine production can no longer meet domestic demand, and this influence will be bullish. Turk's commentary is headlined "Chinese Gold Imports Will Keep Increasing".

It's posted over at the goldmoney.com website...and the link is here.

Ben Traynor of Bullion Vault elaborates on Turkey, India, and Vietnam, three countries whose government don't mind acknowledging that they have a big problem with freely trading gold, a competitive currency. Traynor's commentary is headlined "Gunning for Gold".

I thank Chris Powell for writing the preamble for me...and this story is posted over at Peter Spina's website goldseek.com. It's a must read...and the link is here.