When a witness has valuable information and may be implicated in a violation, there are delicate maneuvers between prosecutors and defense lawyers. That is playing out behind the scenes for Edith O’Brien, an assistant treasurer at MF Global, who could have crucial information about how millions of dollars of customer money went missing in the firm’s final days.

Ms. O’Brien asserted her Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination at a House subcommittee investigating MF Global’s collapse, but The Wall Street Journal reports that her lawyers are discussing with prosecutors her possible cooperation in the investigation. Until an agreement is reached with the Justice Department, however, she will maintain her silence.

This story was posted in The New York Times on Thursday...and I thank Phil Barlett for sending it along. The link is here.

Stocks shot out of the gate in 2012 to post their best first quarter in 14 years, but a familiar anxiety is creeping back into the markets.

But the widespread optimism that began the year is fading to some degree. The data pointing to the economic recovery is leveling off, showing weaker manufacturing activity and stagnant personal income.

The S.& P. 500 fell during 6 of the last 10 trading days in March. April has traditionally been the best month for blue-chip stocks, and among the best for other public companies. But over the last two years, April has also been the time when early-year rallies gave way to big summer drops. Even investors and strategists who do not expect a big pullback think that at least a short-term decline is in the cards.

This is a story from yesterday's edition of The New York Times...and is another Phil Barlett offering. The link is here.

Richard Russell, writer of the Dow Theory Letters, is just looking for the right time to buy stocks.

But that time isn't now. And until that time comes, Russell will be keeping his wealth in gold.

He writes in King World News: "What I want to illustrate is that great fortunes are made at super-bear market lows. But you must have the money at the lows. Which is why gold is so singular and valuable. If you have gold at the bottom of the next bear market, you can exchange it for a collection of great common stocks or funds, and then sit back and relax."

This story was posted on the businessinsider.com website last night. It's a short read...and certainly worth your time. It's Roy Stephens first offering of the day...and the link is here.

Moody's warned on Thursday it may cut the credit ratings of 17 global and 114 European financial institutions in another sign that the impact of the euro zone government debt crisis is spreading throughout the global financial system.

The U.S. rating agency said its action on financial institutions from 16 European nations reflected the impact of the debt crisis and deteriorating creditworthiness of its governments.

Moody's said it was reviewing the long-term ratings and standalone credit assessments of Bank of America, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley and Royal Bank of Canada.

This short story was posted over at cnbc.com yesterday...and I thank West Virginia reader Elliot Simon for sending it our way. It's worth running through...and the link is here.

Jim had the opportunity to lay it on the line when he spoke at the Federal Reserve on March 12th...and he made the most of it. Here's a 6:19 minute absolute must watch CNBC interview from Thursday where he goes over the highlights of his speech with Maria Bartiromo. The speech was posted over at the zerohedge.com website in its entirety yesterday. It's headlined "Must Read: Jim Grant Crucifies The Fed; Explains Why A Gold Standard Is The Best Option".and the link to that story is here. I thank Phil Barlett for providing both stories.

For a generation of investors, the standard approach to allocating assets has been to invest the bulk of their holdings in equities and bonds and leave only a small percentage, usually 5% to 10% in cash. This strategy has worked well for the better part of four decades, because of the heavy use of credit by capital markets to generate profits and growth.

As a result, stocks and bonds have been the backbone of most investment portfolios, but Bill Gross, managing director of PIMCO, the well-respected investment firm headquartered in Newport, Calif., believes metals and minerals as well as real assets such as land, buildings and machines should take precedence over the next few years as individuals, companies and governments around the world continue the arduous process of paying down their debts.

“Commodities and real assets become ascendant, certainly in relative terms, as we by necessity de-lever or lever less,” Mr. Gross said in his April outlook published this week.

This must read story was posted in Canada's Financial Post yesterday...and I thank Elliot Simon for sharing it with us. The link is here.

At least Bank of America got its name right. The ultimate Too Big to Fail bank really is America, a hyper-gluttonous ward of the state whose limitless fraud and criminal conspiracies we'll all be paying for until the end of time. Did you hear about the plot to rig global interest rates? The $137 million fine for bilking needy schools and cities? The ingenious plan to suck multiple fees out of the unemployment checks of jobless workers? Take your eyes off them for 10 seconds and guaranteed, they'll be into some #%!@ again.

This bank is like the world's worst-behaved teenager, taking your car and running over kittens and fire hydrants on the way to Vegas for the weekend, maxing out your credit cards in the three days you spend at your aunt's funeral. They're out of control, yet they'll never do time or go out of business, because the government remains creepily committed to their survival, like overindulgent parents who refuse to believe their 40-year-old live-at-home son could possibly be responsible for those dead hookers in the backyard.

This 5-page article was posted over at the Rolling Stone website earlier this month...and I thank Australian reader Wesley Legrand for bringing it to my attention. This long read is "R" rated...as Matt uses his usual pithy prose to make his points. It's definitely worth the read if you have the time...and the link is here.

President Obama's National Defense Resources Preparedness Executive Order of March 16 does to the country as a whole what the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act did to the Constitution in particular -- completely eviscerates any due process or judicial oversight for any action by the Government deemed in the interest of "national security."

Like the NDAA, the new Executive Order puts the government completely above the law, which, in a democracy, is never supposed to happen. The United States is essentially now under martial law without the exigencies of a national emergency.

If you're an American citizen, this rather short Huffington Post article from March 21 is a must read...as it's just plain terrifying. I thank reader Bruce Brantley for sending it along...and the link is here.

It sometimes seems as if our planet has no secrets left – but deep beneath the great Antarctic ice sheet, scientists have made an astonishing discovery. They’ve found one of the largest lakes in the world. It’s very existence defies belief. Scientists are desperate to get into the lake because its extreme environment may be home to unique flora and fauna, never seen before, and NASA are excited by what it could teach us about extraterrestrial life. But 4 kilometers of ice stand between the lake and the surface, and breaking this seal without contaminating the most pristine body of water on the planet is possibly one of the greatest challenges science faces in the 21st century.

In 1957 the Russians established a remote base in Antarctica – the Vostok station. It soon became a byword for hardship – dependent on an epic annual 1,000 km tractor journey from the coast for its supplies. The coldest temperature ever found on Earth (-89°C) was recorded here on the 21st July 1983. It’s an unlikely setting for a lake of liquid water. But in the 1970’s a British team used airborne radar to see beneath the ice, mapping the mountainous land buried by the Antarctic ice sheet. Flying near the Vostok base their radar trace suddenly went flat. They guessed that the flat trace could only be from water. It was the first evidence that the ice could be hiding a great secret.

This 49-minute BBC documentary is beyond fascinating...at least to me. So even though it's way off-topic for this column, I thought I'd post it anyway. I'm grateful to Wesley Legrand for sharing this incredible story with us...and the link is here.

Bond sales globally have exceeded a record $1.16 trillion in the first three months of 2012 as moves by global central banks along with reduced risk from Europe’s sovereign debt crisis drive credit-market optimism.

Offerings by companies from Europe to Asia and the U.S. have surpassed the previous record of $1.155 trillion reached in the first quarter of 2009, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Yields on global corporate bonds fell to 4.12 percent on March 29, within 15 basis points of the lowest yield in records going back to 1997, Bank of America Merrill Lynch Index data show.

Issuance has climbed as the Federal Reserve holds borrowing rates near zero and after the European Central Bank’s Long-Term Refinancing Operations have supplied more than a trillion euros ($1.3 trillion) of three-year loans to banks since December. The efforts by the central banks along with the successful restructuring of Greek bonds have helped improve confidence in credit markets.

This is, of course, pure insanity...as there isn't a snowball's chance in hell that these bonds will ever be repaid...and if they are, they will be repaid in money that's not worth anything near its current purchasing power. This Bloomberg piece from yesterday was sent to me by Washington state reader S.A...and the link is here.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel and her finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, have been accused of crossing many of the "red lines" that they have set for themselves over the course of the euro crisis, making U-turn after U-turn as the crisis escalated. They officially stepped over the latest red line on Friday, when European Union finance ministers meeting in Copenhagen agreed to boost the scope of the euro zone's firewall to over €800 billion ($1 trillion). Berlin had long rejected such an expansion out of hand.

Austrian Finance Minister Maria Fekter announced on Friday that the permanent euro rescue fund, the European Stability Mechanism (ESM), would be expanded, by considering the around €200 billion in current bailouts as being separate from the €500 billion earmarked for the ESM -- originally, the €500 billion figure was to have included the €200 billion in existing aid. The ESM, which is due to come into operation in mid-2012, will also be boosted by including around €100 billion in bilateral aid that was given to Greece in 2010, as well as aid from other EU funds, bringing the firewall's total capacity to over €800 billion.

Fekter expressed her confidence that Friday's move would be enough to calm the financial markets. "The markets are already signaling relative calm," she said. "That shows that the markets can work with what we have set up here." But German commentators warn that even the new firewall may still be too small.

Too small it is...and I said so earlier this week. It's going to take many, many trillions...if not tens of trillions...to do the job, and that's just in Europe. In the end, all they're doing is kicking the can further down the road. This Roy Stephens offering was posted on the German website spiegel.de yesterday...and the link is here.

As tempers ran high among eurozone policymakers, their agreement to boost the support available to the region's debt-laden nations was clouded by infighting over how the decision was announced.

However, Mr Juncker, who is also Luxembourg's prime minister, cancelled a planned news conference to announce the move after the Austrian finance minister Maria Fekter revealed the decision to the media herself.

The ministers were warned that the underlying causes of the debt crisis have not been resolved. Documents distributed at the meeting said that “contagion may...re-emerge at very short notice”, with warnings over “new sources of instability” as European banks have turned to “more volatile sources of funding”.

European Central Bank policy maker Marko Kranjec said he saw no clear end to the debt crisis. “I personally still do not see the light at the end of the tunnel,” he said in an interview published on Saturday.

As I've said before, there's no way out of this mess except default or hyperinflation. This story was posted in The Telegraph at midnight last night...and is a must read in my opinion. I thank Roy Stephens once again...and the link is here.

Spain unveiled "the most austere budget in democratic history" with €27bn of cuts and a 7pc rise in utility bills but still failed to win over economists.

The cuts fell short of the €34bn experts said were required to reduce the budget deficit from 8.5pc to 5.3pc of gross domestic product (GDP).

By targeting businesses rather than individuals the Government was accused of short-termism.

Christian Schulz, senior economist at Berenberg Bank, said: "If the UK has put up a sign saying 'open for business', then Spain has put up a sign saying 'siesta'.

"They’ve really tried to spare consumption, but since they’ve had to cut somewhere, they’re really hurting corporations."

This was posted in The Telegraph yesterday evening...and I thank Roy for sending it to me. The link is here.

Norway's $610 billion sovereign wealth fund, Europe's biggest equity investor, plans to sharply reduce its European exposure while raising investments in emerging markets and Asia-Pacific, the finance ministry said on Friday.

Of its entire bond, fixed income and real estate portfolio, European investments will be "gradually" reduced to 41 percent from 54 percent, while Asia-Pacific's share will rise to 19 percent from 11 percent, Finance Minister Sigbjoern Johnsen told a news conference.

"We're reducing our European exposure because we see that economic development in the global economy is changing and this should also be reflected in our investment strategy," Johnsen said. "Most likely we'll have to sell some assets in Europe."

Personally, I wouldn't own any European assets...if one wishes to dignify them with that description. I found this Reuters story posted in a GATA release yesterday...and the link is here.

South Korea, Asia's fourth-largest economy, pared the share of dollars in its foreign-exchange reserves to the lowest level since the global financial crisis erupted in 2007.

Dollar holdings dropped to 60.5 percent of foreign- exchange reserves at the end of last year from 63.7 percent in 2010, the central bank said in its annual report for 2011 released today.

The drop underscores a shift among reserve managers to diversify assets, with China's yuan and Australia's dollar among the beneficiaries. South Korea's government earlier this year announced plans to invest in Chinese equities as well as bonds as the yuan's international role increases.

This Bloomberg story is another that I found posted in a GATA release yesterday...and the link to that is here.

The BRICS - Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa - have agreed to provide credit to each other in local currencies. Officials say the deal will facilitate economic growth in times of crisis.

­The currency swap deal is aimed at promoting trade and investment in local currencies as well as to cut transaction costs. It’s also seen as a step to replace the dollar as a reserve currency in trade between BRICS.

“The idea is in line with many interests and economic exigencies in the world economy,” Yaroslav Lissovolik, the chief economist at Deutsche Bank told RT. “The euro and dollar are no longer seen as unquestionable monopolies in the role of reserve currencies. Clearly the world needs more reserve currencies.”

This story was posted over at the Russia Times website on Thursday...and I thank reader Doug Beiers for bringing it to my attention. The link is here.

The first is the Richard Russell blog that was quoted in a story further up in this column. It's headlined "Hang onto Gold, Massive Collapse Coming". The second is the audio interview with Rob Arnott...and it's linked here. And lastly is the audio interview with ERIC SPROTT. The blog of both these interviews was posted in Friday's column.

This interview took place last Sunday...and is a transcription of the audio interview that we did on that date. The audio track is imbedded in the interview as well...but it takes less time to read it than it does to listen to it. The interview runs about 31 minutes...and is posted over at the metallwoche.de website...and the link to all of this is here.

I posted a story about this firm several weeks back and it received a fair amount of interest, so I thought I'd post this article that was written about them last year. Their mintings for each coin/medallion run in the hundreds, not the tens of thousands. This is even more amazing when you consider the fact that this mint is located on an island that is off-grid...and has no road access or car ferry. It's posted over at the lqmint.com website...and the link is here.

Industrialist and economist Hugo Salinas Price, president of the Mexican Civic Association for Silver, told King World News yesterday that gold and silver will be the only currencies to endure and will offer some protection to their owners but that this protection won't be enough if civilization fails...and civilization is very much at stake in the world financial turmoil. Salinas Price sees protectionism as the next phase of that turmoil.

I borrowed the introduction from Chris Powell...and the link to the KWN blog is here.