Two years after President Barack Obama vowed to eliminate the danger of financial institutions becoming "too big to fail," the nation's largest banks are bigger than they were before the nation's credit markets seized up and required unprecedented bailouts by the government.

Five banks – JPMorgan Chase & Co., Bank of America Corp., Citigroup Inc., Wells Fargo & Co., and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. – held $8.5 trillion in assets at the end of 2011, equal to 56 percent of the US economy, according to central bankers at the Federal Reserve.

Five years earlier, before the financial crisis, the largest banks' assets amounted to 43 percent of US output. The Big Five today are about twice as large as they were a decade ago relative to the economy, sparking concern that trouble at a major bank would rock the financial system and force the government to step in as it did in 2008 with the Fed-assisted rescue of Bear Stearns Cos. by JPMorgan and with Citigroup and Bank of America after the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy, the largest in US history.

This Bloomberg story from yesterday was sent to me by West Virginia reader Elliot Simon...and the link is here.

China took a milestone step in turning the yuan into a global currency on Saturday by doubling the size of its trading band against the dollar, pushing through a crucial reform that further liberalizes its nascent financial markets.

The People's Bank of China said it would allow the yuan to rise or fall 1 percent from a midpoint every day, effective Monday, compared with its previous 0.5 percent limit.

Analysts said the timing of the move underlines Beijing's belief that the yuan is near its equilibrium level and that China's economy, although cooling, is sturdy enough to handle important, long-promised, structural reforms.

I found this Reuters story imbedded in a GATA release yesterday. Chris gave it the headline "Wider trading band for yuan may facilitate gradual devaluation"...and the link is here.

Amid ongoing tension about Iran's nuclear program, representatives from Tehran and six global powers held talks in Istanbul on Saturday. Despite cautious optimism from diplomats, German commentators warn on Monday that the specter of war still haunts the region.

Despite early signs of progress, the two sides still remain far apart in their positions. Iran pushed for an end of sanctions and international recognition that its uranium enrichment is for peaceful purposes. Meanwhile, the United States demanded evidence that the Islamic Republic is not creating a potential nuclear arsenal. Both Washington and Israel have threatened to forcefully eliminate any nuclear weapons Iran might seek to develop.

This story was posted on the German website spiegel.de yesterday...and is Roy Stephens' first offering of the day. The link is here.

With his commentary at GoldMoney on Saturday, the economist Alasdair Macleod details the shocking trade imbalances within the euro community, so large that it's hard to imagine the community and its currency holding together.

Chris Powell provided the above introductory paragraph...and the link to this must-read commentary is here. The imbedded graph is worth the trip on its own.

The latest round of panic buying sweeping British consumers isn't for fuel, as it was earlier this year when threats of a strike by the tanker drivers' union led to long queues of cars snaking their way around filling stations.

Instead, the commodity Britons are desperately snapping up in bulk this month is stamps, after Royal Mail, the British postal service provider, announced it would raise prices after April 30 to make up for falling revenues.

The price increase – which will raise the cost of sending a letter first class by a huge 30 percent to 60 pence ($0.96), and the slower, second class by 39 percent to 50 pence – has sparked alarm across the country, where consumers are facing slow wage growth and high inflation.

Wow! That's a big increase! This is another Reuters story that I found in a GATA release yesterday. The headline reads Stretched Britons Begin Stampede for Stamps... and the link is here.

Britain's exchange rate is "crippling" the economic recovery, and devaluing the pound by as much as 25 percent could push growth back to an annual 4 percent, research group Civitas said.

The pound's "significant" drop since 2008 hasn't been enough to make UK exports competitive on world markets, and a future decline in the currency is inevitable, according to John Mills, the author of the Civitas report published in London today. A devaluation of as much as 15 percent would balance the UK's trade deficit, he said.

"The exchange-rate policy we have pursued for decades has made it much more expensive to run most manufacturing operations here than in other parts of the world," Mills said. "Getting the exchange rate down is a matter on which, in the end, we will have no choice."

This Bloomberg story was posted on their website last Thursday...and is another story that Chris Powell posted on the GATA website yesterday. The Bloomberg headline reads Pound's Strength Is "Crippling" Britain's Recovery, Civitas Says...and the link is here.

For all the hullabaloo and vehement rejection by many of my compatriots of what is considered the "Germanification of Greece" (under the pretense of saving the country from bankruptcy), Greeks are showing increasing signs of not only becoming more like the Germans, but also of enjoying the transformation.

There is not a single Greek who hasn't poked fun at the archetypal German shopper, who, as the anecdote goes, visits his local supermarket and buys one slice of watermelon and exactly four tomatoes. In pre-crisis Greece, such behavior, especially in food shopping, would be frowned upon and considered a source of great embarrassment. The average Greek would go out of his way to avoid demonstrating any kind of thrift, even in the cases of households where four tomatoes would make much more sense than two kilos of tomatoes that may ultimately end up in the garbage.

Consumption was thrown off its pedestal by the crisis, with Greeks increasingly subscribing to the value of Germanic thrift. According to recent polls, more than eight out of ten Greeks have cut down their private spending and turned to cheaper products. Taverns are empty on Saturday nights, more and more people have started using wood for heating, car sales have dwindled dramatically, and cafeterias, bars, and restaurants that used to charge astronomical prices (€6 for a cup of coffee) are now offering "happy hours," periods of reduced prices and other incentives to lure customers.

This is the second story from spiegel.de in today's column...and the second offering from Roy Stephens. The link is here.

Spain is once again experiencing tremendous pressure from the financial markets. With the economy sliding and Spanish banks no longer able to finance themselves independently, doubts are growing among investors that the country can service its debts without outside help. Some are already speculating that Spain will have to request aid from the European Union's euro rescue fund.

On Monday, the interest rate on 10-year government loans rose for the first time this year to over the 6-percent mark, increasing by 0.13 points to 6.12 percent. Investors are demanding increasingly higher risk premiums in order to buy Spanish bonds.

The cost for credit loss insurance also rose to a record high. For securities with a five-year term and a face value of $10 million, insurers are demanding an annual premium of $520,000.

"We're back in full crisis mode," Rabobank strategist Lyn Graham-Taylor said, according to Reuters. "It is looking more and more likely that Spain is going to have some form of a bailout." For weeks now, markets have been rife with speculation that Spain may have to borrow money from the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) in order to shore up its foundering banks. Figures ranging from €50 billion to €100 billion are being bandied about.

This is the third and final spiegel.de story from Roy...and the link is here.

As of yesterday, insult follows injury, as the LME has formally asked the members of the exchange to drop the sterling contract denomination (in addition to USD, EUR, and JPY contracts) and replace it with the Chinese renminbi. Why this sudden and dramatic, if gradual and tacit, admission that the CNY is the ascendant reserve currency? Because, as the Financial Times reminds us, China has become the market for non-ferrous metals: it is "the dominant force in the market, accounting for more than 40 per cent of global demand for most metals and a rapidly increasing share of trading in LME futures."

Add that to yesterday's news of a widening in the CNY band (which incidentally is much ado about nothing, at least for now: at best it will allow China to devalue its currency when and if it so desires much faster than before.

This must read zerohedge.com story was sent to me by Bob Fitzwilson...and the link is here.

Investment bank JPMorgan has lodged a filing to list a copper-backed exchange-traded fund (ETF) with NYSE Euronext in the first sign for nearly a year that a new product, potentially tying up 60,000 tonnes of metal, may list.

JP Morgan Commodity ETF Services lodged a proposal to list and trade shares of JPM XF Physical Copper Trust in a filing dated April 2, 2012.

According to a NYSE spokesperson, the filing has already been submitted to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for review and will post to the SEC's web site as well as its Federal Register by April 23, for public review and comment.

Upon completion of a 45-day review process, the product could come to market as early as June of this year, the spokesperson said.

This is another Reuters story that I borrowed from a GATA release...and the link is here.

No portfolio is perfect or without risk. Yet too often we think of risk narrowly and ignore the greatest risks of all in the form of monetary collapse, social disorder, regime change, and emergency edicts. Warren Buffett disparages gold because it has no yield. The reason it has no yield is that is has no risk. Yield is what you earn when you take risk. Gold has no credit risk, no currency risk, no maturity risk, indeed no risk of any kind. It is just gold.

In contrast, Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway stock when priced not in dollars but in ounces of gold has declined in value by about 75 percent since 2000, from 280 ounces per share to 70 ounces per share. Put differently, someone who bought gold rather than Berkshire in 2000 could today buy four times as much Berkshire stock using the same gold. There has been similar appreciation in the value of fine art. Admittedly this is a selective example. Yet it is true that over centuries it is the hard assets not the paper assets that retain value through collapse and catastrophe. The old money knows this – they have seen it all before.

This short Jim Rickards piece was posted over a the usnews.com website yesterday...and I thank reader Randall Reinwasser for sharing it with us. It's worth your while...and the link is here.

I received the link to this 30-minute conference call from reader N. West yesterday. In his covering email he said that "Don makes some very interesting comments about Fed, ECB statements and money printing. His stand on gold and gold stocks begin at the 21:20 minute mark...and is well worth listening to." It's posted over at the bellwebcasting.ca website...and the link is here.

I mentioned in my Friday column that Bron Suchecki from The Perth Mint had said that GFMS was calling for miners to consider hedging again. There was supposed to have been a story attached to that email he sent me, but there wasn't.

So when Bron got back to work this week, he sent me the relevant piece. It's a blog he posted over at the perthmintbullion.com website last Friday in Australia [Thursday in North America]...and it's a must read for sure. The link is here.

It's been obvious for more than a decade that the dark side of The Force reads everything members of the rebellion have to write...and the reason for that is simple...sometimes they just get caught with their skirts pulled down...and the attached GATA release is just another one of those times.

"ZeroHedge catches the Bank for International Settlements admitting and then trying to cover up its services to member central banks in surreptitiously manipulating the gold market, work the BIS was positively advertising a few years ago in a promotional brochure for prospective central bank members that GATA brought to your attention in February."

The rest of this GATA release is an absolute must read as well...and the link is here.

The first blog is by Gerald Celente. It's entitled It's Absolutely Terrifying Where Society is Headed. The second is from John Embry...and it's headlined What's Happening in China is Wildly Bullish for Gold. The third blog is from John Williams...and it bears the title Real Earnings Collapse Nearly 50% Below 1973. And lastly, we have this audio interview with Jim Sinclair.

There is one product which the PIIGS, or in this case Italy, are all too happy to export in size. Gold, and not just to anywhere, but to that ultimate safe haven – Switzerland. From the BBC: "Italian exports of gold ingots to Switzerland have soared in recent months, data has shown."

Exports to Switzerland were 35.6% higher than in February 2011 "mainly because of sales of non-monetary raw gold", statistics agency Istat said.

This zerohedge.com story was sent to me by Roy Stephens...and it's his last offering in today's column. The link is here.

The following comments by T.R. were sent to GATA's secretary treasurer Chris Powell yesterday...

"It's increasingly difficult to grit my teeth and hang onto my positions in gold and silver, in the gold and silver exchange-traded funds GLD and SLV, and even actual bullion (like American eagle coins). I fully agree with GATA's views on bankster manipulation of these markets, but the breakout forecast for the metals has been thwarted for decades, with no lasting loss of bankster control in more than 30 years. Can you give any encouragement beyond the predictions by various analysts that reality will prevail in these markets any day now? Thanks for your diligence and truth telling."

Chris Powell answers him in this must read GATA release...and the link is here.

As those of you who've been with us for a while know, Rick Rule is one of the most successful resource speculators in North America. His firm Sprott Global is one of our recommended brokers, and his reputation for earning outsized gains in the junior resource sector is legendary.

So naturally we wanted his take on the current weakness in gold and gold stocks. Big Gold editor Jeff Clark contacted him and found that he is actually excited about current market conditions. He had so much to say that Jeff asked him to put it in writing, which you'll find below. You'll see Rick's take on the current condition of the gold market, why he likes the producers right now, what to look for in the juniors, and an investor's game plan for going forward. We think you'll find his insights very useful – and profitable.

This commentary by Rick was posted in yesterday's edition of Casey Daily Dispatch...and the above two paragraphs of introduction were written by Louis James, Casey Research's senior metals investment strategist. It's a must read of course...and the link is here.

GoldMoney founder, Free Gold Market Report editor, and GATA consultant James Turk notes that investment analyst Doug Casey asks in his latest newsletter to see the evidence of gold market manipulation. Turk obliges at length, citing GATA's work, in an essay titled Some Answers to Doug Casey's Questions.

This very long piece by James is posted over at the fgmr.com website. It, too, is a must read...and the link is here.