U.S. securities regulators charged credit-rating firm Egan-Jones and its president Sean Egan on Tuesday with making material misrepresentations to the agency in its 2008 regulatory application to rate asset-backed and government securities.

The Securities and Exchange Commission's administrative charges, which were first reported by Reuters last week after a closed-door SEC meeting, also include allegations of record-keeping and conflict of interest violations.

Lawyers for Egan-Jones have previously said they plan to vigorously defend itself against the SEC's lawsuit.

On Monday Sean Egan told reporters what he had told CNBC Thursday, that the SEC's case will not affect the independence of the company's ratings.

This 4-paragraph story was posted over at the cnbc.com website yesterday...and you just read them all. The link to the hard copy is here...and I thank West Virginia Reader Elliot Simon for sending it.

Trading by "real" investors is taking up the smallest share of US stock market volumes in more than a decade, according to a recent study.

The findings highlight how US trading activity is increasingly being fuelled by fast turnover of shares by independent firms and the market-making desks of brokerages, many using high-frequency trading engines.

The proportion of US trading activity represented by buy and sell orders from mutual funds, hedge funds, pensions, and brokerages, referred to as "real money" or institutional investors, accounted for just 16 per cent of total market volume in the form of buying, and 13 per cent via selling in the final quarter of last year, according to analysis by Morgan Stanley's Quantitative and Derivative Strategies group.

This Financial Times story was posted in the clear in this GATA release late last night...and it's a must read for sure. The link is here.

Jim Puplava over at financialsense.com interviewed Casey Research's own Bud Conrad. Bud sees large and growing demands for credit from the federal government, which will require the Fed to continue to create a large and growing supply. This will lead to debasement of the dollar, higher inflation, and higher interest rates, all long-term negatives for the US economy. As government debt grows, the interest to be paid grows as well. If rates rise, the scenario becomes much worse.

This audio interview runs a hair over 18 minutes...and is certainly worth your time if you have it. The link is here.

Commodities guru Jim Rogers was on Fox Business News yesterday afternoon predicting disaster for 2013.

"First of all, we have tax increases January 1," warned Rogers. "Secondly, we've had recession every four to six years... Next year, it's four to six years."

"Now I've been investing for a long time and I have noticed when good news comes out and stocks go down, something's wrong. So you better be worried," warned Rogers. "I don't know what's wrong. But I know we've had a great first quarter. One of the best first quarters in history. And now good news is coming out and stocks are going down."

This video interview with Jim Rogers is imbedded in this story that was posted at the businessinsider.com website yesterday...and I thank reader Donald Sinclair for bringing it to my attention. The link is here.

This 6:28 minute video is imbedded in a Mike Shedlock article on this subject that was posted over at the safehaven.com website yesterday...and I thank Roy Stephens for his first story of the day. The link is here.

Europe's political centre is starting to crumble, replicating the pattern of the early 1930s as the crisis ground into its third year under a similar mix of fiscal and monetary contraction.

Elected governments have already been swept away - or replaced by EU technocrats without a vote, indeed to prevent a vote - in every eurozone state where unemployment has reached double-digits: Spain (23.6pc), Greece (21pc), Portugal (15pc), Ireland (14.7pc) and Slovakia (14pc).

The political carnage has been striking. Ireland's Fianna Foil, creator of the Irish free state, has lost every seat in Dublin. Greece's Panhellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK) - torch-bearers of Greek democracy since the Colonels - has fallen to 14pc in the polls and faces ruin next month.

This week the tornado has smashed into the core, bringing down Holland's government and probably the French leader Nicolas Sarkozy as well in a cacophony of anti-EU diatribes.

This Ambrose Evans-Pritchard blog was posted in The Telegraph yesterday evening...and is Roy Stephens second offering of the day. The link to this very worthwhile read is here.

In a rare concession, the German Chancellor admitted that austerity alone would not solve the crisis but she insisted that the wave of political opposition to fiscal discipline was wrong.

"We're not saying that saving solves all problems," Ms Merkel said at a conference in Berlin. "[But] you can't spend more than you take in. You can't live your whole life this way. Everybody knows this."

Mark Rutte, the deposed Dutch prime minister, made a passionate plea to politicians to stick to his proposed budget cuts. "The problems are serious, the economy is stalling, employment is under pressure and government debt is growing faster than the Netherlands can afford," he said. "Those are the facts and nobody can run away from them. I'm standing here without pretences, it is up to parliament and the voters."

This is another item that was posted in The Telegraph yesterday evening...and is Roy Stephens third story in a row. The link is here.

The Dutch government has collapsed after failing to win coalition support for its austerity plans. Elections are set to be held in September and analysts say one of the EU’s strongest economies may bring the unified currency’s demise

Prime Minister Mark Rutte, a strong advocate of the Euro, has been trying to get the Parliament to adopt 14-16 billion euros worth of austerity cuts. The deficit slashing is aimed at getting the Dutch budget deficit under the three per cent of deficit to GDP limit established by the new EU fiscal pact.

Rutte was unable to win the support of the far-right Freedom Party, whose leader Geert Welders said his country should not fund the new European Stability Mechanism and, at the same time, be expected to implement Brussels’ budget deficit caps.

“We don't want to cut spending by 14 billion euros and at the same time transfer billions of euros to Brussels for the horrible ESM emergency fund and the weak Greeks,” Welders noted.

This story was filed from somewhere in Europe in the wee hours of this morning...and is Roy's fourth offering in a row. It's posted over at the Russian Times...and the link is here.

This past Saturday, all eyes were on El Clasico, the showpiece event of world club football. And what an occasion it was, with the league title up for grabs. However, all is not as it seems in La Liga.

Although it boasts some of the world's biggest stars in Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo, Spanish football's debt crisis has put the league on course for economic ruin.

Both Barcelona and Real Madrid have reached the Champions League semi-finals (although both take a one-goal deficit into the second legs), and could meet in the final on May 19 in Munich. Domestic rivals Atletico Madrid, Valencia and Athletic Bilbao are in the Europa League semi-finals.

Real Madrid, which lead the Spanish league by four points, has debts of €589m (£477m), while Barcelona's stands at €578m (£473m) and Atletico's is €514m (£420m). Valencia have sold star players like David Villa, David Silva and Juan Mata to drop its own debt to €382m (£312m).

If you're a football fan [what we call soccer here in North America] this is a must read...and I thank reader Graeme Guthrie for sending me this story yesterday, which was posted over at the dailymail.co.uk website last Thursday. The link is here.

About 20 jailed foreign businessmen have gone on hunger strike in Dubai to protest against lengthy sentences for writing checks that bounced, a criminal offence in the United Arab Emirates.

“I’ve exhausted every avenue that I can see,” Peter Margetts, 48, a former property developer, told the Financial Times from a prison pay phone. “I’ve exhausted the legal system, the lawyers have their hands tied here and they’re not going to rock the boat.”

Mr. Margetts is one of three British prisoners who started a hunger strike on Sunday. Other jailed businessmen come from Ireland, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Lebanon, India and Pakistan.

Many of the hunger strikers fell victim to Dubai’s once-thriving real estate market, struggling to meet their payments when boom turned to bust in 2008. Twelve face sentences of more than 20 years because each bounced check can translate into a jail term of up to three years.

This very interesting Financial Times story from yesterday ended up as a posting over at the cnbc.com website yesterday...and I thank reader Randall Reinwasser for sharing it with us. The link is here.

Despite its victory in parliamentary elections, Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood has been weakened in the race to elect a successor to former President Hosni Mubarak, after its two most promising candidates were disqualified. Meanwhile ordinary Egyptians, who care more about making a living than about religion, are looking for a strong leader for the country.

This very interesting read was posted on the German website spiegel.de yesterday...and gives some indication of just how deep the problems run in Egypt these days. As one citizen put it in this article..."Egypt needs a new pharaoh." I thank Roy Stephens for this, his last offering in today's column...and the link is here.

The website www.sharelynx.com is a treasure trove of weird and wonderful charts, most of them gold-related.

It’s the only site I know where you can find the historical ratio of gold-to-milk prices, for example. Or where you can look at a measure of sentiment in the gold market from, say, 1983.

Nick Laird, who runs the site, pinged me an e-mail last week, which read: “This must be the low. I have rarely seen it so quiet. Normally I get at least a couple of visitors a day looking for a trial of my website. The last ten days, I’ve had two people asking”.

This article, authored by Dominic Frisby, was posted over at the moneyweek.com website yesterday...and the link is here.

The Shanghai Futures Exchange (SHFE), China's largest market for commodities, issued a draft Tuesday, outlining the upcoming launch of the exchange's silver contract, China Securities Journal reported Wednesday.

The launch of silver futures trading on the SHFE will help silver-related companies hedge against silver fluctuations in the world market, give China more sway in determining global silver prices, and offer another investment option for the nation's small investors, experts told the Global Times.

China's miners, manufacturers, retailers and other enterprises, which rely on the precious metal, will undoubtedly welcome the start of domestic silver futures trading, which will allow them to hedge against fluctuating global silver prices, Li Ning, a gold analyst from Shanghai Cifco Futures, told the Global Times.

There has been a lot of talk about the silver trading platform on this exchange, I certainly hope that it lives up to its advance billing. We'll find out soon enough, although the article doesn't mention when trading on this new futures market will begin. I thank Washington state reader S.A. for bringing this story to our attention...and the link is here.

The first blog is from Jim Sinclair...and Eric King has headlined it "Shorts Now Trapped and Gold Could Gap Up to $3,000". The second blog is with Caesar Bryan...and it's entitled "Asia to Deploy Stunning and Massive QE". The third blog with Richard Russell was posted on the KWN website shortly after midnight last night. It's headlined "After the Calm Comes the Storm".

Dear Mr. President,

It seems to me that you opened up a very large can of worms last week when you sought to combat price manipulation in the energy markets. Within that now-opened can, I believe you will find one worm made of gold and another cast in silver.

Because I prefer fair markets to the perpetually rigged variety, I do applaud the aspect of your proposal that would combat price-manipulating behavior in the futures markets by the hand of "an irresponsible few." I find it highly questionable, however, that you would limit the scope of such efforts exclusively to the energy markets, while turning a blind eye to similar abuses in other segments of the futures markets.

My friend Christopher Barker over at the Motley Fool website sent me his latest commentary that was posted on that website yesterday. It's certainly worth the read...and the link is here.

Michael Harwath over at the German website metallwoche.de conducted an interview with GoldMoney's James Turk on the weekend...and the link to this 32-minute audio presentation is here.

Mexico added 16.8 metric tons of gold valued at about $906.4 million to its reserves in March as nations including Turkey, Russia, and Kazakhstan increased their holdings of the metal, International Monetary Fund data show.

Mexico raised its reserves to 122.6 tons last month when gold averaged $1,676.67 an ounce, data on the IMF's website showed. Turkey added 11.5 tons, Kazakhstan 4.3 tons, Ukraine 1.2 tons, Tajikistan 0.4 ton, and Belarus 0.1 ton, according to the IMF. The data shows Russia boosted gold reserves by about 16.5 tons after its central bank said on April 20th they were higher. The Czech Republic reduced bullion reserves by 0.1 ton.

This Bloomberg story was sent to me by Washington state reader S.A. yesterday...and it's certainly a must read. The link is here.