Basically, there was way more demand for Facebook stock than there was shares...so Morgan Stanley and the other underwriters had to figure out which small clients to give stock to.

At Morgan Stanley, a source reports, this decision was made as follows: The individual clients who were the most profitable for the firm got the most stock.

In this case, the strategy backfired--at least for those clients who didn't flip their Facebook stock on the first day of trading.

Morgan Stanley's best clients, the ones who got the most Facebook stock on the IPO, have now gotten the most hosed. Whoops!

This delicious little story was posted on the businessinsider.com website yesterday...and I thank Roy Stephens for sharing it with us. The link is here.

FaceBook is now not only the worst (from an investor standpoint) large IPO in the past decade, but by the time Andy Borowitz is done with it, it will also be the funniest. Today, having previously presented the world with the "adjusted" letter from Zuck, and introduced PhoneBook, Borowitz gives us the low down on the Facebook founder's own post-mortem.

And yes, it's funny cause it's true, because making fun of human stupidity never gets old, and because watching the formerly hip become the terminally uncool is just the greatest slow-motion train wreck available.

This zerohedge.com piece is a hoot to read, so if you're looking for a good laugh, this is it. I thank reader U.D. for digging it up on our behalf...and the link is here.

U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission investigators have concluded their probe of possible financial fraud at Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. without recommending enforcement action against the firm or its former executives, according to an excerpt of an internal agency memo.

Pressure on the agency to punish any wrongdoing related to Lehman’s collapse escalated after Anton Valukas, the court- appointed bankruptcy examiner, found the firm misled investors with “accounting gimmicks” that disguised its leverage.

Senior SEC officials have been reluctant to formally close the matter even though investigators found a lack of evidence of wrongdoing, according to people with direct knowledge of the matter. The officials have weighed issuing a public report on their findings that would stop short of an enforcement action while highlighting the firm’s questionable conduct.

I'm sure if they'd found something seriously amiss, the company's top people would still have walked. This story was filed on the Bloomberg website on Thursday evening...and I thank West Virginia reader Elliot Simon for sending it. The link is here.

Frontline has aired a short documentary on bankruptcy of brokerage MF Global, with a heavy focus on the rise and fall of the firm's former CEO Jon Corzine.

If the epic Frontline documentary "Money, Power & Wall Street" is any measure of the network's ability to cover a financial collapse, we've got pretty high hopes for this one. From the press preview of the documentary, we can tell it's filled with insight from experts and lots of interesting video clips of Corzine's old days.

The documentary, entitled "MF Global's $6 Billion Bet", was aired on Tuesday night...and it's posted on the pbs.org website. I thank reader Norbert Wangnick for bringing it to our attention...and it's definitely worth watching. The link is here.

Detroit, whose 139 square miles contain 60 percent fewer residents than in 1950, will try to nudge them into a smaller living space by eliminating almost half its streetlights.

As it is, 40 percent of the 88,000 streetlights are broken and the city, whose finances are to be overseen by an appointed board, can’t afford to fix them. Mayor Dave Bing’s plan would create an authority to borrow $160 million to upgrade and reduce the number of streetlights to 46,000. Maintenance would be contracted out, saving the city $10 million a year.

Other U.S. cities have gone partially dark to save money, among them Colorado Springs; Santa Rosa, California; and Rockford, Illinois. Detroit’s plan goes further: It would leave sparsely populated swaths unlit in a community of 713,000 that covers more area than Boston, Buffalo and San Francisco combined. Vacant property and parks account for 37 square miles (96 square kilometers), according to city planners.

This Bloomberg story was posted on their website on Thursday...and I thank reader 'David in California' for sending it along. The link is here.

Faber’s bearish market calls have been followed closely since 1987 when he warned his clients to cash out before Black Monday.

And in a live interview on CNBC’s Fast Money Halftime Report, Faber again warned that economies of the world may be on the brink of a serious slowdown.

Faber indicated that while investors remain focused on Greece and Europe – other issues, bigger issues are looming. And they’re more threatening.

“As an observer of markets – whenever everyone focuses on one thing – like Greece and Europe – maybe they miss issues that are far more important – such as a meaningful slowdown in India and China.”

This story showed up on the CNBC website late yesterday afternoon...and I thank Nitin Agrawal for sending it. The link is here.

In Europe, the situation this week went from bad to worse. The 18th emergency EU summit was acrimonious and unproductive. It is clear that with its new Socialist President, the political landscape has shifted dramatically in France. Importantly, the breakdown of the German and French policymaking axis has only made the policymaking backdrop more dysfunctional. In a quote worthy of note, French President Hollande this week asked: “Is it acceptable that some sovereigns can borrow at 6% and others at zero in the same monetary union?” Not surprisingly, this line of thinking - and his hard line approach with the Germans - has been warmly embraced in Spain and Italy. We’ll see if the Germans can be bullied.

It is not a low probability that a cataclysmic event is unfolding in Europe. Over the past twenty years, cataclysms have been anything but rare occurrences (1995, ‘97, ‘98, 2000, ‘01, and ‘08 come quickly to mind). European finance is not functioning effectively; policymaking is dysfunctional; confidence is breaking down; and the region’s economies are in serious trouble (I know, markets are “oversold”). It is also apparent that major Credit Bubbles in China, India, Brazil and elsewhere are showing their age. While talk of capital flight from Greece, Spain and Italy garners most attention, there are maladjusted economic/financial systems round the globe that are quite susceptible to de-risking/de-leveraging dynamics and attendant reversals in “hot money” flows. Heightened global market stress, bouts of financial dislocation and a resulting global economic slowdown now appear likely. The extent to which dollar carry trades (shorting/selling dollar instruments to finance the purchase of higher-returning global risk assets) have accumulated over the years remains an important unknown.

Doug Noland's Friday Credit Bubble Bulletin is always worth reading...especially so in these trying times. This week's column is no exception...and I thank reader U.D. for forwarding it to me. The link is here.

"Currencies are in effect the ocean" that all the fish, including the great white shark, fear, says investment manager and author of Currency Wars, James Rickards. Sometimes the ocean is calm, but in times like ours it becomes a much more hostile and dangerous environment. Find out how currencies interact globally and why governments manipulate them so much, in this video.

This short video teaser runs for just under seven minutes...and it's posted over at the Casey Research website. If you wish to listen to the whole presentation...and those of 30 other well-known economist, authors and investment pros, you'll find out more about that when you click on the link to the video teaser, which is here. I thank reader Scott Pluschau for pointing out what I should have found on my own.

WSPD's Brian Wilson discusses "The Ascendance of Sociopaths in US Governance" with Doug Casey, who notes that "over time, government degrades and draws the wrong kind of people."

The audio track...which runs 17:37...is posted over at the wspd.com website...and it's a must listen for sure. The link is here. I thank reader Carl Lindfors for bringing this interview to my attention.

Every time a “Bilderberg Meeting” takes place, important things happen. The last time they met in the US was an election year, 2008 – and the world got Obama. This year they’re back in the US: will they decide who the next president of the United State

­When in 2008 they gathered from June 5 to 8 in Chantilly, Virginia – just a stone’s throw from the Washington DC – Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton were neck-in-neck in the battle for the Democratic Party’s presidential candidacy.

On June 5 of that year, Barack and Hillary mysteriously “disappeared” for some hours “somewhere in the DC area.” Their agendas blocked out, they clearly sneaked off to “Meet the Bilderbergers.”

The media kept mum about that, save for an Associated Press report on the campaign trail saying that, "reporters traveling with Obama sensed something might be happening between the pair (i.e. Obama and Hillary) when they arrived at Dulles International Airport after an event in Northern Virginia and Obama was not aboard the airplane. Asked at the time about the Illinois Senator's whereabouts, Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs smiled and declined to comment." (The AP dispatch “Obama and Clinton meet, discuss uniting Democrats” is, strangely, “no longer available” on their website).

This must read essay was posted on the Russian Today website on Wednesday...and I thank West Virginia reader Elliot Simon for sharing it with us. The link is here.

The bad news from last week's passage of the 2013 National Defense Authorization Act is that Americans can still be arrested on US soil and detained indefinitely without trial. Some of my colleagues would like us to believe that they fixed last year's infamous Sections 1021 and 1022 of the NDAA, which codified into law the unconstitutional notion that some Americans are not subject to the protections of the Constitution. However, nothing in this year's bill or amendments to the bill restored those constitutional rights.

Supporters of the one amendment that passed on this matter were hoping no one would notice that it did absolutely nothing. The amendment essentially stated that those entitled to habeas corpus protections are hereby granted habeas corpus protections. Thanks for nothing!

Actually, the amendment in question makes matters worse, as it states that anyone detained on US soil has the right to file a writ of habeas corpus "within 30 days" of arrest. In fact, persons detained on US soil already have the right to file a habeas petition immediately upon arrest!

This short piece was posted over at the safehaven.com website on Tuesday...and I thank Roy Stephens for digging it up on our behalf. The link is here.

Think of devaluation as the monetary equivalent of the "tragedy of the commons". In a nutshell, if everyone owns something, it is in each individual's interest to grab what they can as quickly as possible, which soon depletes the resource.

With currency exchange rates, as with fisheries and sheep pastures, there's an advantage for those who move first and pain for those who dither. Consider Iceland's nearly-instantaneous recovery from its epic banking crash.

In Greece and the other PIIGS countries, Iceland is the real-world blueprint for those who want to abandon the euro experiment and take back national control of monetary policy -- in other words, to regain the ability to devalue.

This very worthwhile story by John Rubino was posted over on the safehaven.com website yesterday...and is worth your time if you have it. I thank Roy Stephens for sending it...and the link is here.

Spain’s banking crisis worsened Friday as the board of Bankia, the country’s biggest mortgage lender, warned that it would need an additional 19 billion euros ($23.88 billion), far beyond what the government estimated when it seized the bank and its portfolio of delinquent real estate loans earlier this month.

The government is trying to head off a collapse of the bank, which could threaten the Spanish banking industry and reverberate through the financial centers of Europe and beyond. The fear is that it will not have the money to save its banks, and their $1.25 trillion in deposits, and will need a rescue by the rest of Europe — even as political and financial leaders struggle to resolve Greece’s debt debacle.

Bankia’s announcement came as Standard & Poor’s, the credit ratings agency, downgraded Bankia and two other banks, Banco Popular and Bankinter, to junk status and lowered the ratings of two other Spanish banks also staggered by mounting bad loans. A junk rating could make it even harder for Bankia to borrow its way out of trouble.

Another brick in the wall...and it's only a matter of time, and not much time either, before the rest of the European financial system is in the same boat...if they're not there already. This story showed up in The New York Times yesterday...and I thank reader Phil Barlett for sharing it with us. It's definitely worth reading...and the link is here.

The first headline reads "Iran will not relinquish its right to 20% enrichment: cleric". The second story bears the title "Iran intends to keep its civilian nuclear program: ambassador". And lastly is this piece headlined "Iran, 5+1 to meet again in Moscow to ‘expand common ground’". All articles are courtesy of Roy Stephens.

More than £4m worth of fake one pound coins have been seized by detectives.

The haul is thought to be the biggest ever in the UK and follows raids on properties around London.

The Metropolitan Police received information from a member of the public that led to raids at addresses in Enfield, Essex and Hertfordshire.

Detective Inspector Bruce South said: "This seizure is a significant blow to the network behind it - individuals clearly intent on undermining the UK monetary system by producing counterfeit currency on an industrial scale.

I knew without reading the story that the headline referred to the British £1 coin...as it has been a huge problem for years. But [Sir] Mervyn King should be behind bars as well for exactly the same offence.

This SkyNews story was picked up by uk.news.yahoo.com on Thursday...and I thank Australian reader Wesley Legrand for sending it to me. The link is here.

MineWeb's Lawrence Williams notes that more major gold purchases have been reported to the International Monetary Fund by central banks and he acknowledges that other purchases, particularly by China, are probably being made but not being reported to the IMF until it is "politically expedient" to do so.

That is, as GATA long has maintained and has reported many times, central bank gold data is often misleading and sometimes outright disinformation, because gold is infinitely more important to central banks than they let on.

I'll let Chris Powell do the rest of the talking in this GATA release linked here...and I thank reader Donald Sinclair for being the first one through the door with this story yesterday. This is another must read.

The first blog is with James Turk. It's headlined "Escalating Bank Runs, Many Banks Will Not Survive". The second blog is with John Hathaway...and it bears the headline "Central Banks & 'Wealthy Are Now Big Buyers of Gold". And lastly is this audio interview with Nigel Farage. I posted the blog in this space yesterday. The two blogs are definitely worth your time.

With the European Union’s fiscal future in question and other major global currencies experiencing severe volatility, Bullion Management Group Inc. (BMG) has invited Jim Rickards, best-selling author of Currency Wars: The Making of the Next Global Crisis, to offer his perspective on what’s happened, and happening to major currencies. The event’s moderator is BMG’s CEO Nick Barisheff, who later this year is coming out with his own book $10,000 Gold: The Inevitable Rise and the Investor’s Safe Haven.

This webinar, which happens on Thursday, May 31, 2012 between 2:00 p.m. and 3:00 p.m. Eastern time, will include an opportunity to ask questions. Every investor who wants to protect their portfolio will benefit from the insights of Jim and Nick as they discuss gold and currency-related topics.

The webinar is entitled "Currency Wars and Capital Markets: No Escape". If you're interested, you must register in advance, which you can do by clicking here.

The Basel Committee for Bank Supervision (BCBS), the maker of global capital requirements and whose Basel III rules form the basis for global bank regulation, is studying making gold a bank capital Tier 1 asset.

"Gold has historically been classified as a Tier 3 asset. When determining how much money a bank can loan, the bank's gold holdings have traditionally been discounted 50 percent of the current market value. With value cut in half, banks have little incentive to hold gold as an asset." Frank Holmes, usfunds.com

If gold is made a Tier 1 Capital asset banks could operate with far less equity capital than is normally required. Gold would be the new backstop for debt, currencies and bank equity capital.

"Anyone who understands gold's historic role will grasp the importance of the argument behind extra bank leverage. Direct ownership of bullion by a bank is superior to holding the fiat money issued by a central bank. It should increase confidence in any bank and the system as a whole. Given relative values, bank purchases of bullion will drive the value of gold as Tier 1 capital up relative to other qualifying assets, increasing its desirability for regulatory purposes further without a gold-owning bank doing anything." Alasdair Macleod, resourceinvestor.com.

This short essay, which is definitely worth reading, showed up over at the safehaven.com website yesterday...and I thank Roy Stephens for his last offering in today's column. The link is here.

Writing at GoldSeek's companion site, SilverSeek, silver market analyst Ted Butler, who exposed the silver price suppression scheme so many years ago and has kept at it ceaselessly since then, gives up on the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which, he says, lied in its previous investigation of the silver market and is lying now as its current supposed investigation nears its fourth year of nothing. Butler calls for the resignation of all CFTC members.

We at GATA are not quite as disappointed in the CFTC as Butler is, as the commission's inability to produce anything honest or intelligent about silver after nearly four years is as good as confirmation that the silver price suppression scheme is essentially a U.S. government operation, like the gold price suppression scheme. Those with eyes to see and ears to hear can figure this out pretty easily now.

I stole 'all of the above' from a GATA release yesterday. Ted's commentary, which is a portion of what he wrote in his mid-week commentary to his paying subscribers, is headlined "Illegalities" and it's posted at the silverseek.com Internet site...and the link is here.