49.1%: Percent of the population that lives in a household where at least one member received some type of government benefit in the first quarter of 2011.

Cutting government spending is no easy task, and it’s made more complicated by recent Census Bureau data showing that nearly half of the people in the U.S. live in a household that receives at least one government benefit, and many likely received more than one.

The 49.1% of the population in a household that gets benefits is up from 30% in the early 1980s and 44.4% as recently as the third quarter of 2008.

This story was posted on The Wall Street Journal's website very early yesterday morning. I thank reader Scott Pluschau for sending it...and the link is here.

Japan and China will likely initiate a foreign exchange system in which the yen and the yuan can be directly exchanged starting in June at the earliest, sources have said.

The Japanese and Chinese governments have entered the final phase of negotiations to establish foreign exchange markets in Tokyo and Shanghai and will likely reach an official agreement soon.

Currently the two countries' currencies are exchanged via the U.S. dollar and thus foreign exchange commissions are relatively high.

This story showed up on the yomiuri.co.jp Internet site on their Sunday...and I thank reader 'David in California' for sending it along. The link is here.

The chief executive of the multi-billion pound Lloyd's of London has publicly admitted that the world's leading insurance market is prepared for a collapse in the single currency and has reduced its exposure "as much as possible" to the crisis-ridden continent.

Richard Ward said the London market had put in place a contingency plan to switch euro underwriting to multi-currency settlement if Greece abandoned the euro.

In an interview with The Sunday Telegraph he also revealed that Lloyd's could have to take write-downs on its £58.9bn investment portfolio if the eurozone collapses.

This story was posted on The Telegraph's website early on Sunday afternoon local time. I thank Roy Stephens for his first story of the day...and the link is here.

As problems mount in the euro zone, it’s increasingly evident that we’ve been witnessing an institutional failure of monumental proportions.

What is to be done about Greece? Simply keeping it in the euro zone won’t help much, even if it’s possible. The continuing crisis has sapped confidence in banks not only in Greece, but also in Spain, Italy, Portugal and Ireland, though to varying degrees. Unless there are explicit guarantees to these banks soon, the market will likely take a further turn for the worse.

An absence of guarantees could prompt a broader chain reaction of capital flight and bank collapses across several countries.

This story appeared in the Saturday edition of The New York Times...and I thank reader Donald Sinclair for bringing it to my attention. The link is here.

Spain is spiralling into the vortex of debt-deflation. The country’s collapse is the mathematically certain - and widely predicted - result of ferocious monetary and fiscal contraction on an economy struggling to deal with a housing bust.

Monetary tightening by the European Central Bank caused Spanish real M1 deposits to fall at an 8pc rate in mid-to-late 2011, guaranteeing the crash into double-dip recession that we now see.

Indeed, the ECB even let the broader M3 money supply contract for the whole eurozone late last year, badly breaching its own 4.5pc growth target. This was not purist hard-money discipline. Let us not dress it up with the bunting of ideology, or false authority. It was incompetence, on a par with the errors of 1931.

Spain’s Bankia fiasco has merely brought matters to head, though the details are shocking enough. A €4bn bail-out in mid-May. A €23bn bail-out two weeks later. You couldn’t make it up.

This rather lengthy commentary by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard is worth running through...and is Roy Stephens second offering in today's column. The link is here.

El Mundo reports that the country can no longer resist the bond markets as 10-year yields flirt with 6.5pc again, and the spread over Bunds – or `prima de riesgo' — hits a fresh record each day.

Premier Mariano Rajoy and his inner circle have allegedly accepted that Spain will have to call on Europe's EFSF bail-out fund to rescue the banking system, even though this means subjecting his country to foreign suzerainty.

Mr Rajoy denies the story, not surprisingly since it would be a devastating climb-down, and not all options are yet exhausted.

"There will not be any (outside) rescue for the Spanish banking system," he said.

Ambrose is at it again in this blog posted on The Telegraph's website yesterday. It's well worth reading...and the link is here. Once again I thank Roy Stephens for bringing it to our attention.

Former Greek prime minister Lucas Papademos has reportedly warned that Greece may run out of money by the end of June if international bailout funds are cut off following next month's election.

"From late June onwards, the ability of the government to fund its obligations fully depends on the approval of the subsequent installments of loans from the EFSF and the IMF," To Vima newspaper quoted Papademos as saying in a leaked memo.

"The available funds in the Greek government will be reduced gradually from about €3.8bn [£3bn] on May 11 to about €700m on June 18 and from June 20 will enter negative territory at the level of around €1bn."

This is another story from Roy that was posted on The Telegraph's website late Sunday morning...and the link is here.

Spain’s borrowing costs approached record highs on Monday as investors fretted over how the government would find additional money to bail out Bankia, the country’s largest mortgage lender, and other troubled banks.

Shares in Bankia plunged almost 30 percent early Monday before recovering somewhat, closing down 13.4 percent. Trading had been suspended Friday before the bank’s board called for an additional 19 billion euros, or almost $24 billion, of government money after reviewing the latest losses.

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

So where will he find the money to finance his €23.5bn bail-out of Bankia, a bank deemed healthy just weeks ago? The Fund for Orderly Bank Restructuring (FROB) has €5.3bn, and other banks to worry about. It would be ruinous to tap the bond markets. Spanish 10-year yields are already at danger levels of 6.4pc. The spread over German Bunds has reached a post-EMU high of 514 basis points.

Capital flight has cut foreign holdings of Spanish debt from 50pc to 37pc since January. Spain's banks -- including Bankia -- have been propping up the state with €316bn borrowed from the European Central Bank. Now the state is propping up banks. The incestuous nexus is surreal.

David Owen from Jefferies said Spain is near the point of no return. "It is not sustainable. They hope things will calm down after the Greek elections. We think there will have to be external intervention," he said.

This Ambrose Evans-Pritchard piece was posted on The Telegraph's website early yesterday evening...and I thank Roy Stephens once again for bringing it to our attention. The link is here.

Alexis Tsipras, head of the leftist Syriza party, wants an end to austerity in Greece. Ahead of Greek general elections in mid-June, he speaks with SPIEGEL about the dangers his country poses to the euro, the failure of economization measures thus far and why Chancellor Angela Merkel would be to blame if the Greek economy collapses.

Tsipras, the 37-year-old rising star in Greek politics, lays his Ray-Ban sunglasses on the table. It's Tuesday afternoon, and he looks exhausted. Indeed, he has a packed schedule: first Paris and then Berlin, where he met with Gregor Gysi and then with Jürgen Trittin and Sigmar Gabriel, senior officials in Germany's Left Party, Green Party and Social Democratic Party, respectively. Tsipras was the surprise victor when his Radical Left (Syriza) party took second place in May 6 general elections in Greece. Because leaders were unable to form a coalition government, a new election will be held on June 17. Most believe that Tsipras will attract even more votes in this second election.

Tsipras' tour through "Europe's two most important capital cities," as he put it, was primarily about cultivating his image. The civil engineer, already politically active in high school as a member of the Communist Youth of Greece, numbers among the strongest critics of the EU-International Monetary Fund (IMF) strategy for Greece, which calls for radical budget cuts and austerity in return for international aid. Should he win the June 17 election, Tsipras plans to ditch the terms of the bailout agreements struck with its creditors. On the campaign trail, one of his slogans has been that Greece is in danger of becoming a "German colony." But he toned things down in Berlin, saying: "We want to persuade, not blackmail."

The interview was posted on the German website spiegel.de yesterday...and I thank Roy Stephens once again for sending it. The link is here.

Greece handed 18 billion euros ($22.6 billion) to its four biggest banks on Monday, an official said, allowing the stricken lenders to regain access to European Central Bank funding.

The long-awaited injection—via bonds from the European Financial Stability Facility rescue fund—will boost the nearly depleted capital base of National Bank, Alpha , Eurobank and Piraeus Bank.

"The funds have been disbursed," an official at the Hellenic Financial Stability Facility, who declined to be named, told Reuters.

This Reuters story was posted on the cnbc.com website early yesterday afternoon was sent to me by West Virginia reader Elliot Simon...and the link is here.

Bad stuff, they say, comes in threes. We've already got the banking and the eurozone sovereign debt crises. Next comes the corporate funding crisis.

Just as you thought things couldn't get any worse, credit markets are about to be hit by a veritable tsunami of maturing corporate debt. Standard & Poor's estimates that companies in Europe, the US and the major Asian economies require a combination of refinancing and new money to fund growth over the next four years of between $43 trillion and $46 trillion. The wall of maturing debt is unprecedented, raising the prospect of further, extreme difficulties in credit markets.

With the eurozone debt crisis still at full throttle, the Chinese economy slowing fast and a still tepid US recovery, it's not clear that the banking system is in any position to deal with this incoming wave of demand.

As if the refinancing problem wasn't already challenging enough, into it all stumbles the European commissioner for internal markets, Michel Barnier, to prove the old saw that there is no mess quite so bad that official intervention won't make even worse.

Here's another must read story from The Telegraph that was posted on their Internet site early yesterday evening in London...and I thank Roy once again for sharing it with us. The link is here.

This euro crisis is now getting extremely serious. Events are happening quickly, closing-in on policy-makers and threatening to engulf us.

Across the single currency zone, fears are rising and, even in the most moderate nations, populations are becoming more restive. History is locked on fast-forward.

Some say that seemingly arcane economic policy debate doesn't matter. In the UK, in particular, but across much of the rest of Western Europe too, the political and media classes have long displayed a tendency to roll their eyes whenever anybody with even a smattering of economic insight has had the audacity to show it.

For the bien pensants, ignorance of financial issues has been a badge of honour. Economics has been dismissed as a "trade". To hold well-researched views about commerce and asset markets has been seen to be a suspect arriviste "striver". Such is the prejudice of those cosseted from economic reality, their minds dulled by generations of inherited wealth. Well, such minds created the euro and what a disaster the euro has been. And the greatest disaster could yet be to come.

This piece was posted in The Telegraph last Friday evening...and I consider it a must read. It's another story courtesy of Roy Stephens...and the link is here.

A new rule published Monday says anyone wanting to buy dollars for travel must first prove their money was obtained legally, and provide the tax agency with trip details including why, when and where they are traveling.

Many Argentines only declare part of their wealth and income to evade taxes, and use black-market currency exchanges to convert their inflationary pesos into dollars. Travel agencies are the latest target since they manage multiple currencies and offer customers black-market rates for their money.

President Cristina Fernandez is cracking down to keep hard currency from flowing out of Argentina, which needs the dollars to maintain its central bank reserves and pay debts.

This very short AP story was posted over at the seattlepi.com website late yesterday morning...and I plucked it from a GATA release. The link to the hard copy is here.

Iranian central bank governor Mahmoud Bahmani says the country has designed and implemented a new system for conducting international transactions.

Bahmani said on Saturday the new system, which has already been activated, would replace Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, the SWIFT system.

This is another very short story. This one was posted over at the presstv.com website on Saturday...and I borrowed this one from a GATA release as well. The link is here.

The first one is with Keith Barron...and it's headlined "This Move Will Be Highly Infaltionary & Where to Deploy Cash". The second blog is with Richard Russell...and contains some excellent graphs. It's entitled "IMPORTANT - Major Bear Market Signal". Next comes Robert Fitzwilson...and his blog is headlined "Investors are Unprepared for the Coming Detour". Next up to bat is Michael Pento with his blog that states "Is This 2008 Again for Gold & Gold Shares or is it Rally Time?" Fifth, and last, is this audio interview with John Hathaway.

Writing at MineWeb, Shivon Seth details and updates the Vietnamese government's war on a free gold market, which mirrors the war being waged against gold by the Indian government.

All governments have the same interest in gaining control over currency, lest people and markets get control, and the interest is just as strong in the West as it is in the East. What's different is, ironically, only that governments have more control over established news organizations in the West than in the East, so what is most obvious about government policy toward gold can be reported only from an Eastern perspective.

This is another story that I lifted from a GATA release yesterday. The mineweb.com report is headlined "Vietnamese Hoarding Around 1,000+ Tonnes of Gold as Government Aims to Increase Controls"...and the link is here.

In a move that will make the silver market more liquid, the Shanghai Futures (SHFE) has begun trading in silver contracts. The contracts are expected to be bullish for silver prices, with traders stating that it could make market manipulation more difficult.

Although the country is a main producer and consumer of silver, it has remained on the sidelines in silver trading. By initiating silver futures, traders say China clearly wants more control over the precious metal's pricing policy.

Chinese investors have been showing an increasing interest in the white metal amidst surging inflation and the sluggish performance of the stock and property markets. In March, about 134 billion yuan ($21 billion) in silver contracts were traded, more than 15 times the amount traded two years ago. More than gold, many retail investors prefer silver because the minimum requirement for investing in it is much lower in China.

This is a re-hash of a story that came out about a month ago when this exchange first began trading. But it does contain quite a bit of new information, so it's definitely worth reading. I thank reader Donald Sinclair for his second offering in today's column. The words "silver market price manipulation" show up a few times in this piece...and the link to the mineweb.com story is here.

Industrial and Commercial Bank of China Ltd is seeking membership of overseas exchanges and aims to become a major global bullion market maker, a senior executive said on Monday.

The world's biggest bank by market value, ICBC is the top player by volume on China's gold and futures exchanges, but its participation in foreign markets is limited to over-the-counter trading, which reached a total $90 billion last year.

Emboldened by Beijing's ambitions to have a bigger say in global commodity prices, ICBC now has an eye on bourses such as COMEX and on joining the 11 market makers of the London Bullion Market Association (LBMA).

Chris Powell wondered out loud if this "meant that China's government wants a hand in gold price rigging too?" That's a good question for which there is no answer at the moment. This Reuters piece is another story that showed up as a GATA release around lunch time in New York yesterday. It's certainly worth reading...and the link is here.