Another one bites the dust. The Royal Bank of Scotland is about to be fined $233 million (£150 million pounds) for its role in the Libor-rigging scandal. It joins Barclays as the first banks to walk the plank in what should be, but so far is not, the most sensational financial corruption story since the crash of 2008.

Many of the banks implicated in the Libor mess have also been targeted in the various municipal bond bid-rigging investigations, and RBS is no different – its subsidiary Natwest is also a defendant in the major civil lawsuit in the bid-rigging case. The cases aren't related, except in the sense that they both involve manipulation and anticompetitive cooperation. It's going to be harder and harder to make the case that the major banks do not routinely cooperate at the expense of the public when it serves their purposes to do so.

This very short Matt Taibbi blog was posted over at Rolling Stone magazine yesterday...and it's well worth your time. I thank Roy Stephens for his first offering in today's column...and the link is here.

Sir Mervyn King, the governor of the Bank of England, piled the pressure on the City on Friday when he said something had gone "very wrong" with Britain's banks that needed to be put right.

As Barclays and other high street banks became embroiled in a new mis-selling scandal, King launched his most scathing attack yet on the culture of banking in the five-year-long financial crisis.

King refused to say Bob Diamond was a "fit and proper" person to run Barclays as the reputational damage from an interest rate-fixing fine led to another fall in the bank's shares. More than £4bn has been wiped off the value of the bank since the rate-fixing scandal emerged.

"It is time to do something about the banking system," King said. As he warned that the outlook for financial stability had deteriorated as a result of the eurozone crisis, he dismissed mounting calls for a Leveson-style investigation into banks, saying that enough was already known to implement root and branch reform of the City.

This longish article appeared in The Guardian on Friday...and is Roy's second offering in a row. The link is here.

Two hundred and eighty-nine trillion dollars. An unimaginable amount. That is the total of derivatives outstanding at the top five US bank holding companies as of March 31, 2012, according to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC).

The five holding companies are JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs. They hold roughly 45% of all over-the-counter derivatives outstanding in the world, based on the $648 trillion total estimated by the Bank for International Settlements. Others estimate that the total global derivatives outstanding could be as large as $1.2 quadrillion, or $1,200 trillion.

The five banking behemoths are so large in the global derivatives market that they would appear to be the market. According to the OCC, their outstanding holdings constitute some 95% of the US market total of approximately $302 trillion. Over the past decade the amount of outstanding derivatives has exploded. Since the end of 2002 the outstandings of the bank holding companies have grown from $58.2 trillion to $302 trillion an increase of 419%.

This is a fairly long read, but gives you some idea as to just how gargantuan the derivatives market has become. I had something about it in my column earlier this week. This report is rather technical...and my best advice is for you to read until your eyes start to glaze over. It was posted over at the goldseek.com website on Thursday...and I thank reader U.D. for bringing it to my attention. The link is here.

After tough all-night bargaining, European leaders appeared to salvage what had seemed to be a summit teetering toward failure by agreeing early Friday to funnel money directly to struggling banks, and in the longer term to form a tighter union.

The agreements at a European Union summit in Brussels suggested Germany had yielded a bit on its insistence on forcing tough reforms in exchange for rescue money. That was a victory for Italy and Spain, who have argued they have done a lot to clean up their economies yet are facing rising borrowing costs.

The bank decision in Brussels was aimed at helping Spain, which sought a €100 billion rescue to help its troubled banks.

This AP story appeared on the france24.com website yesterday...and is another offering from Roy Stephens. The link is here.

The deal, sealed by leaders in the early hours of Friday morning in Brussels, will allow stricken banks to directly access the region’s rescue fund. The hope is it will enable Ireland to return to international bond markets.

Eamon Gilmore, Ireland’s deputy prime minister, said: “This is a massive breakthrough for Ireland and it changes the game in terms of our bank debt. This deal will allow the country to recover much faster.”

Under previous rules, rescue funds first had to be handed to governments before being passed on to troubled banks. That way countries like Spain ,which has been forced to intervene to help its banks, had to take on additional debt, pushing up borrowing costs.

This is another story courtesy of Roy Stephens. This one is out of The Telegraph yesterday afternoon...and the link is here.

Politicians from both inside and outside Chancellor Angela Merkel's government are calling for the vote on the euro bailout fund scheduled for Friday evening to be pushed back. Too much has changed since the marathon summit in Brussels, they say, and they need time to sort things out.

Jürgen Koppelin, a member of the Free Democratic Party, called for a delay in Friday evening's planned vote to okay funds to shore up the ailing euro, saying his party did not want to see the watering down of the criteria Merkel agreed to Friday morning in Brussels. "The position of the FDP up until now has been that the criteria cannot be eased," he said. "Talks within the coalition are necessary."

"My immediate advice is to postpone the vote until next week and not to hold it now," he said.

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

German Chancellor Angela Merkel rarely sees these kinds of negative headlines when returning from European Union summits. During her over six years as the head of Germany's government, she has usually been able to put a positive spin on even unpopular compromises.

But at the most recent emergency gathering of European heads of state and government, which was held in Brussels and lasted until the wee hours of Friday morning, she had a hard time doing exactly that. Reactions back home were devastating, and there were even calls for pushing back key parliamentary votes on the permanent euro bailout fund, known as the European Stability Mechanism (ESM), as well as Merkel's fiscal pact scheduled for Friday evening. In fact, the vehemence of the attacks seems to have taken even Merkel's advisers by surprise.

Merkel launched her counterattack on Friday afternoon. In a post-summit press conference, she said one first has to sort things out after such a long night, and she tried to counter the impression that she had been out-maneuvered by Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti and Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy.

This is another Roy Stephens offering from spiegel.de yesterday...and the link is here.

Pacific Investment Management Co.’s Bill Gross said a “debt trap” remains in place even after European leaders reached an agreement that alleviated concern the region’s banks will fail.

Pimco continues to avoid the debt of nations including Spain and Portugal in favor of U.S. Treasuries and mortgage securities, Gross, who runs the world’s biggest bond fund, said in a radio interview on “Bloomberg Surveillance” with Tom Keene and Ken Prewitt.

“The peripherals and even the core union nations have too much debt,” Gross said. “The marginal cost of that debt is far above nominal GDP growth in respective nations. That continues a debt trap unless the cost of debt can come down.”

This Bloomberg story from yesterday morning is courtesy of Washington state reader S.A...and the link is here.

Even as markets cheered the agreement by European leaders to allow the direct use of the bloc’s bailout funds to recapitalize struggling banks, well-known investor Jim Rogers told CNBC the move does nothing to help solve the region’s biggest problem, which is its high debt levels.

“Just because now you have a way to get them (the banks) to borrow even more money, this is not solving the problem, this is making the problem worse,” Rogers said on Friday.

“People need to stop spending money they don’t have. The solution to too much debt is not more debt. All this little agreement does is give them (banks) a chance to have even more debt for a while longer,” he added.

That pretty much sums it up. This story was posted on the CNBC Asia website early yesterday morning Hong Kong time...and I thank West Virginia reader Elliot Simon for sending it along. The link is here.

Sprott Asset Management CEO Eric Sprott tells King World News today there's no plan to fix the European financial system, that everything from government officials is a lie, and that there's nothing to do but wait for governments to get out of the business of gold price suppression.

I borrowed the headline and the introductory paragraph from a GATA release yesterday. This KWN blog is a must read for sure...and the link is here.

In a last minute call, the White House spares Beijing and Singapore of financial penalties under Iran oil sanctions. The US says the two countries have “significantly reduced” their purchases of the Persian country’s crude.

­“Today, I’ve made the determination that two additional countries, China and Singapore, have significantly reduced their volume of crude oil purchases from Iran,” US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Thursday – the day the US sanctions against Iran and its customers took legal effect.

The sanctions, which deny access to US banking systems for Tehran’s oil customers, will no longer apply to China’s and Singapore’s “financial institutions for a potentially renewable period of 180 days,” Hillary Clinton added.

This brings the total number of “cleared” countries to 20. Exemptions for South Korea, Turkey and India – all major importers of Iranian crude – were announced on June 11 and were earlier granted to Japan and countries across Europe.

This story was posted on the Russia Today website yesterday evening...and it's also courtesy of Roy Stephens. The link is here.

Once upon a time, not too long ago, Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu was the prime proponent of a foreign policy dubbed "zero problems with our neighbors" - derided by many in the West as "new-Ottomanism".

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) meets this Tuesday in Brussels not only to craft its response to a Turkish F-4 Phantom jet shot being down by Syria's anti-aircraft artillery but to seal what sort of "new Ottomanism" is emerging from what actually turned into a "big problem with one of our neighbors" policy.

Davutoglu insists the F-4 was shot in international air space - although conceding it had briefly entered Syrian air space. Contradicting Syria's official explanation, he said the jet was clearly marked as Turkish; was on a "training flight" to test Turkey's "national radar system"; and most of all had "no covert mission related to Syria".

This is the first of two stories about the "New Great Game". This one is by Pepe Escobar...and it was posted over at the Asia Times Internet site on Tuesday. Although unsuitable and too long for a weekday column, it fits in the Saturday column perfectly. Roy Stephens sent it to me...and the link is here.

The building blocks of the historic visit by Russian President Vladimir Putin to Pakistan in September have begun arriving in Islamabad. It is a poignant moment in the region's history and politics. This will be the first time a Russian president visits Pakistan since its birth in 1947.

The Russians are fabricating some hardy bricks for the mansion they hope to build in the region which forms a beachhead on the Indian Ocean - a mansion large enough for their friends in Pakistan and in the neighboring countries of India, Iran and Afghanistan to consort with them.

But then, the very sight of the Russian bricks infuriates the United States. The point is, this Russia House will stand bang on the way of the New Silk Road that the US has been planning, which also needs to run through Pakistan. If the access is blocked, it becomes problematic for the US to keep together the body and soul of the tens of thousands of its troops who were hoping to settle down in the Hindu Kush and Central Asia as pioneers in the "Wild West" of China's Xinjiang and on the "soft underbelly" of Russia.

This is the second "New Great Game" story...and it was posted on the Asia Times website earlier today. It is, of course, another offering from Roy Stephens...and the link is here.

With global stock markets on the move, while gold and oil exploded to the upside, today Art Cashin told King World News that for the shorts, “It is a kind of ‘Dear God get me out of here and I promise not to do this again.’ So a general panic along those lines.” Cashin, who is Director of Floor Operations for UBS, which has $612 billion under management, also commented on the spectacular rally in gold and oil. Here is what Art Cashin had to say: “Expectations for this summit were so low that if they came out of it without a fist-fight, we probably would have had a rally. The idea that they may have gotten something moving caused a spectacular short-covering rally in the euro and put pressure on the dollar. You can see oil is up 8%.”

The link to the rest of the Art Cashin blog is here.

California Gov. Jerry Brown has approved the state's newly adopted $92 billion state budget which contains a rider which continues the state's moratorium on suction dredge mining until the state adopts new rules which "fully mitigate all identified significant environmental impacts."

The rider also directs California's Department of Fish and Game, which regulates suction dredge mining, to work with public health, water and tribal authorities in a review of the practice.

Opponents contend the new rider essentially bans the practice in California waters forever.

This story was posted on the mineweb.com Internet site yesterday...and I thank Donald Sinclair for sharing it with us. The link is here.

GATA board member Adrian Douglas, publisher of the Market Force Analysis letter, who has been sidelined in recent months as he has been recovering from illness, returned this week with commentary titled "A Good Time to Buy Gold," posted in PDF format at GATA's Internet site...and the link is here.

Well, I never thought I'd live to hear the day that Wall Street Journal columnist Simon Constable had a lot of positive things to say about gold...but he does in this 4:08 video posted over at the wsj.com website. I thank reader Alan Baer for finding this...and it's certainly worth watching. The link is here.

This interview is with Ron Hera...and was posted over at the safehaven.com website yesterday. I thank Roy Stephens for finding it....and the link is here.

Gold traders are bullish for a sixth week on speculation that Europe’s debt crisis will boost demand from investors seeking to protect their wealth and drive prices higher after moving to within 1 percentage of a bear market.

Sixteen analysts surveyed by Bloomberg said they expect a rally next week and 10 were bearish. Another five were neutral. Investors added almost $2 billion to holdings in gold-backed exchange-traded products this month, the most since November, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Hedge funds and other speculators have increased bets on a rally for four consecutive weeks, U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission data show.

This is another Bloomberg story from yesterday...and Roy Stephens final offering in today's column. The link is here.