JPMorgan Chase & Co. is being investigated over potential power-market manipulation that inflated payments for electricity, according to the U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

The FERC, which has pledged to combat manipulation of prices, began its probe after reports last year of bidding practices by JPMorgan that the California and Midwest grid operators deemed to be abusive, according to documents provided by the Washington-based agency.

“Three of the bidding techniques had together resulted in at least $73 million in improper payments,” the agency said in documents filed yesterday, citing estimates by the two system operators.

So, what else is new? This Bloomberg story was sent to me by Scott Pluschau who discovered it shortly after it was posted on their website late yesterday morning Eastern time. The link is here.

To quote Lando Calrissian..."this deal is getting worse all the time."

General Motors shares fell to a fresh 2012 closing low of 19.57 on Monday. The stock hit 19 in mid-December, the lowest since the auto giant came public at $33 in November 2010 following its June 2009 bankruptcy.

Normally you might say, tough luck investors. But this is Government Motors. The Treasury still owns 26.5% of GM, or 500 million shares. Taxpayers are still out $26.4 billion in direct aid. Shares would have to hit $53 for the government to break even.

Those shares were worth about $9.8 billion as of Monday. That would leave taxpayers with a loss of $16.6 billion.

This investors.com story from yesterday is Scott Pluschau's second contribution in a row to today's column...and the link is here.

[Yesterday] morning, British investment bank Barclays announced that its CEO Bob Diamond would immediately resign in the wake of a massive fine over manipulating interest rates a few years ago.

Specifically, Barclays has been accused of submitting false numbers about the rate at which it was borrowing money, skewing LIBOR (which is an index measuring the rate at which banks borrow money).

Diamond will be at a government hearing tomorrow, and in preparation for that, Barclays has submitted a stunning letter to the government, basically accusing the Bank of England of being the real conspirator behind the interest rate manipulation scheme.

This businessinsider.com story was posted on their website midmorning Eastern time yesterday...and I thank Roy Stephens for his first offering of the day. The link is here.

A memo published by Barclays suggested that Paul Tucker gave a hint to Bob Diamond, the bank’s chief executive, in 2008 that the rate it was claiming to be paying to borrow money from other banks could be lowered.

His suggestion followed questions from “senior figures within Whitehall” about why Barclays was having to pay so much interest on its borrowings, the memo states.

Barclays and other banks have been accused of artificially manipulating the Libor rate, which is used to set the borrowing costs for millions of consumers, businesses and investors, by falsely stating how much they were paying to borrow money.

The bank claimed yesterday that one of its most senior executives cut the Libor rate only at the height of the credit crisis after intervention from the Bank of England.

This story showed up on the telegraph.co.uk Internet site last night...and is Roy's second offering in today's column. The link is here.

The LIBOR manipulation story has exploded into a major scandal overseas. The CEO of Barclays, Bob Diamond, has resigned in disgrace; his was the first of what will undoubtedly be many major banks to walk the regulatory plank for fixing the interbank exchange rate. The Labor party is demanding a sweeping criminal investigation. Mervyn King, Governor of the Bank of England, responded the way a real public official should (i.e. not like Ben Bernanke), blasting the banks:

It's time to do something about the banking system…Many people in the banking industry are hardworking and feel badly let down by some of their colleagues and leaders. It goes to the culture and the structure of banks: the excessive compensation, the shoddy treatment of customers, the deceitful manipulation of a key interest rate, and today, news of yet another mis-selling scandal.

The furor is over revelations that Barclays, the Royal Bank of Scotland, and other banks were monkeying with at least $10 trillion in loans (The Wall Street Journal is calculating that LIBOR affects $800 trillion worth of contracts).

Matt Taibbi, in his usual pithy prose, tees this story up and drives it down the fairway. It's a fairly longish blog, but well worth your time if you have it. It is, of course, posted on the Rolling Stone website...and I thank Roy Stephens once again for sending it along. The link is here.

The British seem to have a taste for referendums at the moment. Next year, the inhabitants of the Falkland Islands will vote on their status as a British overseas territory. Then, in 2014, the Scottish government will hold a referendum on independence from the United Kingdom. Now it looks like there could be another nationwide referendum after that -- on Britain's membership of the European Union.

As the euro-zone countries push forward with greater integration as a response to the euro crisis, there are growing calls in Britain for an EU referendum. Prime Minister David Cameron is coming under increasing pressure to agree to a vote, especially from the right wing of his Conservative Party. In a letter sent to the prime minister last week, hundreds of Conservative members of parliament called on him to commit to an EU referendum after the next election in 2015.

The pressure from euroskeptics puts Cameron, who does not want to be rushed into holding a vote, in a tricky situation. In a speech to parliament on Monday on the outcome of last week's EU summit, the prime minister said that although he is not in favor of an immediate referendum on EU membership, he does not want to rule one out for the future. He insisted that the "status quo" was unacceptable in any case. If the euro zone grows ever closer together into a political union, it will change Britain's relationship with the EU, Cameron said.

This Roy Stephens offering was posted on the German website spiegel.de yesterday...and the link is here.

Bavarian governor Horst Seehofer, the leader of the conservative Christian Social Union party (CSU) which is part of Chancellor Angela Merkel's center-right federal government coalition, has criticized the outcome of last week's European Union summit and threatened to let the government collapse if Berlin makes any further financial concessions to ailing euro member states.

"The time will come when the Bavarian government and the CSU can no longer say yes. And I wouldn't then be able to support that personally either," Seehofer said in an interview with Stern magazine released on Tuesday. "And the coalition has no majority without the CSU's seats."

The CSU is the Bavarian sister party to Merkel's Christian Democratic Union.

This is the second story in a row from the German website spiegel.de...and I thank reader Marshall Angeles for sending it. The link is here.

The common currency union was supposed to benefit the economy of the entire European Union. Now that the euro is struggling, however, it is bringing growth down with it. Germany's economy, once seemingly immune to the crisis, is now facing mounting difficulties.

This under-the-hood story about what's really going on in Germany is well worth the read, if this sort of in-depth story interests you. It's from Roy Stephens, of course...and it's posted on the spiegel.de Internet site. The link is here.

Nigel is at it again...doing what he does best...ripping Van Rompuy and Barroso a new one. Roy Stephens sent me this 2:17 minute youtube.com video just after midnight. The link is here.

The Kremlin won't make any movement on arms reductions with the United States unless concessions are made in Europe, a senior Russian official said.

NATO leaders, during their annual summit in Chicago, issued a proclamation saying the "appropriate mix of nuclear, conventional and missile defense capabilities" was vital for the security of the alliance.

Washington and its allies say a missile defense shield in Europe would counter regional aggression for adversaries such as Iran. Russia says it views the plan as a threat to its national security, warning it may take corresponding action along its western border.

This very short UPI story was posted on their website on Monday...and I thank Roy Stephens for sharing it with us. The link is here.

The United States has quietly moved significant military reinforcements into the Persian Gulf to deter the Iranian military from any possible attempt to shut the Strait of Hormuz and to increase the number of fighter jets capable of striking deep into Iran if the standoff over its nuclear program escalates.

The deployments are part of a long-planned effort to bolster the American military presence in the gulf region, in part to reassure Israel that in dealing with Iran, as one senior administration official put it last week, “When the president says there are other options on the table beyond negotiations, he means it.”

But at a moment that the United States and its allies are beginning to enforce a much broader embargo on Iran’s oil exports, meant to force the country to take seriously the negotiations over sharply limiting its nuclear program, the buildup carries significant risks, including that Iran’s powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps could decide to lash out against the increased presence.

This story appeared in The New York Times yesterday...and I thank reader W. Busser for sending it along. The link is here.

China's factory downturn worsened in June as a key activity index hit a seven-month low, data expected to raise expectations the central bank may seek more policy easing to revive the world's second-largest economy.

The official Chinese purchasing managers' index (PMI) fell to 50.2 in June after seasonal adjustments, the National Bureau of Statistics said on Sunday, above forecasts for 49.8, but down from May's 50.4.

That was the worse reading since November last year, and a sharp fall in export orders and shrinking new orders suggested a recovery is not in sight. This would fuel bets that Beijing could further relax monetary policy as soon as this month, an analyst said.

This Reuters piece was filed from Beijing on Sunday...and I lifted it from yesterday's edition of the King Report. The link is here.

The first is with John Embry. It's headlined "Fixes From The 70s Won't Stop This Disaster"...and it's a must read. The second blog is with Rick Rule. It's entitled "We are Seeing Dislocations in Many Financial Markets". And lastly is this one with Citibank analyst, Tom Fitzpatrick. It bears the title "2 Key Markets: The Euro vs. Dollar & Stocks".

GoldMoney founder and GATA consultant James Turk interviewed financial writer Robert Blumen about a crucial difference gold has from commodities -- that it is produced for hoarding as money and is not consumed...and that nearly all gold ever produced remains available to the market. As a result annual gold production from mines has relatively little influence on the metal's price. The interview is 20 minutes long and it's posted in audio format at the GoldMoney.com Internet site...and the link is here.