Citigroup released its third-quarter earnings on Monday, and Pandit quit on Tuesday, and though the bank said his departure was voluntary, the timing has raised red flags.

Pandit reportedly clashed with the bank’s board over strategy and operational issues. John Havens, the bank’s chief operating officer, stepped down as well.

“Citigroup is ‘the incredible shrinking bank,’ and the least interest of the big four, in our opinion,” Whitney wrote in a note, according to The Wall Street Journal.

“No CEO will be able to change these facts in the near term. It appears the board feels the same way, as they have appointed an unknown to the outside to the new CEO position, Mike Corbat.”

This story showed up on the moneynews.com Internet site early on Thursday afternoon...and I thank West Virginia reader Elliot Simon for our first story of the day. The link is here.

Thursday, 15 members of The Financial Services Forum, a non-partisan financial and economic policy organization comprising the CEOs of 20 of the largest and most diversified financial services institutions doing business in the United States, sent a letter to President Barack Obama and Congress warning that interest rates could spike significantly if policymakers do not agree to stop the series of automatic tax cuts and spending hikes and replace them with a long-term plan to tame federal debt.

“The consequences of inaction — for stability in global financial markets, for economic growth, for millions of Americans still without work and for the financial circumstances of American businesses and households — would be very grave,” the letter stated.

“But merely avoiding the fiscal cliff is not enough. We further urge you and your colleagues to enact legislation that truly restores the nation’s long-term fiscal soundness.”

This is the second story in a row from the moneynews.com website...and the second offering in a row from Elliot Simon. The link is here.

Federal welfare spending has grown by 32 percent over the past four years, fattened by President Obama’s stimulus spending and swelled by a growing number of Americans whose recession-depleted incomes now qualify them for public assistance, according to numbers released Thursday.

Federal spending on more than 80 low-income assistance programs reached $746 billion in 2011, and state spending on those programs brought the total to $1.03 trillion, according to figures from the Congressional Research Service and the Senate Budget Committee.

That makes welfare the single biggest chunk of federal spending — topping Social Security and basic defense spending.

This story showed up on The Washington Times Internet site on Thursday...and I plucked it from the Friday edition of the King Report. The link is here.

The Fed’s statement on October 20, 1987 commenced 25 years of serial (and escalating) booms and busts around the world. We’re nowadays in the midst of “melt-up” Credit debasement, a “blow-off” top in global speculative excess, and complete policy capitulation in hope of holding the downside of the global Credit cycle at bay. For a few years now, I’ve referred to the “global government finance Bubble” as the granddaddy of them all. What started as excesses at the fringes of U.S. bank and junk bond finance back in the late-eighties eventually made its way to terminally infect Treasury and related debt at the core of our entire monetary system. Global excesses, having fueled precarious Bubbles in Japan, SE Asia, Europe and the emerging economies over the years, afflicted China with its estimated population of 1.3 billion. Today’s historic Bubble phase risks the loss of market trust in sovereign debt. The current global “inflationist” policy regime risks being completely discredited. And the historic Chinese Bubble risks a precarious post-Bubble day of reckoning.

Unlike the 80’s and 90’s, there’s no longer any attempt at a coordinated strategy to deal with global excesses and imbalances. Policymakers have thrown in the towel - and these days have no strategy beyond reflation and Bubble perpetuation. U.S. policymakers pay little more than lip service to incredible federal deficits. This, however, is actually more than is paid to the massive Current Account Deficits that have been the root cause of now deep structural global imbalances and economic impairment. More than 25 years later, our nation’s policy prescription for unmatched global imbalances is even looser monetary policy and added stimulus for all nations, everywhere, all the time.

As always, Doug Noland's Credit Bubble Bulletin is a must read...and this one is no exception, as it shows how we got to where we are today in twenty-five years or less. The link is here.

Hollywood is to court controversy with a film that will challenge the official version of the events of 9/11, a previously taboo topic for the industry mainstream. Martin Sheen, Woody Harrelson and Ed Asner, who have all supported conspiracy theories about the terrorist attacks, have signed up to the movie, which is entitled September Morn.

Styling itself as a drama in the tradition of Twelve Angry Men, the film's advance publicity note hints at a cover-up, saying: "We the people demand that the government revisit and initiates a thorough and independent investigation to the tragic events of 9/11."

Details of the film, which is to be directed by BJ Davis and written by Howard Cohen, are expected to be revealed at an American Film Market conference in Los Angeles next week.

This story showed up on Wednesday on the guardian.co.uk Internet site of all places...and I thank reader 'David in California' for sending it. It's worth reading...and the link is here.

This is the 62-minute speech that Doug gave at Libertopia 2012 in San Diego last Saturday. I haven't had the time to listen to all of it and, like you, it will go on my 'ta do' list this weekend. It was posted over at the youtube.com Internet site on Monday...and the link is here.

Sorry to quibble, but there was no EU banking union deal Thursday night. It was a step backwards from agreements already made in June.

Germany has succeeded in kicking the issue into touch until after the Bundestag elections late next year. There will be no decision until deep into 2013 on whether to recapitalise the banks (i.e. crippled Spanish banks) directly through the European Stability Mechanism.

The crucial issue of whether this can be applied "retroactively" to legacy assets remaining from the Spanish burbuja will be discussed later by finance ministers. i.e., by the same AAA bloc that has already said it won't underwrite this mess.

The final text repeats verbatim the loose commitment from the June summit to break the vicious circle between banks and sovereign states, but Europe is not in fact any closer to doing so. The timetable has slipped further.

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard has his knickers in a twist in this blog posted over at The Telegraph website yesterday. It's certainly worth reading nonetheless...and the link is here.

An unknown group launched a so-called “denial of service” attack on Britain’s largest bank on Thursday evening, crashing web-based services for about seven hours.

At its peak, HSBC was deluged with internet traffic 500 times its normal level, five times higher than the amount of traffic that hit the bank in a similar attack earlier this year.

A spokesman for the bank said full internet services were restored by 3 a.m. yesterday and claimed that no customer data had been compromised as a result of the attack.

This HSBC banking group is NOT related to HSBC USA, even though they bear the same name. I thank Donald Sinclair for sending this story which was posted on the telegraph.co.uk Internet site late last night BST...and the link is here.

The world stopped getting warmer almost 16 year ago, according to new data released last week.

The figures, which have triggered debate among climate scientists, reveal that from the beginning of 1997 until August 2012, there was no discernible rise in aggregate global temperatures.

This means that the 'plateau' or 'pause' in global warming has now lasted for about the same time as the previous period when temperatures rose...1980 to 1996. Before that, temperatures had been stable or declining for about 40 years.

The new data, compiled from more than 3,000 measuring points on land and sea, was issued quietly on the Internet, without any media fanfare,and, until today, it had not been reported.

The graph is worth checking out...and it was posted on the dailymail.co.uk website on Monday afternoon BST. I thank reader Rick Mark for bringing it to our attention...and the link is here.

As the confrontation between Turkey and Syria escalates, Ankara is readying not only for possible war against Syrian President Bashar Assad, but also against Kurdish separatists. Turkey fears they may be emboldened by the situation in Syria and resurrect their cause.

Turkey's army, second in size only to that of the United States within NATO, would likely defeat the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad within a few days. But an attack could drag NATO into the conflict, and it also poses substantial risks. The few shells that are landing on Turkish soil should be the least of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's worries. Indeed, he should be more concerned over a strategic maneuver on the part of Syria, whereby Assad is allowing the Kurds to do as they please on his side of the border, fueling the Turks' fears of a new uprising by the Kurdish minority in their own country.

In principle, an enabling statute for military campaigns would allow Prime Minister Erdogan to strike at any time. The situation in the region is already volatile. Syrian artillery shells continue to strike near refugee camps that now house up to 100,000 Syrians. And with the forced landing last week of a Syrian passenger jet, which apparently had ammunition and missile parts from Russia in its cargo hold, Turkey irritated the Assad regime and antagonized Syria's ally, Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The "New Great Game" in full cry. This spiegel.de story was posted on their Internet site on Tuesday...and I've been saving it for today's column. I thank Roy Stephens for sending it...and the link is here.

The Vietnam war wasn't really about Vietnam. Spaniards may have fought in the Spanish Civil War, but the real opponents were elsewhere. US and Soviet machinations in Afghanistan in the late 1970s had little to do with liberating a repressed population.

They were all proxy wars, struggles between superpowers that chose to fight their battles in faraway lands and inflict their collateral damage on other peoples instead of their own.

Each war had a cover. Each time the superpowers of the world got involved - overtly or covertly - to right an arguable wrong. Really though, they were there to fight each other. To weaken each other. To claim moral superiority and political preeminence. And to win the right to use the proxy nation's resources and location to their advantage.

It would be lovely to think such wars are a thing of the past... but another proxy war is rapidly developing...in Syria.

This Wednesday edition of the Casey Daily Dispatch was written by our own chief energy investment strategist, Marin Katusa. It's a must read for sure...and the link is here.

Iraqi authorities issued arrest warrants for the former central bank chief and other bank officials after a probe into corruption, a spokesman for the high judicial council said on Friday.

Iraq's cabinet on Tuesday ousted director Sinan al-Shibabi over a parliamentary charges bank officials were abusing dollar sales. His dismissal will do little to ease investor worries the government is undermining the bank's autonomy.

Abdul-Sattar al-Birqdar, a spokesman for the judiciary council confirmed an arrest warrant issue was issued against Shibibi and some other officials. But he did not give any details about the charges they face.

You've just read the entire 3-paragraph Reuters story on this subject. It was posted on their website very early on Friday morning Eastern time...and I thank Scott Pluschau for sending it along. The link to the hard copy is here.

The barbaric attempt on the life of a 14-year-old schoolgirl last Tuesday by Taliban terrorists has spawned a state of trauma and national mourning in Pakistan. It's unlike other incidents that have hit the tragedy-prone country with a devastating frequency in recent years.

Malala Yusafzai, the innocent victim of the Pakistani Taliban's bloodlust, rose to prominence three years ago when, as an 11-year-old from the picturesque Swat Valley, she challenged the Taliban edict that girls shouldn't get an education. The Taliban, with their archaic, stone-age mentality, were then in control of Swat, and the Pakistan Army had just mounted a major military offensive against them. The militants had torched scores of schools for girls and threatened to deface with acid burns any girl seen going to a school.

Malala's bravado made her a celebrity; she became an icon to those who abhorred the Taliban's anachronistic and wayward interpretation of their religion. Once the Taliban brigands had been driven out of Swat, Malala was showered with government recognition and accolades. She became a standard-bearer of the Pakistani secularists and religious moderates who loathed the Taliban's craving to turn the clock back to the Middle Ages and deny the benefits of education to half the country's population.

This story showed up on the Asia Times Internet site on Wednesday...and I thank Roy Stephens for his final offering in today's column. The link is here.

This first blog is a repeat of one I posted yesterday...with the wrong link, as it turned out. It's with John Embry...and it's headlined "London Trader, Commercials & a Spike in Gold". Next comes James Turk...and his blog is entitled "One of the Most Important Gold Charts Ever". The third blog is with Dan Norcini. It bears the headline "Incredibly Key Chart, This One Worries the Gold & Silver Bears". The audio interview is with Egon von Greyerz.

The World Gold Council launched the Conflict-Free Gold Standard yesterday, which it describes as, an industry-led approach to combat the potential misuse of mined gold to fund unlawful armed conflict.

The World Gold Council has developed the Conflict-Free Gold Standard with its member companies, comprising the world's leading gold mining companies, and with extensive input from governments, civil society and supply chain participants. By following this Standard, gold miners can assess their operations and provide assurance that they do not cause, support or benefit unlawful armed conflict, nor contribute to serious human rights abuses, or breaches of international humanitarian law. It is designed to increase trust and transparency in the gold supply chain. It provides further confidence that responsibly undertaken, gold mining is an important source of social and economic development.

It sure sounds great on paper in the not-so-hallowed halls of the World Gold Council...but in practice it will be impossible to prevent it, regardless of how noble it all sounds. The story was posted on the mineweb.com Internet site yesterday...and I thank Donald Sinclair for bringing it to our attention. The link is here.

A photo of a large gold nugget believed to have been found near Kalgoorlie-Boulder is creating much excitement in the gold mining community in Australia.

The nugget is said to weigh up to 60 kilograms, with an estimated value of around $1.6 million.

No one has claimed ownership and the photograph's origin is unknown.

Rumours of big gold finds in the area are not uncommon but rarely verified.

This short story, along with an eye-popping photo, was posted on the abc.net.au Internet site on their Friday afternoon while North America was sound asleep on Thursday night. Not surprisingly, it was Australian reader [and chartist extraordinaire] Nick Laird who came up with this must read item...and the link is here.

Here's an idea that almost certainly wasn't discussed at Thursday night's European summit: using countries' gold reserves to lower the borrowing costs of euro-zone governments.

Central banks of the 17-nation currency union are sitting on more than 10,000 metric tons of gold. At northward of $1,740 a troy ounce, that's a chunk of change.

From the point of view of Europe's debt crisis, most of it is in the wrong place. Nearly a third of it belongs to Germany and almost a quarter of it is in France, neither of which is struggling with high debt-interest costs. For some countries burdened with debt—Spain, which holds 282 tons, Greece with 112 tons and Ireland with just six—their holdings are too small to make much of a difference.

But two countries have enough gold to make a difference to their financing costs. Italy, which has flirted with unsustainably high borrowing costs, is sitting on the second-largest holding of gold reserves in Europe: 2,450 tons. The small economy of Portugal, which is in a bailout program after it lost access to affordable government finance, has reserves of 382 tons.

This Wall Street Journal reporter is a day late and a dollar short with this story, as this idea has been proposed in the gold world...and by your humble scribe...for many years now. The only thing that the reporter didn't mention, that in order to make it really work, gold would have to be re-priced to about ten times its current value...and that's what I expect will happen sooner or later...and probably sooner rather than later.

This story was posted on the WSJ website on Thursday evening...and I thank Ulrike Marx for bringing it to our attention. The link is here.

Gold has steadily advanced over the last 60 days from $1,600 to this morning’s $1,742. The IAU and GLD have been off to the races. Which is making some people a little nervous. For instance: “Can you comment,” a reader asks, “on what you think might happen to the price of gold if Romney gets elected?” I’ll tackle that question today in the course of examining some longer-term trends that will prove immune to whatever happens [checking the calendar] 25 days from now [thank God].

One of the most respected gold fund managers sees gold reaching for a new high inside the next 12 months. In his latest shareholder letter, Tocqueville Gold Fund chieftain John Hathaway bases that forecast on continued negative real interest rates: That is, as long as central banks push interest rates below the rate of inflation, gold performs well.

“Some suggest,” Hathaway writes by way of answering the reader’s question, “that a Republican victory in November would be a game changer for gold. It could bring about the dismissal of Bernanke, the taming of fiscal deficits, the painless elimination of excess liquidity from bloated central bank balance sheets and the restoration of robust economic growth.” [Pausing while your editor guffaws…]

This piece by the Daily Reckoning's Addison Wiggin was posted on the Forbes website on Tuesday morning....and I consider it a must read. I thank Jonathan Lewis for digging this story up for us...and the link is here.

John Reade, senior vice president at Paulson & Co., made the following comments at the SALT conference in Singapore today.

"I think gold has an appropriate place in a portfolio during certain macroeconomic circumstances and I think that's right now.

‘‘Under the right macroeconomic circumstances, gold is a good place to be and those circumstances will continue to play out over the next few years.

‘‘And there is no doubt the expectation or the announcement of QE4 or QE infinitive has been positive for gold and I would expect gold will do well in this environment where central banks will continue to print and where monetary policy is still in an extraordinary condition.

This Bloomberg story, filed from Singapore yesterday, was posted on the mineweb.com Internet site...and it's definitely worth reading. I thank Donald Sinclair for his final offering in today's column...and the link is here.

A note by long term silver analyst (and silver bull), Israel Freidman published on Ted Butler's internet site contains some true gems which will be manna to the ears (if you can have such a thing) of silver investors everywhere. Leading off with the comment that silver is, in Freidman's view, the best raw material of all for the investor to hold, he says he held this opinion 30 years ago (when silver was under $5 an ounce) and holds the same view today (at $33) and that for the investor in bullion, silver remains one of the few commodities that the average person can actually hold in his possession (gold is another but the price precludes the ‘average' investor holding all but a tiny amount in comparison).

And he waxes enthusiastic, particularly about the US Mint's silver eagle coin which he describes as the most beautiful, and popular, coin in the world. He is convinced that it is so popular that one day the US Mint will not be able to keep up with demand (we have seen occasional times in the recent past when the Mint has had to ration sales) and that premiums on the coins will explode if, and when, the Mint has to stop producing them.

Lawrence [Lawrie] Williams, Mineweb's General Manager and Editorial Director, comments on the above essay that I linked in this column on Thursday. Lawrie's take on it is very interesting...and I consider it a worthwhile read. It's almost pointless to mention that it was posted over at the mineweb.com Internet site yesterday...and the link is here.