The U.S. could stop banks from boosting their earnings by cutting back on reserves held against future loan losses, a top bank regulator said Monday, arguing that the economy remains too rocky for financial institutions to lower their cushions.

Comptroller of the Currency Thomas Curry has been warning for several months about the practice of bank-reserve releases, which occur when banks add less to their loan-loss reserves than they write off for uncollectible loans. The difference has bolstered banking profits in recent quarters.

Mr. Curry repeated his criticism in a speech before a group of bank risk managers in Dallas, citing the potential for future losses in residential and commercial real estate.

No surprises here. The big banks have been crafting earnings by depleting loan-loss reserves and marking derivatives to fantasy. Now a U.S. bank regulator is warning about this abuse. The story showed up in The Wall Street Journal on Monday...and I borrowed it from yesterday's edition of the King Report. The link is here.

Dow Chemical Co. will take a fourth-quarter charge of as much as $1.1 billion related to last week's announcement that it will close 20 plants, write down the value of its lithium ion battery business and lay off thousands of workers.

Dow, the largest U.S. chemical maker, said the restructuring program - its second of 2012 - was necessary because of dropping demand for its plastics and other products.

Another sign that the U.S. economy is on the mend. This short Reuters story from Tuesday is worth reading...and it's another article I borrowed from yesterday's King Report. The link is here.

Swiss bank UBS unveiled plans on Tuesday to fire 10,000 staff and wind down its fixed income business, returning to its private banking roots as it adapts to tough capital rules that make it harder to turn a profit from trading.

Zurich-based UBS will focus on wealth management and a smaller investment bank, ditching much of the trading business that ran up $50 billion in losses in the financial crisis and is embroiled in a global LIBOR rate-fixing investigation.

Some UBS staffers took to social media to air their frustration after dozens of traders were stopped from entering the bank's London offices on Tuesday.

I ran a similar story to this in my column yesterday. That one was posted in The Telegraph early yesterday morning GMT...and the Reuters article posted here was filed from Zurich yesterday afternoon Eastern time. It, too, came from yesterday's edition of the King Report...and it's very much worth the read. The link is here.

Barclays LC faced a double-barreled assault from U.S. authorities, as the federal energy-market regulator sought a record $435 million in penalties for the bank's alleged manipulation of U.S. electricity markets, and the lender also disclosed that it was facing a U.S. anticorruption investigation.

The corruption investigation focuses on potential violations during the bank's efforts to raise money from Middle Eastern investors in the early days of the financial crisis. The probe, being conducted by the Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission, is at an early stage.

Barclays said Wednesday that it is investigating the matter itself and cooperating with authorities. The U.S. investigation follows a similar probe that British regulators opened earlier this year.

This item was posted on The Wall Street Journal Internet site late last night Eastern time...and I thank West Virginia reader Elliot Simon for sending it our way. The link is here.

Managers at HBOS were routinely threatened and abused by colleagues and senior executives at the lender in the years leading up to its collapse, according to a former head of risk at the bank.

Paul Moore, who was in charge of group regulatory risk at HBOS and claims he was sacked in 2004 for raising concerns about the way the bank was run, said he had personally been abused by one of the lender’s top managers.

“When I went to try to resolve the previous difficulties with Jo Dawson [Mr Moore’s replacement and a former head of HBOS’s retail distribution business], she lent over the table... she stood up... pointed at me and said 'I’m warning you. Don’t you make an effin’ enemy out of me’. And that is an absolute verbatim comment.

“That is the most extreme example,” he added, “but it demonstrates that if a very senior executive who is clearly a protégé of the chief executive feels that it is OK to speak to the head of group regulatory risk in those terms you can imagine how that type of culture spreads through the organisation.”

This story was posted on the telegraph.co.uk Internet site on Tuesday evening GMT...and I thank Donald Sinclair for sending it. The link is here.

British Prime Minister David Cameron came under pressure to act tough on the European Union budget and France threatened to use its veto, signaling a divisive start to bargaining over the 1 trillion euro ($1.3 trillion) long-term spending plan.

Wednesday's warning from Paris echoed similar threats from Denmark and Britain, where Cameron suffered a humiliating defeat in parliament after Conservatives rebelled over Europe, an issue that has long divided his party.

Although the British parliamentary vote is non-binding, rebel Conservatives said Cameron should ditch his call for a real terms freeze in EU spending and push for outright cuts.

This Reuters piece, filed jointly from Brussels and London, was posted on their website early yesterday evening...and my thanks go out to Roy Stephens for finding it for us. The link is here.

Greece’s debt-load is rising much faster than expected as the country spirals into a sixth year of depression, ratcheting up the pressure on Germany and Europe’s creditor states to accept debt-forgiveness for the first time.

Finance minister Yannis Stournaras said public debt will reach 189pc of GDP, far higher than estimates of 179pc published just weeks ago.

The new estimates exceed the worst-case scenario sketched by the International Monetary Fund and demolish any hope that Greece can claw its way back to solvency. "Unless EU leaders come up with a sustainable solution and cut the debt burden, everything is going to fall apart in Greece," said Simon Derrick from BNY Mellon.

The Greek economy is still caught in a vicious circle. It will contract by further 4.5pc next year, while the budget deficit will remain stuck at 5.2pc, according to forecasts in the 2013 budget.

Ambrose Evans Pritchard provides the material in this story that was posted on the telegraph.co.uk Internet site early yesterday evening GMT...and it's courtesy of Roy Stephens as well. The link is here.

The unemployment rate crept up from a revised 11.5pc during August, according to data from EU statistics agency Eurostat, leaving 18.5m hunting jobs.

Eurostat estimates that the number of men and women out of work across the 27 EU states rose by 169,000 from August to 25.8m. The eurozone accounted for the bulk of that increase, climbing 146,000 over the same period.

The lowest rates in the eurozone were seen in Austria (4.4pc) and Luxembourg (5.2pc), while the highest remained in stricken Spain (25.8pc) and Greece (25.1pc, most recent available figure from July).

This Roy Stephens offering was posted on The Telegraph's website mid-morning GMT yesterday...and the link is here.

The first blog is with Louise Yamada...and it's entitled "Here are the Key Levels to Watch on Gold & Silver". The second blog is with Rick Rule. It's headlined "There is Spectacular Demand for Gold Right Now". Lastly is this blog with BMO's Don Coxe. It bears the headline "A Gold Bull, Bond Bear & Commodity Supercycle"...and it's a must read.

MineWeb's Dorothy Kosich notes the clamor for an audit of Germany's gold reserves, largely vaulted abroad, and the role played in that clamor by GATA.

Kosich's commentary is headlined "Germany's Gold Reserve Inspection Could Spark Other Central Bank Gold Audits" and it's posted at the mineweb.com Internet site. I thank Chris Powell for wordsmithing the introduction...and the link to this must read story is here.

MineWeb's Dorothy Kosich notes the clamor for an audit of Germany's gold reserves, largely vaulted abroad, and the role played in that clamor by GATA.

Kosich's commentary is headlined "Germany's Gold Reserve Inspection Could Spark Other Central Bank Gold Audits" and it's posted at the mineweb.com Internet site. I thank Chris Powell for wordsmithing the introduction...and the link to this must read story is here.

This 32-minute audio interview with John was posted on the McAlvany Weekly Commentary website yesterday...and I thank Dennis Meredith for bringing it to our attention. The link is here.

Where does Germany keep its gold reserves?

It might sound like a silly question. In Germany, of course. Probably in a very deep vault somewhere in Frankfurt, surrounded by the best security systems that Teutonic technical brilliance can create.

As it turns out, however, that is the wrong answer.

Much of the German gold, the second largest national reserves in the world, is held in New York, London, and Paris. Now there is a campaign under way in Germany to bring the metal back home -- and it is gathering strength all the time.

That tells us three things about the global monetary system, none of them especially reassuring.

This story showed up on the marketwatch.com Internet site in the wee hours of Wednesday morning Eastern time...and is worth reading. It's embedded in this GATA release...and the link is here.

Iranians can no longer export gold without approval by the central bank, an official was quoted as saying on Wednesday, in a new effort by the government to restrict outflows of wealth.

The move follows media reports on Tuesday that Iran had banned the export of some 50 basic goods, as the country moves to secure supplies of essential items in the face of tightening Western sanctions that have destabilised its currency, the rial.

"The export of gold and coins without permission from the central bank has been banned," said customs official Mohammad Reza Naderi, according to the Mehr news agency.

This Reuters story, filed from Dubai early yesterday afternoon GMT, is another offering I found in a GATA release yesterday. It, too, is worth skimming...and the link is here.

Coming down heavily against gold once again, India's apex bank the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has asked banks not to finance the purchase of gold. Though the RBI has already halted banks' ability to lend money for the purpose of purchasing gold bars, now the apex bank has slashed lending for gold in any form.

"No advances should be granted by banks against gold bullion to dealers/traders in gold if, in their assessment, such advances are likely to be utilised for purposes of financing gold purchase at auctions and/or speculative holding of stocks and bullion," the bank says in its second quarter review of the monetary policy 2012-13 on October 30.

It adds, "In this context, the significant rise in imports of gold in recent years is a cause for concern as direct bank financing for purchase of gold in any form viz., bullion/primary gold/jewellery/gold coin could lead to fuelling of demand for gold for speculative purposes.

This news item was filed from Mumbai yesterday...and I thank Manitoba reader Ulrike Marx for sending it along. It's well worth reading...and the link is here.

Atlanta, Georgia reader Ken Hurt sent me these Kitco video clips that were recorded in N.O. last week. Each one runs about five minutes or so...and there are about six of them. You can pick whichever interview you like...ranging from Doug Casey, to Frank Holmes, to Dennis Gartman. They're posted over at the Kitco website...and the link is here.

Gold is likely to go much higher in the course of the 45th President's four year term – whether there is a President Obama or a President Romney, according to analytics firm GoldCore.

In its latest newsletter, GoldCore said that the US fiscal cliff, involving steep government spending cuts and tax hikes due in January, is likely to "support gold at these levels and lead to higher gold prices in the coming weeks".

Depending on which of the candidates is elected as US President, the gold price is predicted to experience short-term weakness, but over the long term, GoldCore expected that monetary challenges facing the Fed and the White House would lead to the gold price increasing.

"Gold will not suffer when there is a change and a move away from ultra, ultra loose monetary policies. As was seen in 1980, gold’s secular bull market is likely to end if the Federal Reserve again achieves positive real interest rates," said an analyst.

Positive interest rates are light years away, so it will be up, up, up and away for the gold price...and that will be despite the antics of JPMorgan et al. This story was posted on the telegraph.co.uk Internet site mid-afternoon GMT yesterday...and I thank Roy Stephens for his last offering in today's column. The link is here.