The number of planned layoffs by U.S. firms jumped 41.1 percent in October to the highest level in five months, although the number includes more than 10,000 jobs in U.S.-owned auto plants in Europe, a report said on Thursday.

Employers announced 47,724 planned job cuts last month, up from September's 33,816, according to the report from consultants Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

It was the highest level since May. U.S. automotive companies said they will let go of 11,615 workers, though that includes 10,900 Ford Motor layoffs that will affect workers in Belgium and the U.K. (Read More: Ford to Shut European Plants, Cut Jobs as Losses Mount)

This story was posted on the moneynews.com Internet site yesterday...and I thank West Virginia reader Elliot Simon for the first story in today's column. The link is here.

Officials in the city of Hoboken, N.J., are defending their response to severe flooding from super-storm Sandy.

Public Safety director Jon Tooke says at least 25 percent of the city on the Hudson River across from Manhattan remains under water. He estimates at least 20,000 people are stranded and says most are being encouraged to shelter in place until floodwaters recede.

Tempers flared Wednesday morning outside City Hall as some residents complained the city was slow to get food and other supplies out to the stranded.

Tooke says emergency personnel have been working 24/7. He says the "scope of this situation is enormous."

I've got some really bad news for some of these most unfortunate citizens...as it will take months if not years for the situation to return to any sort of normalcy. This is all there is to this short AP story that was picked up by the news.yahoo.com Internet site on Wednesday...however, there are lots of pictures attached to it. I found it in yesterday's edition of the King Report...and the link is here.

Drivers and homeowners scrambled to secure fuel for their cars and generators in the U.S. Northeast on Wednesday as storm-hit gasoline stations started to run dry.

More than half of all gasoline service stations in the New York City area and New Jersey were shut because of depleted fuel supplies and power outages, frustrating attempts to restore normal life, industry officials said.

Reports of long lines, dark stations and empty tanks circulated across the region. Some station owners were unable to pump fuel due to a lack of power, while others quickly ran their tanks dry because of increased demand and logistical problems in delivering fresh supplies.

The lack of working gasoline stations is likely to compound travel problems in the region, with the New York City subway system down until at least Thursday and overland rail and bus services severely disrupted.

This Reuters story from Wednesday was also picked up by the news.yahoo.com Internet site...and is also from yesterday's King Report. The link is here.

The prospect of more money printing has receded after Charlie Bean, the Bank of England’s deputy governor, revealed he had doubts about how much growth the policy would deliver in what could be a key shift at the central bank.

Mr Bean appeared to signal a change of stance in a speech in Hull that is likely to mean quantitative easing (QE) is voted down next week, when the Bank’s nine rate-setters make their monthly decision. Until recently, most economists had expected the Bank to re-launch QE in November, with another £50bn injection on top of the £375bn completed.

In July, when QE was last increased, two members of the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) voted against QE – including chief economist Spencer Dale. A swing against by such a senior figure as Mr Bean, who is deputy governor for monetary policy and a former chief economist, would be expected to carry other members, too.

It also raises the prospect of Sir Mervyn King, the Governor, being outvoted twice in just six months. Sir Mervyn is expected to call for another £50bn round as he did in June, when he was in the minority and Mr Bean was one of those who voted him down.

This story was posted on the telegraph.co.uk Internet site early on Wednesday evening...and I thank Donald Sinclair for digging it up on our behalf. The link is here.

UBS is not the only bank to be scaling back its ambitions...as almost all big European banks are doing so in one way or another. But the Swiss bank has chosen to “undress in public”, says one analyst. Its promise to start paying at least 50% of its profits in dividends, after it reaches a certain ratio of capital to assets, helped lift UBS shares by 4% on the day of the cull.

Investment banks have had their fair share of foul-ups in recent years, but UBS has been particularly accident-prone. The division has produced meagre profits since losing close to SFr60 billion ($54 billion) from 2007 to 2009. It took a huge hit on subprime mortgage-backed securities, prompting the Swiss government to inject capital. It suffered heavy losses in the botched Facebook listing earlier this year. Only this week a tearful junior trader took the stand in a London courtroom to defend himself against charges that he lost the bank SFr1.8 billion in rogue trading. As long ago as 2010 Philipp Hildebrand, the then governor of the Swiss central bank, very publicly raised doubts that UBS, and its big Swiss rival Credit Suisse, could succeed in full-service investment banking and urged them to concentrate on their strengths.

It has taken time for that message to sink in, but pressure inside and outside the bank helped. Axel Weber, the chairman of UBS since May and a former president of the German Bundesbank, “is bleak and leery about the world,” comments a UBS-watcher. Above all, the requirements of Finma, the Swiss regulator, which has imposed extra charges on the two Swiss banks that are “too big to fail”, have made it harder to hit targets for returns.

This rather short story, filed from Berlin, is from The Economist...and it's well worth reading. I thank Donald Sinclair for sending it our way...and the link is here.

French leader François Hollande is uncomfortably close to a collapse in credibility. His poll rating has sunk to 36pc. The speed of decline has been shocking.

The latest broadside comes from ex-German chancellor Gerhard Schröder, supposedly his ally on the Left.

"The election promises of the French president are going to shatter on the walls of economic reality," he said in Paris.

The backsliding in the retirement age is indefensible and "cannot be financed". Two or three more blunders of this kind and "reality will catch up with out French friends".

AE-P takes Hollande to task in this blog from yesterday...and hoists him with his own petard. It's worth reading...and I thank Roy Stephens for sharing it with us. The link is here.

The US Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has provisionally fined Barclays a total of $435m and ordered the bank to repay $34.9m in "unjust profits" as it accused the lender of engaging in a "coordinated scheme to manipulate trading at four electricity trading points in the Western United States".

Four Barclays traders were named by the authorities and fined a total of $18m for taking part in the alleged scheme.

Scott Connelly, managing director of North American power at Barclays, who was described by the regulator as the "leader of the manipulative scheme" and its "highest paid member", was hit with the largest fine and provisionally ordered to pay $15m. Three other traders, named as Daniel Brin, Karen Levine and Ryan Smith, were each fined $1m.

One wonders what fine JPMorgan et al will face if the silver and gold price management scheme is ever allowed to see the light of day in the public press. This story was posted on the telegraph.co.uk Internet site very late on Wednesday night GMT...and is another offering from Donald Sinclair. The link is here.

Average Greeks are reeling under the strict austerity measures passed in order to balance the country's budget. Top earners, on the other hand, continue to evade the tax man. Most of the self-employed in Greece significantly underreport their earnings, whereas shipping magnates enjoy generous exemptions.

The principle of tax justice may be enshrined into the Greek constitution, but it has become increasingly obvious that not all Greek taxpayers are created equal. Currently, the government in Athens is preparing yet another round of harsh austerity measures, severely testing the cohesion of both the coalition and society. Already, such measures in combination with tax hikes have slashed average household income in Greece by half since the beginning of the crisis. Measures now planned will see pensions sink by 25 percent.

At the same time, though, a small elite of wealthy Greek ship owners is fighting to defend its tax-free status -- also, ironically enough, enshrined in the constitution. Meanwhile, other moneyed Greeks, including doctors, lawyers and engineers, continue to systematically avoid taxes. According to a recent study, seven out of 10 self employed Greeks significantly underreport their earnings. Indeed, though the crisis has been raging for five years now, many wealthy Greeks are under no more pressure to pay taxes than they were before.

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

Green shoots are sprouting across much of the Far East as stimulus begins to feed through, greatly reducing the risk of a deep global slump next year.

A slew of economic data from China and the Pacific Rim show that orders are picking up and trade is rebounding after the industrial recession of the past few months.

The Baltic Dry Index, measuring shipping rates for commodities – watched as a proxy for Chinese demand – has come back from the dead, rising 50pc since July...and container freight rates on Asian routes have started to recover. The Danish group Maersk raised its shipping rates two weeks ago, and the Chinese operator COSCO followed suit on Thursday.

The HSBC/Markit index for Chinese manufacturing jumped to 49.5 in October. It is still below the expansion line of 50 – for the 12th month in a row – but domestic orders have risen sharply, suggesting that the world’s second-biggest economy is at last generating its own momentum.

This Ambrose Evans-Pritchard story was filed on The Telegraph's website yesterday evening GMT...and I thank Roy Stephens for sending it. The link is here.

The first blog is with Egon von Greyerz 1.0. It's titled "One of the Most Important Charts Ever". Next is Egon von Greyerz 2.0...and it bears the headline "Gold & the Incredible Financial Destruction We Face". The last blog is with Citi analyst Tom Fitzpatrick. It's entitled "Get Ready for Big Moves in Gold, the US Dollar & the Euro". The audio interview is with Rick Rule.

Jan Skoyles, research director for U.K. bullion dealer The Real Asset Co., takes note of the clamor in Germany for repatriation of the nation's foreign-vaulted gold and GATA's disclosure that the U.S. Federal Reserve has secret gold swap arrangements with foreign banks, likely including the Bundesbank. Skoyles' commentary is headlined "5 Things Repatriating Gold Bullion Says about the Country".

I thank Chris Powell for wordsmithing the introduction on our behalf. The commentary is posted on therealasset.co.uk Internet site...and is definitely a must read. The link is here.

This is the third of a five part series that is based on a Q&A with Nick Barisheff, CEO of Bullion Management Group Inc. and author of the book “$10,000 Gold: Why Gold’s Inevitable Rise is the Investor’s Safe Haven.” His book will be released later this year but is available now for pre-order on Amazon.com. In our first article, we discussed the single most important reason for gold’s primary upward trend pointing to $10,000. The second part provided insights in the unwillingness of people and the media to see the real benefits of owning physical gold. In this third article, we look at the risks to avoid when buying precious metals.

This rather short commentary was posted on the goldsilverworlds.com Internet site yesterday...and is well worth reading. The link is here.

This interview, hosted by Kerry Lutz, was posted over at the Financial Survival Network yesterday...and is definitely worth a listen...so please make the time for it. It runs about 20 minutes...and the link is here.

For the first time this year, the United States Mint's American Gold and Silver Eagle bullion coins recorded higher monthly sales than the year ago period.

The economic turmoil and uncertainties experienced during 2008 led to renewed interest in precious metals investment. This situation led to problems for the United States Mint, which was unable to produce an adequate supply of bullion coins to meet public demand. The often dubbed "unprecedented demand" led to temporary sales suspensions and prolonged periods of allocation, during which available supplies were rationed amongst authorized purchasers.

Despite the suspensions and rationing, sales of the American Silver Eagle bullion coins reached an all time annual sales record of 19,583,500 coins in 2008. This was followed by successive record breaking annual sales totals in 2009, 2010, and 2011, when annual sales reached 39,868,500 coins.

This very interesting read was posted over at the coinupdate.com Internet site yesterday...and it, too, is worth the read. I thank Elliot Simon for sending it our way...and the link is here.