Germans see the US election as a battle between the good Obama and the evil Romney. But this is a mistake. Regardless of who wins the election on Tuesday, total capitalism is America's true ruler, and it has the power to destroy the country.

The United States Army is developing a weapon that can reach -- and destroy -- any location on Earth within an hour. At the same time, power lines held up by wooden poles dangle over the streets of Brooklyn, Queens and New Jersey. Hurricane Sandy ripped them apart there and in communities across the East Coast last week, and many places remain without electricity. That's America, where high-tech options are available only to the elite, and the rest live under conditions comparable to a those of a developing nation. No country has produced more Nobel Prize winners, yet in New York City hospitals had to be evacuated during the storm because their emergency generators didn't work properly.

Anyone who sees this as a contradiction has failed to grasp the fact that America is a country of total capitalism. Its functionaries have no need of public hospitals or of a reliable power supply to private homes. The elite have their own infrastructure. Total capitalism, however, has left American society in ruins and crippled the government. America's fate is not just an accident produced by the system. It is a consequence of that system.

Well, dear reader, if total capitalism had been allowed to function without interference, we wouldn't be in this mess anywhere in the western world right now...including the United States. Only the direct interference by government for the favoured few has put us in the position where were are today...a process that really began to gather steam in the late 1960s. I thank Donald Sinclair for sending me this spiegel.de piece from yesterday...and the link is here.

Residents feel isolated and some use guns, baseball bats, booby traps — even a bow and arrow — to defend themselves.

When night falls in the Rockaways, the hoods come out.

Ever since Sandy strafed the Queens peninsula and tore up the boardwalk, it’s become an often lawless place where cops are even scarcer than electrical power and food. Locals say they are arming themselves with guns, baseball bats, booby traps — even a bow and arrow — to defend against looters.

Thugs have been masquerading as Long Island Power Authority (LIPA) workers, knocking on doors in the dead of night. But locals say the real workers have been nowhere in sight, causing at least one elected official — who fears a descent into anarchy if help doesn’t arrive soon — to call for the city to investigate the utility.

Further exacerbating desperate conditions, it could take at least a month to repair the bridge that connects the Rockaways to the city subway system, officials said.

This story showed up on the New York Daily News website on Friday evening...and I thank Washington reader S.A. for sending it along. The link is here.

Election day is upon us, and neither President Obama nor Mitt Romney has really addressed one of the nation’s most pressing economic issues: the risk that one day taxpayers might have to bail out swashbuckling financial institutions again.

Granted, the economic pain many are feeling now — the snail’s pace recovery, the stubbornly high unemployment — is foremost in voters’ minds. But given all we’ve gone through after the last binge in the financial industry, failing to confront the too-big-to-fail question is a serious oversight.

Many Americans probably think the Dodd-Frank financial reform law will protect taxpayers from future bailouts. Wrong. In fact, Dodd-Frank actually widened the federal safety net for big institutions. Under that law, eight more giants were granted the right to tap the Federal Reserve for funding when the next crisis hits. At the same time, those eight may avoid Dodd-Frank measures that govern how we’re supposed to wind down institutions that get into trouble.

In other words, these lucky eight got the best of both worlds: access to the Fed’s money and no penalty for failure.

This piece showed up on the nytimes.com Internet site on Saturday...and I thank Phil Barlett for sharing it with us. The link is here.

Wow! I'd suggest taking a Gravol before reading this article. Terrence Duffy is the grand poobah of the CME Group...and one of the organizations that aid and abets the criminal price management schemes in all the precious metals.

I can't believe that this guy has the gonads to say what he does in light of the MF Global debacle...which the CME Group has yet to make whole.

If they ever bring back the guillotine...this is the one first guy whose head should roll. It was posted on the futuresmag.com Internet site a week ago today...and I thank Quebec reader John Bastian for finding it for us. The link is here.

Speaking on The Andrew Marr Show the Work and Pensions Secretary said public opinion had “shifted dramatically” and did not rule out a referendum on the UK’s position in Europe, but did not provide specifics as to what the question would be.

“The prime minister has always said he is not against one and it is just a case of when and what,” he said.

“We have time and we need to get this one right.”

Nearly a third of voters in David Cameron's own constituency would "seriously consider" voting against the Prime Minister if he does not offer a vote on Britain's European Union (EU) future, according to a new poll.

Mr. Cameron is in Europe this week to vote on the EU budget, just days after he suffered a stinging Commons defeat over Europe as Conservative backbenchers told him he must deliver real reductions in the European Union budget.

This story showed up on the telegraph.co.uk Internet site Sunday at 10:34 a.m. GMT...and I thank Roy Stephens for his first offering in today's column. The link is here.

HSBC is set to face a final bill for fines as high as $1.5bn (£937m) for the “shameful and embarrassing” US money-laundering scandal that has engulfed Britain’s biggest bank.

The lender is tomorrow expected to spell out the full financial damage caused by the crisis, which erupted earlier this year. The bank stands accused of leaving America’s financial system exposed to Mexican drug cartels and rogue nations such as Iran and Sudan, by failing to enforce US anti money- laundering laws.

HSBC said at its half-year results in the summer that it had set aside $700m to cover the cost of the scandal. The bank said at the time that the huge sum was only its “best estimate” for the fines and penalties it would face from US authorities. But Stuart Gulliver, HSBC’s chief executive, admitted the actual total could be higher.

The final bill is now expected to have more than doubled to $1.5bn, forcing the bank to make a further provision of up to $800m in its third quarter results tomorrow, according to Sky News.

This is the second story in a row from The Telegraph. This one showed up on their website on Sunday evening GMT...and I thank Donald Sinclair for his second offering in today's column. The link is here.

European Central Bank (ECB) officials are investigating claims that they have blundered and advanced money to Spanish banks on generous rather than penal terms.

It is thought they may have breached the tough austerity sanctions imposed on a beleaguered economy, making it easier for the government to resist pressure for a full scale bail-out.

German newspaper Die Welt am Sonntag, citing the results of its own research, said Spanish banks had borrowed funds from the ECB at a preferential interest rate of 0.5pc even though the creditworthiness of the T-bills they provide as collateral should have required them to pay 5.5pc.

The €80bn (£64bn) issue of 18 month treasury bills had been wrongly classified as carrying a top A rating when some of them were 'completely ineligible’ as collateral under ECB rules, it is claimed.

The blunder charge has been levelled at the ECB in Germany following an investigation into the way the bank has been attempting to ease the eurozone crisis through its offer to buy unlimited amounts of debt from the states under the greatest pressure to help them reduce borrowing costs.

This is another story from the telegraph.co.uk Internet site...this one from late Sunday afternoon GMT...and I thank Roy Stephens for sharing it with us. The link is here.

The EU is likely to bail out the banks of tiny member state Cyprus with 10 billion euros of credit. But a secret German intelligence report reveals that the main beneficiaries of the aid would be rich Russians who have invested illegal money there. It's a big dilemma for Chancellor Angela Merkel.

The boutiques sell sable coats even in summer, the restaurants serve salted herring and vodka, apartments near the pier cost upwards of €300,000 ($383,000) and there's no shortage of luxurious villas priced at millions of euros.

But they are at risk of losing their paradise because Cyprus is virtually bankrupt. The island's economy has been dragged down by the recession ravaging Greece, with which it has close business ties. In addition, Cypriot banks bought billions of euros in Greek government bonds that are practically worthless now. The banks have already had to write off large portions of their investments, and are in trouble as a result.

But refusing aid is not an option. Angela Merkel has become a firm believer in the domino theory, which in this case would take on the following shape: allowing Cyprus to fall would put the entire euro zone at risk of collapsing. It would be a disastrous message to send to financial markets. Why should the Europeans save Spain or Italy if they can't even bail out a dwarf like Cyprus?

I've mentioned Cyprus a fair number of times this year...and must admit that I never considered just how pivotal this tiny island has suddenly turned out to be in the grand scheme of things. It was a shocker to read this article and...without a doubt, should be right at the top of your absolute must reads for the day. It was posted on the spiegel.de Internet site yesterday...and I thank Donald Sinclair for sending it our way. The link is here.

Politicians seldom like to deliver bad news, particularly when they face an election in the coming year. So congratulations to German Chancellor Angela Merkel for telling a regional party congress in Pomerania that they should expect the euro crisis to grind on "for another five years or more."

"We have to hold our breath for five years or more," Merkel warned delegates in Sternberg. "Whoever thinks this can be fixed in one or two years is wrong."

She is correct, of course, and those five years will see even more elderly Europeans collecting pensions and requiring costly healthcare while the unemployed youth after five years without a job will be even less employable than they are now.

This UPI story was filed from Berlin yesterday...and I thank Roy Stephens for digging it up on our behalf. The link is here.

If reports from the Hong Kong press and China's blogosphere are correct, a remarkable upset has occurred on the eve of the ten-year power shift next week -- the greatest turn-over of top cadres since Mao's revolution.

The South China Morning Post says the new line-up of the Politburo's Standing Committee is "packed with conservatives". The succession deal agreed over the summer has been scuppered.

The 86-year Mr Jiang -- who rose to supreme leader on the bones of Muxidi and Tiananmen in 1989 -- has placed his accolytes in charge of the economy, propaganda, as well as the Shanghai party machine.

The hardliners seem poised to snatch control of the seven-man Committee, tying the hands of incoming president Xi Xinping and premier Li Keqiang. If confirmed, long-term investors may have to rethink their core assumption about the future course of China.

This Ambrose Evans-Pritchard offering showed up on The Telegraph's Internet site late Sunday afternoon GMT...and falls in the must read category for sure. It's another Roy Stephens offering...and the link is here.

Over the past few weeks, there's been a growing buzz about central banks playing a greater role in explicitly serving as funders of government.

The idea that people (journalists and Wall Streeters, mostly) have been talking about is the notion that central banks could buy government debt (as they do in quantitative easing) but then just rip up those bonds, and cancel the debt, with few consequences, except perhaps some inflation (which central banks wants, anyway).

This kind of blatant monetization seems unlikely (especially in countries like the UK and the US, which are borrowing at super-low rates) but the idea of central banks working more closely with their government to stimulate the economy may be on the road to happening.

This rather short, but very interesting read was posted on the businessinsider.com Internet site very early on Sunday morning Eastern time...and if you have the time, it's more than worth your while. I thank Donald Sinclair for sending it our way...and the link is here.

Ten thousand miles from Wall Street, a federal judge in Australia has issued what appears to be the first ruling of its kind, holding a ratings agency liable for the “misleading and deceptive” seals of approval it stamped on complicated investment products in the years leading up to the financial crisis.

While banks and other institutions have been fined for behavior contributing to the crisis, this is the first time that a ratings house—whose “AAA” grades provided essential cover to those selling dross-laden assets as gold—has been found legally accountable, too.

Standard & Poor’s (MHP) gave AAA ratings to two complex products known as constant proportion debt obligations in 2006, indicating that they were highly reliable. Twelve local Australian councils that claimed they lost more than 90 percent of their roughly $17 million (U.S.) investment when the products collapsed are now entitled to damages, Justice Jayne Jagot ruled from Sydney’s Federal Court.

Well, it's about time! Let's see how this all shakes out in the Australian courts. I'd love to see these rating agencies get precisely what they deserve. This very short story was posted on the businessweek.com Internet site yesterday...and I thank Washington state reader S.A. for bringing it to our attention. It's certainly worth reading...and the link is here.

1. John Embry: "What to Expect in 2013". 2. Bill Haynes: "We're Witnessing Shocking Surge of Retail Gold & Silver Buying". 3. Robert Fitzwilson: "Our Financial System is Mass Delusion on a Grand Scale". 4. Dan Norcini: "Here is Why a Monumental Move is Coming in Gold & Silver". 5. James Turk: "Fed Allowing Lehman-Type Blowup to Occur". 6. The audio interview is with Dr. Stephen Leeb.

Hugo Salinas Price, president of the Mexican Civic Association for Silver, writes that gold has gotten too valuable to be used as everyday money but silver remains well-suited for that and particularly for savings by ordinary people. Of course for almost a decade now Salinas Price and his group have been urging Mexico's government to issue an un-denominated silver coin whose official value in pesos would be quoted daily by the Mexican central bank and would never be reduced. He is optimistic about the chances that the Mexican Congress will enact such legislation next year.

The essay is posted on their Internet site plata.com.mx...and I thank Chris Powell for writing the above paragraph of introduction. The link is here.

While the prevailing opinion seems to be that Republican Mitt Romney's election as president would be bad for gold, Centennial Precious Metals proprietor Michael Kosares finds that gold has been pretty indifferent to the results of presidential elections. In any case, Kosares notes, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke's term won't end until two years into the term of the next president, so the monetary helicopters may keep flying.

I plucked this story from a GATA release yesterday...and I thank Chris once again for wordsmithing the introductory paragraph. It's posted on the usagold.com Internet site...and the link is here.

As New York City continues to dry out in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, the financial world is reconsidering just how smart it is to place critical pieces of infrastructure in flood-prone areas. Citigroup's waterlogged building at 111 Wall St. will be unusable for several weeks, and two critical Verizon Communications facilities suffered extensive flooding during the storm.

At least the material at those sites is replaceable. What about the nearly 15 million pounds of gold bricks stored at the New York Fed?

They're safe -- and will be, in theory, should floodwaters return. The bullion is so heavy that its vault sits 80 feet below street level, and 50 feet below sea level, on the bedrock beneath Manhattan. Though the bank's fortress-like building is located far downtown, close to where other financial institutions sustained water damage, the property at 33 Liberty St. sits in the city's evacuation Zone C, where residents are told to expect storm-surge flooding only from major -- Category 3 or 4 -- hurricanes that hit the New York harbor.

This businessweek.com story from Sunday is another one I found embedded in a GATA release...and the link is here.

A year ago, S. Kashinath, an illiterate laborer from India's southern Tamil Nadu state, lost 300,000 rupees ($5,600) in savings he invested in a pyramid scheme promising high returns from emu farming.

Now Kashinath, and around 23 million other low- to middle-income Indians, are being courted by a government scheme to boost investment in local stock markets.

The ambitious scheme, which aims to broaden share ownership, re-energize an unprofitable mutual fund industry, and bring some structure to a patchy investment landscape, faces formidable barriers -- not least India's love affair with gold.

India has one of the world's highest savings rates, at over 30 percent -- more than double the United States -- and the bulk of the nation's $800 billion in savings is parked in gold. India is the world's biggest gold buyer and holds $1 trillion worth of the precious metal, World Gold Council data shows -- more than the combined military spending by the United States, China, Russia, and Great Britain.

This Reuters story was filed from India yesterday evening local time...and is another item I found in a GATA release. It's worth reading...and the link is here.

In a run up to the Diwali festival next week and the marriage season which is around the corner, leading jewellers and bankers are already quoting positive signs on gold sales.

Bullion houses have said that while there has been a bit of volatility in prices, consumer sentiment remains unaffected.

"Though the key presidential elections in the US are set to give further direction to global financial markets on Tuesday, Indian consumers are waiting for Dhanteras, a day considered auspicious for gold buying according to the Hindu calendar," said Gitanjali group chairman Mehul Choksi.

He added that sales were expected to leap frog 40% this Dhanteras (to fall on November 11), with most consumers opting for gold coins to usher in the auspicious day. Sales of gold coins of different denomination have already risen by over 30% as compared to last year, he added.

This story, filed from Mumbai, was posted on the mineweb.com Internet site in the wee hours of this morning...and I stumbled on it just moments before hitting the 'send' button on today's column. It's certainly worth reading...and the link is here.