While there had been speculation that the BLS may delay the release of its October nonfarm payroll number until after the election, it turned out there was no reason to worry.

There was, however, another closely tracked number which perhaps is far more indicative of the economic "growth" in the past 4 years, which certainly had a delayed release. The number of course is that showing how many Americans are on food stamps, and usually is released at the end of the month, or the first day or two of the next month. This time the USDA delayed its release nine days past the semi-official deadline, far past the election, and until Friday night to report August food stamp data. One glance at the number reveals why...47.1 million!

This short story, along with an excellent chart, was posted over at the zerohedge.com Internet site on Saturday. Reader Marshall Angeles...who now has both power and heat after the hurricane...sent it to me on the weekend...and it's well worth skimming. The link is here.

Last month Broadwell—former CIA director David Petraeus' mistress and a former military intelligence officer—told a Denver audience that intelligence shows "the militia members in Libya were watching the demonstration in Cairo and it did sort of galvanize their effort."

She also dropped this bombshell: "Now I don't know if a lot of you heard this, but the CIA annex [to the consulate] had taken a couple of Libyan militia members prisoner and they think that the attack on the consulate was an effort to try to get these prisoners back."

If there were ever a motive to attack Americans, it would be the disappearance of friends.

Paula Broadwell? David Petraeus? You wouldn't believe this even if this scenario showed up in a third-rate spy novel! This story was posted on the businessinsider.com Internet site late yesterday afternoon...and I thank Roy Stephens for his first offering of the day. The link is here. [Note: Since I posted this article, it now boasts a new headline...and part of it has been re-written. - Ed]

This Russia Today story on this affair arrived in my in-box long after I'd posted the above story...so I just thought I'd add it at this point in this column. I'm just wondering how much longer it will be before Hillary Clinton's name pops up. It's also from Roy Stephens...and the link is here.

The City watchdog, the Financial Services Authority, is investigating claims by a whistleblower that Britain's L300 billion wholesale gas market has been "regularly" manipulated by some of the big power companies, exploiting weaknesses that echo the recent Libor scandal.

Separately, the energy regulator Ofgem has been warned by a company responsible for setting so-called benchmark prices, ICIS Heren, that it had seen evidence of suspect trading on 28 September, a key date as it marks the end of the gas financial year and can have an important influence on future prices.

The whistleblower, who works for ICIS Heren, raised the alarm after identifying what he believed to be attempts to distort the prices reported by the company. These benchmark prices are critically important because many wholesale gas contracts are based on them and small changes in the price can cost or save companies millions. The revelations come at a highly charged time for Britain's energy sector, with many of the big six suppliers under public fire for alleged profiteering on household energy bills and mis-selling on the doorstep.

What else is new? Of course there are still those mental giants out there that believe that gold and silver prices are still set by normal supply and demand factors...and we thought that the dinosaurs were extinct. Silly us! They all know better, but won't say a word. This story showed up on the guardian.co.uk Internet site yesterday...and I plucked it out of a GATA release. The link is here.

Greek lawmakers approved the country's 2013 austerity budget early Monday, an essential step in Greece's efforts to persuade its international creditors to unblock a vital rescue loan installment without which the country will go bankrupt.

The budget passed by a 167-128 vote in the 300-member Parliament. It came days after a separate bill of deep spending cuts and tax hikes for the next two years squeaked through with a narrow majority following severe disagreements among the three parties in the governing coalition.

"Just four days ago, we voted the most sweeping reforms ever in Greece," he said. "The sacrifices (in the earlier bill and the budget) will be the last. Provided, of course, we implement all we have legislated."

This story showed up on the telegraph.co.uk Internet site in the wee hours of Monday morning GMT...and I thank Donald Sinclair for sending it. The link is here.

Greece's international creditors have finally filed their report on the state of the country's reform efforts. According to top euro-zone official Jean-Claude Juncker, the document is largely "positive" in tone. Still, no final decision has yet been made on the payout of the next tranche of aid Greece so desperately needs.

Arriving in Brussels for Euro Group talks later in the day, Juncker said the ministers received the report on Sunday night and that it "is positive in its fundamental tone because the Greeks really delivered. Now it is for us to deliver." He said the ministers would check the report in detail and that he couldn't give a final verdict on it because he was still reading it.

The Euro Group meeting comes after the Greek parliament passed an austerity budget for 2013 late on Sunday and a structural reform package last Wednesday, meeting the conditions for the release of the next €31.5 billion tranche of euro-zone aid. Athens' 2013 budget includes cuts of almost €10 billion.

Don't forget that all this money is just being 'lent' to Greece so that it can pay back the banks that they originally 'borrowed' the money from. There's not a penny in this for the country, or its people, anywhere. This story showed up on the German website spiegel.de yesterday...and it's Roy Stephens second offering in today's column. The link is here.

It’s no secret that the methods many banks use for calculating capital ratios are a farce, especially at large European lenders. Sometimes the numbers are so over- the-top, all you can really do is sit back and admire the chutzpah.

Consider France’s third-largest bank, Credit Agricole SA, which today reported a third-quarter loss of 2.85 billion euros ($3.62 billion), sending its stock down 6 percent.

For a more realistic capital ratio, take tangible shareholder equity (which excludes intangible assets such as goodwill) and divide it by tangible assets. At Credit Agricole, the figure was 1.4 percent as of Sept. 30, which translates into leverage of about 73-to-1.

The financial crisis isn’t over by a long shot. [Amen, bro'....Ed]

This very short op-ed piece posted on Bloomberg on Friday is also your first must read of the day. Columnist Jonathan Weil gets it exactly right...and that's precisely the reason that the Basel III Accord got 'postponed'...as every bank is broke. It's as simple as that. I thank Manitoba reader Ulrike Marx for finding this story...and the link is here.

It was the second apparent suicide linked to evictions and further highlights the dire conditions many Spaniards find themselves in as the country's economy sinks.

The government recently created a task force to study how to reduce evictions because of the devastating personal impact of repossessions due to tough mortgage rules and growing unease among the public on the subject.

The unnamed 53-year-old woman threw herself from her balcony in a suburb of Bilbao, the regional Interior Ministry said. She worked at a local bus depot, was married to a former town councillor and had a 21-year-old daughter.

What happened to that wonderful French invention...the guillotine? I'm sure there are plans for this thing still kicking around somewhere...and the good folks who live in Europe should dig them up.

This AP story showed up on the independent.co.uk Internet site on Saturday...and I thank London, U.K. reader Tariq Khan for sending it our way. The link is here.

Spain's banking association announced on Monday it would freeze eviction orders for the next two years in cases of "extreme hardship", following widespread alarm and protests after a woman killed herself on Friday moments before she was due to be evicted, the second such death in less than a month.

"This cannot be allowed to go on," said Juan Carlos Mediavilla, a judge who attended the scene after Amaia Egaña, 53, leapt from her fourth-floor flat in the northern city of Bilbao.

"It's a problem which has been talked about for some time. The time for talk is over and steps must be taken for something to happen."

Within hours of Egaña's death noisy protesters had gathered on the streets of Bilbao. Stickers saying "murderers" were fixed to cash machines, while the governing People's party and opposition Socialists pledged to hold an emergency meeting on Monday to agree on reforming mortgage laws.

This story showed up on the guardian.co.uk Internet site very late last night GMT...and it's a follow-up story on the one above...and also from Tariq. I consider it a must read...and the link is here.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel braved hostile crowds in Portugal on Monday to show unflinching support for the country’s austerity ordeal and plead for patience as social cohesion frays. Yet she also insisted that there would be no renegotiation of the country’s €78bn (£62.5bn) EU-IMF Troika package or softer terms to alleviate the slump, saying austerity is the “only way forward”.

The flying visit came as trade unions led a protest march through Lisbon “in defence of national sovereignty” and the Left Bloc in parliament said its top priority is to “bring down the government” and forge a salvation front.

The tough love message comes as unemployment reaches 15.7pc, with 35pc among the young, and dole duration is slashed from nine months to four under Troika reforms.

This Ambrose Evan-Pritchard commentary was posted on The Telegraph's website yesterday evening...and I thank Ulrike Marx for her second story in today's column. The link is here.

Prosecutor Michele Ruggiero has asked a court in Trani, Italy to indict five S&P employees and two from Fitch Ratings for market manipulation, in a move that could trigger a raft of similar claims against rating setters around the world.

Mr Ruggiero, who has pursued the agencies since they placed Italy on negative watch last summer, accused them of “aggravated and continuous…market abuse”. He claimed they leaked “biased and distorted information” about Italy’s financial stability to traders.

In a statement, he said the rating agencies had tried to “destabilise Italy’s image, prestige and credit confidence on the financial markets, alter the value of Italian bonds by depreciating them [and] weaken the euro”.

This story was posted on the telegraph.co.uk Internet site late yesterday afternoon GMT...and is another story courtesy of Ulrike Marx. The link is here.

President Hu Jintao opened the 10-year power handover with a clear warning to modernizers that Beijing will not give up control over the commanding heights of industry and commerce.

In a valedictory state of the nation address after a decade in power - called "Firmly march on the path of Socialism" and delivered beneath a huge hammer and sickle - he insisted that "public ownership is the mainstay of the economic system" and warned that the party must "resolutely not follow Western political systems".

The language was peppered with anti-reform code words and pointed references to "Mao Zedong Thought", as well as a warning not to fall into "wicked ways".

This Ambrose Evans-Pritchard story was posted on The Telegraph's website early Thursday evening GMT...and it arrived just after I filed my Saturday column, so it's somewhat dated. But if you're not up on what's happening in the power handover in China, I consider this a must read. I thank Roy Stephens for sending it...and the link is here.

Japan’s economy shrank last quarter as exports tumbled and consumer spending slumped, putting pressure on the central bank to add stimulus and hurting Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda’s record as he prepares for elections.

Gross domestic product fell an annualized 3.5 percent, the most since the earthquake and tsunami in early 2011, Cabinet Office data showed today in Tokyo. The median of 23 estimates in a Bloomberg News survey was for a 3.4 percent decline. Shipments to Asia, Europe and the U.S. all slid, as did capital spending.

With analysts also seeing a GDP decline this quarter, according to a Bloomberg survey last week, Japan faces the risk of its third textbook-definition recession since 2008. The deterioration may undermine plans by Noda to implement the nation’s first sales-tax rise in more than a decade, and raises the stakes of a political impasse that’s left the government running out of cash.

This Bloomberg story was posted on their website late on Sunday night...and I thank Casey Research's own Louis James for digging it up on our behalf. The link is here.

It is official. The US will overtake Saudi Arabia to become the world's top oil producer by 2017.

The International Energy Agency (IEA) said in its world outlook for 2012 this morning that the US will be a net exporter of gas by 2020, with all the vast implications of abundant cheap gas for its chemical, plastics, glass, and steel industries.

"The United States, which currently imports around 20 per cent of its total energy needs, becomes all but self-sufficient in net terms – a dramatic reversal of the trend seen in most other energy importing countries," it said.

This is entirely due to the shale and gas revolution. North America as a whole will become a significant net exporter.

This firmly falls into the "I'll believe it when I see it" category. The first reader through the door with this story was Donald Sinclair in the wee hours of Monday morning...but his marketwatch.com link crashed my computer...so here's the story from The Telegraph that Roy Stephens sent me later in the morning. The link is here.

Driven by bad wheat and a serious collapse the Siberian harvest, world wheat prices have risen more than 40 percent since January and are once more flirting with the panic prices of 2007 and 2008.

Those price peaks, along with surging oil prices, were critical factors in the world economy's plunge in recession. The bread shortages and riots that followed the food crisis destabilized countries dependent on food imports like Egypt and helped trigger the Arab Spring.

Oil prices can hurt but they don't kill. Food shortages, however, are lethal to poor people and to governments. Either one eats or one starves.

This UPI story was filed from London yesterday...and I thank Roy Stephens for his final offering in today's column. The link is here.

1. Robert Fitzwilson: "The Die is Cast & Only One Question Remains". 2. Michael Pento: "Falling Markets & Why Gold Shorts are Getting Suckered". 3. James Turk: "The Fed is Playing an Extraordinarily Dangerous Game". 4. John Embry: "China to Import a Staggering 775 Tons of Gold in 2012". 5. The first audio interview is with Gerald Celente. 6. The second audio interview is with Rob Arnott. 7. And this blog just in...Richard Russell: "Multi-Trillion Dollar Question, Stocks & Gold".

At least $2 billion worth of diamonds have been stolen from Zimbabwe's eastern diamond fields and have enriched President Robert Mugabe's ruling circle, international gem dealers and criminals, according to an organization leading the campaign against conflict diamonds.

Zimbabwe's Marange fields have seen "the biggest plunder of diamonds since Cecil Rhodes," the colonial magnate who exploited South Africa's Kimberley diamonds a century ago, charged Partnership Africa Canada, a member of the Kimberley Process, the world regulatory body on the diamond trade.

Zimbabwe's eastern Marange field — one of the world's biggest diamond deposits — has been mined since 2006 and its vast earnings could have turned around Zimbabwe's economy, battered by years of meltdown and political turmoil, the group said. But funds from the diamond sales have not showed up in the state treasury. Instead there is evidence that millions have gone to Mugabe's cronies.

This AP story showed up on the foxnews.com Internet site yesterday...and I thank Washington state reader S.A. for bringing it to our attention. The link is here.

1. Chinese Gold Imports Surge In September, YTD Total Surpasses Official Indian Holdings: Zero Hedge. 2. Adrian Ash...Where to next for China's gold market?: Mineweb.com 3. Shanghai plans gold ETFs as China seeks to expand market: Mineweb.com 4. China Lags U.S. in Gold Holdings, May Raise Total, LBMA Says: Bloomberg [And don't forget the John Embry blog on this issue in the KWN section above, if you didn't read it.]

Investigators are scrutinizing Twin Cities coin and precious metal dealers in response to widespread complaints of consumer fraud.

Last week, the state attorney general's office obtained a court order to shut down a St. Paul precious metals dealer. The office has referred a number of other cases to federal and state investigators and regulators. And the U.S. attorney's office in Minnesota already is considering criminal charges against some coin dealers in the coming months.

Indictments can't come soon enough for the Minnesota attorney general's office, which began making criminal referrals as early as June 2010, spokesman Ben Wogsland said on Tuesday.

"The most effective deterrent to financial crime is criminal prosecutions and jail time," Wogsland said.

This story showed up in the Minneapolis Star Tribune late on Saturday evening...and I thank West Virginia reader Elliot Simon for sending it. The link is here.

The price of gold this Dhanteras has been the highest in five years. But this has done little to mar the spirit of buyers, who are splurging on the yellow metal like never before. In fact, people were seen queuing up in jewellery shops across the city to buy gold, silver, and other precious metals.

Last year the price of gold on Dhanteras was Rs 26,000 (approximately) per 10 gram, but this year the price has shot up to Rs 31,000/ 10 gram for 22-carat and Rs 32,000/ 10 gram for 24-carat gold.

Buying gold and silver is considered auspicious on this occasion. Keeping this in mind, several jewellery houses are offering attractive discounts and other such schemes to lure the customers. Some have gone a step further and are offering discounts on the making charges as well.

This story was posted on the Times of India website early yesterday morning local time...and I borrowed it from a GATA release. The headline reads "Rising Gold Price No Bar for Buyers this Dhanteras"...and the link is here.

Now one of the true experts in this matter is Ted Butler. He is not only respected because he is in the precious metals markets for more than three decades but also because of his tremendous inside knowledge. His analysis goes to the heart of the price setting: the Commitment Of Traders reports. Based on years of in-depth analysis, he came to the conclusion that the price of silver is manipulated and he is best positioned to explain himself why and how this manipulation happens. Although he believes that the manipulation has a strong short term effect, he is convinced that the longer term price is controlled by the increasing demand for physical silver. So yes the future looks bright, although there is uncertainty in the very short term price setting.

This short, must read article appeared on the goldsilverworlds.com Internet site yesterday...and contains three paragraphs from one of Ted Butler's latest commentaries to his paying subscribers. I thank Matthew Nel for bringing it to my attention...and now to yours. The link is here.

Eric Sprott, chief executive officer of Sprott Asset Management, talks about investment strategy and the performance outlook for gold. Sprott speaks with Erik Schatzker and Scarlet Fu on Bloomberg Television's "Market Makers."

This most excellent must watch 15-minute video was posted on the Bloomberg Internet site yesterday...and I thank reader Charley Orr for his efforts in digging up it up on our behalf. The link is here.

During his stay in Indonesia, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan brought up an interesting suggestion for the International Monetary Fund.

Stating that although IMF assistance may appear to be a prescription for some nations, in fact it is quite the opposite, as the fund has often caused serious problems for countries in trouble. So Erdogan asks why it is that the fund uses dollars instead of gold.

Saying that he doesn't feel it is right for the IMF to act according to one nation's currency, Erdogan states, "The IMF extends aid on a 'who, where, how, and on what conditions' basis. For example, if the IMF is under the influence of any single currency, then they are going to rule the world based on the exchange rates of that particular currency.

"Why do we not switch then to a monetary unit such as gold, which is at the very least an international constant and indicator that has maintained its honor throughout history? This is something to think about."

This must read story showed up in a GATA release yesterday afternoon...and the link is here.