Politicians working to avert the "Fiscal Cliff" may take away some of the advantage of tax-free municipal bonds, dealing a blow to investors as well as local governments.

While Congress isn't yet expected to try to change muni bonds' tax-free status, industry experts think lawmakers could take a first step by limiting how much income investors could deduct under the popular tax break, which has been around since 1913.

Limiting the tax deduction could make muni bonds less popular, resulting in higher borrowing costs for state and local governments, particularly those in the weakest financial positions.

Our first story of the day is this CNBC piece that was picked up by the finance.yahoo.com Internet site yesterday...and I thank Texas reader Roger DeReu for sending it our way. The link is here.

Despite the 6.5% stock market rally over the last three months, a handful of billionaires are quietly dumping their American stocks...and fast.

Warren Buffett, who has been a cheerleader for U.S. stocks for quite some time, is dumping shares at an alarming rate. He recently complained of “disappointing performance” in dyed-in-the-wool American companies like Johnson & Johnson, Procter & Gamble, and Kraft Foods.

In the latest filing for Buffett’s holding company Berkshire Hathaway, Buffett has been drastically reducing his exposure to stocks that depend on consumer purchasing habits. Berkshire sold roughly 19 million shares of Johnson & Johnson, and reduced his overall stake in “consumer product stocks” by 21%. Berkshire Hathaway also sold its entire stake in California-based computer parts supplier Intel.

With 70% of the U.S. economy dependent on consumer spending, Buffett’s apparent lack of faith in these companies’ future prospects is worrisome.

Unfortunately Buffett isn’t alone.

This item showed up on the moneynews.com Internet site on Tuesday...and I thank reader Glenn Jeffs for bringing it to our attention. It's worth skimming...and the link is here.

When it was released a year ago this month, James Rickards' "Currency Wars: The Making of the Next Global Crisis" was widely hailed and quickly adopted as a guidebook of sorts for economic conservatives, Fed critics and especially gold bugs, given Rickards' support for a return to the gold standard.

And he's still sticking with a long-term forecast of the dollar's demise as the world's reserve currency. "The Fed wants a cheaper dollar, but that doesn't mean they're going to get it" right away, says Rickards, a partner at JAC Capital Advisors. "If they don't get it, they'll have to try harder."

As evidence, he cites Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke's "blunt and threatening" speech in Tokyo last month, which many observers took as a response to criticism of Fed policy by global finance ministers, notably Brazil's Guido Mantega.

"What Bernanke said, reading between the lines is: 'Do what you want; we'll keep printing until the dollar gets weaker. Your choices are inflation if you want to keep pegged [to the dollar] or higher export prices if you let your currency go up.'"

This CNBC story from yesterday has a 4:18 minute video interview with Mr. Rickards embedded in it...and the video is definitely worth your time...and I thank West Virginia reader Elliot Simon for his first offering it today's column. The link is here.

Americans may want to freeze the leftovers from Thanksgiving dinner, as retail food prices are expected to rise next year, sparked by the country’s worst drought in more than half a century.

The dry conditions sent corn futures to a record and wheat prices to the highest in four years. They had less of an effect on food costs than expected earlier this year because slowing economies and oil demand have offset price pressures, economists say. Thanksgiving dinner will cost only 0.6 percent more than in 2011, the American Farm Bureau Federation said, with a 3.1 percent jump in turkey prices leading the way.

Next year, retail poultry prices are projected to increase as much as 4 percent, beef by 5 percent and dairy products by 4.5 percent because of higher feed prices and as herds thinned by the drought tighten supplies, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said. The drought’s effects on food prices may linger as late as 2016, said Christopher Hurt, a livestock economist at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana.

This story was posted on the Bloomberg website late on Tuesday evening Mountain time...and I thank Elliot Simon for his second offering in a row. The link is here.

"The U.S. Constitution was essentially a coup; the delegates to what we now call the Constitutional Convention were not empowered to replace the existing government - only to improve upon the Articles of Confederation between the then-independent states. The framers of the Constitution drafted it with the notion of a national government already in place, but calmed fears of loss of state sovereignty by calling the new government the "United States of America" - a verbal sleight of hand that worked for over half a century. Then the southern states decided to exercise what these words imply; their right to leave the union. While slavery was and is a wholesale criminal activity I object to in every way possible, the southern states did have the right to secede, both legally and ethically. But the question was settled by force, not reason, and the wrong side won."

As the years go by, Doug Casey is becoming even more strident...and even more politically incorrect [if that's possible]. He is literally screaming at all Americans to leave the U.S. far behind. I hope all my American readers at least have gold and silver stored safely abroad someplace...and a current passport so they can leave if they have to.

This is the latest edition of Conversations with Casey...and it's a must ready for sure. As usual, Louis James is there to goad Doug along...not that it takes much these days. The link is here.

Sen. Patrick Leahy has abandoned his controversial proposal that would grant government agencies more surveillance power -- including warrantless access to Americans' e-mail accounts -- than they possess under current law.

The Vermont Democrat said today on Twitter that he would "not support such an exception" for warrantless access. The remarks came a few hours after a CNET article was published this morning that disclosed the existence of the measure.

A vote on the proposal in the Senate Judiciary committee, which Leahy chairs, is scheduled for next Thursday. The amendments were due to be glued onto a substitute (PDF) to H.R. 2471, which the House of Representatives already has approved.

Leahy's about-face comes in response to a deluge of criticism today, including the American Civil Liberties Union saying that warrants should be required, and the conservative group FreedomWorks launching a petition to Congress -- with more than 2,300 messages sent so far -- titled: "Tell Congress: Stay Out of My E-mail!"

This is a pleasant surprise. This story was posted on the cnet.com Internet site at lunchtime Pacific time on Tuesday. I thank Tom Germain for finding it for us...and the link is here.

The United States used U.S.-Israeli spy software to hack into the French presidential office earlier this year, the French cyber-warfare agency has concluded, according to the newsmagazine l'Express.

The magazine reported late Tuesday that the computers of several close advisers to then-President Nicolas Sarkozy — including Chief of Staff Xavier Musca — were compromised in May by a computer virus that bears the hallmarks of Flame, which was allegedly created by a U.S.-Israeli team to target Iran's nuclear program. Anonymous French officials pointed the finger at the United States.

“You can be on very good terms with a 'friendly' country and still want to guarantee their unwavering support — especially during a transition period,” an official told the magazine. The alleged spying attack took place a few days before the second round of the French presidential elections, which Sarkozy lost to Francois Hollande, a socialist.

This story showed up on thehill.com Internet site around supper time in Washington on Tuesday. I borrowed it out of yesterday's edition of the King Report...and the link is here.

A bus explosion in Tel Aviv has stunned Israel. Though those responsible have yet to be identified, most Israelis believe Hamas is to blame. They say that there is no option but retaliation.

"After such an attack there can be no cease-fire," says Ginat. "How can someone negotiate an end to the violence and then do something like this? With that the negotiations have come to an end." Though no one has claimed responsibility for the attack, hardly anyone in Israel doubts that Hamas was behind it. In the Gaza Strip the radical Islamic army and party was said to have celebrated the news of the attack.

Even if a lone individual were found to be behind the attack, a cease-fire is probably off the table now in the negotiations between the Israeli government and Hamas. Just 16 hours earlier, an end to the violence seemed so close. United Nations General Secretary Ban Ki Moon had become involved, making a special trip to Cairo. United States' Secretary of State Hillary Clinton also visited Israeli allies. The pressure from these high-level officials was meant to prevent further escalation in the conflict, but now this hope has been crushed.

This story showed up on the German website spiegel.de yesterday...and I thank Roy Stephens for sending it our way. The link is here.

Under intense Egyptian and American pressure, Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas halted eight days of bloody conflict on Wednesday, averting a full-scale Israeli ground invasion of the Gaza Strip without resolving the underlying disputes.

With Israeli forces still massed on the Gaza border, a tentative calm descended after the announcement of the agreement. The success of the truce will be an early test of how Egypt’s new Islamist government might influence the most intractable conflict in the Middle East.

The United States, Israel and Hamas all praised Egypt’s role in brokering the cease-fire as the antagonists pulled back from violence that had killed more than 150 Palestinians and five Israelis over the past week. The deal called for a 24-hour cooling-off period to be followed by talks aimed at resolving at least some of the longstanding grievances between the two sides.

Let's see how long this lasts. Not long, is my guess. The story showed up on The New York Times website yesterday...and I thank Roy Stephens for his second contribution in a row to today's column. The link is here.

The fabulous reclining Buddha at Wat Pho in Bangkok does not exactly subscribe to drone wars and "targeted assassinations" - not to mention bombing of civilian infrastructure. So the Buddha may have been puzzled - to say the least - when US President Barack Obama, right at the start of his whirlwind "pivoting" tour of Southeast Asia, and referring to Israel and Gaza, came up with this: "There is no country on earth that would tolerate missiles raining down on its citizens from outside its borders."

So imagine the Buddha in nirvana, mercifully surveying the sorry landscape of this valley of tears, and duly noting that Obama's drones do rain Hellfires from Pakistan to Yemen, while one of Israel's trademark - extra-judicial - target assassinations, of Hamas military leader Ahmad al-Jabari, was the preamble to unleashing the latest chapter of Israel's collective punishment of Gaza.

Call it the Obama Doctrine or good ol' American exceptionalism; all across the Arab street Obama's endorsement of Israel's rampage was analyzed side by side with this perceptive bit of geopolitical analysis by Ariel Sharon's son; "We need to flatten entire neighborhoods in Gaza. Flatten all of Gaza. The Americans didn't stop with Hiroshima - the Japanese weren't surrendering fast enough, so they hit Nagasaki, too".

This piece showed up on the Hong Kong website of Asia Today just before the cease fire was signed yesterday. But regardless of that, it's a must read from one end to the other...and it's definitely a must read for all students of the "New Great Game". I was saving it for Saturday, but decided that it deserves to be in this column. If I had to pick one story for you to read today...this would be the one. It's Roy's third offering in a row...and the link is here.

The first is with Ron Rosen...and it's headlined "The Roadmap for $3,000+ Gold, $100+ Silver and 1,650 HUI". The other blog features Citi analyst Tom Fitzpatrick. It's entitled "This is What We Are Looking at Directly in Front of Us". The audio interview is with Wilbur Ross, Jr.

It’s a shocking way to stop the copper theft crime-wave – a 7,000-volt electric security fence.

The Rancho Cordova City Council voted Monday night to draft an ordinance allowing businesses to put up electric security fences that will zap would-be copper thieves.

Sam Matsoyan of MP Auto Parts said Monday he can’t wait to install it around his Rancho Cordova business.

“It’ll be a little fun to watch one of these guys get electrocuted holding my fence trying to rob me,” he said.

Just when you thought things couldn't get any more bizarre in the U.S...along comes a story like this. Where I come from, electric fences are for cattle. It was posted on the cbslocal.com Internet site out of Sacramento on Monday...and I thank Scott Pluschau for bringing it to our attention. The link is here.

Asset manager Nick Barisheff says, “There’s never been a fiat currency in history that didn’t end in hyperinflation and complete collapse.” Barisheff thinks that Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner’s most recent call to have an “unlimited debt ceiling” for the U.S. was “just telling the truth.” That’s essentially what we have now with “open-ended” money printing by the Fed. Barisheff adds, “All it’s doing is postponing a problem...it makes it bigger and eventually it blows up.” Forget about remedies for the economy, it’s too late. Barisheff says, “We’ve passed the point of this getting fixed.”

Barisheff thinks if the Fed’s gold holdings are ever audited, there will be a “gigantic short-covering rally...multiple bankruptcies...and a massive loss of confidence” in the dollar because much of the gold is gone or leased out. Barisheff thinks the gold price could be “easily double” right now. That’s because Barisheff believes, “What’s kept the price down is the artificial leased gold going onto the markets.”

Well, Nick's only partly right, as it's the massive Comex short positions by JPMorgan et al that really control the price at the moment...and I note that he's 'borrowed' a lot of work from James Turk and GATA without attribution...but what else is new.

Greg Hunter of usawatchdog.com goes one-on-one with Nick Barisheff, CEO of the $650 million Bullion Management Group...and the link to the 17-minute video interview is here. It's certainly worth watching.

In commentary posted at Turd Ferguson's Internet site, the TF Metals Report, London monetary metals trader and silver market rigging whistleblower Andrew Maguire explains how the gold and silver exchange-traded funds, GLD and SLV, are used by the major bullion banks for price suppression.

Well, dear reader, except for the first couple of paragraphs...and the associated charts...which aren't part of Andrew's commentary, I haven't a clue as to what he's talking about. I understand the first couple of paragraphs, but after that it's all Greek to me.

I'm not saying he's wrong, it's just that I don't understand the mechanics, even if it is true. One thing worth noting is that no other ETF/bullion fund on Planet Earth can be talked about in these terms. As you know, I've always been deeply suspicious of both GLD and SLV...and the two custodians that hold the metal...JPMorgan in silver...and HSBC USA in gold. There are other choices for owning precious metals in fund form...and for precisely that reason, I don't [and never would] own either of these two ETFs.

I found this Andrew Maquire commentary in a GATA release yesterday. It's posted on the tfmetalsreport.com Internet site...and the link is here.

You may soon have options to invest in new financial instruments that are linked to gold, such as a possible gold bond.

With savings rates dropping from 35% about five years ago, the government, trying to boost savings and discourage hoarding of gold in physical form as a speculative activity, is planning to soon come out with attractive paper products including gold bonds, riding on India's craze for gold.

Though the details are yet to emerge, experts say that in such instruments investors may be allowed to invest cash or offer gold against an assured minimum return.

At the time of maturity investors are given the option of receiving gold or cash. The funds raised are likely to be used to build infrastructure projects. The government is expected to offer sovereign guarantees to notified companies that can sell such bonds and back it up with hedging in global gold markets to assure minimum returns linked to the metal.

I hope the Indian people are smart enough to realize the difference between the real metal and paper gold. The Reserve Bank of India...and the government...is doing everything possible to dissuade its citizens from buying gold...and this is just another attempt.

This is another story that I borrowed from a GATA release yesterday. It was posted on the hindustantimes.com Internet site yesterday...and the link is here.

Here's an interview with Ian McAvity at the San Francisco Gold conference. McAvity said the low attendance at the conference is a good contrarian sign. At some length, he tells why, when, and where he expects gold price to move.

This is all wonderful...and I agree with him up to a point...but it's also entirely dependent on what JPMorgan Chase et al will allow. The 6-minute interview from yesterday is posted at the Kitco website...and I thank reader Jim Rogers for bringing it to our attention. The link is here.

Spots. Collectors don’t like them on their coins. The U.S. Mint knows that, and its determined to get rid of them.

“Where there’s a will there’s a way. We can do it,” said Stacy Kelley-Scherer, the Mint’s Division Chief in charge of Quality.

It’s a matter of looking at the complete process for manufacturing the coins, she said, from the raw planchets to the chemicals used to clean them, as well as the machinery.

“We have to not only wash and rinse them, but make sure that they’re dry, because if not, they will get spots on them like glasses in the dishwasher,” Kelley-Scherer said.

I was unaware that the U.S. Mint was having 'spot' problems with some of their coins. Here in Canada, the 1 oz. Maple Leaf coin from the Royal Canadian Mint has a serious production defect called "milk spots"...and at the bullion store, we try to talk people out of buying them for that very reason...and the problem has become much worse over the last couple of years.

The RCM's attitude, if you've read the above link, is "tough bananas...they're bullion coins". However, we Canadians pay a hefty premium [about $1.25 per coin] for the privilege of owning them...and when a customer sells them back to us in that condition, they lose all the premium...and maybe a bit more if they're really bad, as we can't sell them as a premium product again.

Our answer to the RCM's "up yours" attitude is that we talk as many people out of buying them as we can...as there is no way to remove these spots once they have formed. The condition normally starts on the milled edge and then works its way around onto the coin's surface...almost like a skin disease. There's no way of knowing which ones will develop spots when you first buy them...but a huge percentage of more recent mintages are showing up with this problem. Even some of the 'collector-type' coins are exhibiting this problem.

This story showed up on the numismaster.com Internet site on Tuesday...and I thank Elliot Simon for sending it along. It's worth skimming...and the link is here.

I was talking to John on the phone yesterday...and he mentioned that he'd done this interview on Tuesday. Reader Dennis Meredith found it for us...and the link is here. It's an mp3 file, so I have no idea how long it runs, as I haven't had time to listen to the whole thing.

Brazil raised its gold reserves for a second month in October to the highest level in more than 11 years as emerging nations from Kazakhstan to Russia boosted holdings by more than 40 metric tons.

Brazil's holdings expanded 17.2 tons last month to 52.5 tons, the most since January 2001, according to data on the International Monetary Fund's website. The country's 1.7-ton purchase in September was the first since December 2008. Kazakhstan's holdings increased 7.5 tons, Russia added 0.4 ton, and Turkey's reserves rose 17.5 tons, the data show. Germany, the second-biggest holder, after the U.S., cut gold holdings by 4.2 tons, the first reduction since June.

This Bloomberg story from yesterday is embedded in a GATA release...and Chris Powell's opening comments, along with the story itself, are worth reading. The article is headlined "Brazil Boosts Gold Reserves to the Highest in More Than 11 Years"...and the link is here.