Forget the stock market's dismal decade of much-ado-about-nothing and ignore the U.S. Dollar's declination; when it comes to reflection on what this once great nation has 'created' since 2001, the following chart from Pennsylvania's Department of Public Welfare sums it up better than most.

The graph is certainly worth looking at...and the link to this tiny Zero Hedge story is here. I thank Marshall Angeles for sending it.

Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago President Charles Evans said the central bank should keep interest rates near zero until unemployment falls to 6.5 percent or below as long as inflation is under 2.5 percent, aligning himself more closely with other Fed officials.

Evans previously had proposed 7 percent for the jobless rate and 3 percent for inflation.

“I now think the 7 percent threshold is too conservative,” Evans said in the text of prepared remarks given in Toronto Tuesday. “I am aware that the 3 percent threshold makes many people anxious” as an inflation measure.

This story showed up on the moneynews.com web site on Tuesday evening...and I thank West Virginia reader Elliot Simon for sending it our way. The link is here.

A nonpartisan, investigative arm of Congress is calling for the United States to stop printing dollar bills and switch entirely to $1 coins instead.

Why? Because the Government Accountability Office believes it could save Uncle Sam money.

A $1 coin typically costs about 30 cents for the U.S. Mint to produce, but then the government can sell them to Americans for a dollar each. That financial gain is called seigniorage, and over a period of 30 years, it could save the U.S. government about $4.4 billion, the GAO said. These coins typically last around 30 years.

In contrast, producing paper bills is cheaper, at about 5 cents apiece. But they also wear far more quickly. A typical $1 bill lasts only 4.7 years, according to GAO estimates.

The push is nothing new. The GAO has been recommending the change for the last 22 years, and will try again Thursday in a hearing before the House Financial Services Committee.

This story showed up on the cnn.com Internet site during the New York lunch hour yesterday...and I thank Mumbai, India reader Avinash Raheja for finding it for us. The link is here.

Credit rating agency Fitch has downgraded Argentina, which is locked in a court battle in New York over its debt, and said the country would probably default.

Fitch cut its long-term rating for Argentina to "CC" from "B," a downgrade of five notches, and cut its short-term rating to "C" from "B". A rating of "C" is one step above default, AP reported.

US judge Thomas Griesa of Manhattan federal court last week ordered Argentina to set aside $1.3bn for certain investors in its bonds by December 15, even as Argentina pursues appeals.

Those investors don't want to go along with a debt restructuring that followed an Argentine default in 2002. If Argentina is forced to pay in full, other holders of debt totaling more than $11bn are expected to demand immediate payment as well.

This story was posted on The Telegraph's website at almost midnight GMT on Tuesday...and I thank Marshall Angeles for his second offering in today's column. The link is here.

“I cannot be disillusioned because I no longer have any illusions about Europe,” muttered Euro Group President Jean-Claude Juncker last week after the horse trading over Greece’s bailout had failed once again.

But he wasn’t the only one who lost his illusions.

“There are better alternatives to the bailout policies of Chancellor Merkel,” declares the man who’ll run against her in 2013; alternatives that “protect taxpayers and don’t only benefit the banks.”

This commentary was posted on the businessinsider.com Internet site late Wednesday afternoon...and I thank Roy Stephens for sharing it with us. The link is here.

For the third time, European finance ministers this week have put together a package of aid measures for Greece and assured Europeans that the country is now back on track to financial health. But is it really? German commentators certainly don't think so.

Hedge fund managers, at least, are pleased. The deal struck late on Monday night between euro-zone finance ministers and the International Monetary Fund to reduce Greece's overall debt load includes a measure stipulating an Athens buyback of its own debt. Investors that bought Greek bonds for as low as 17 cents on the euro can now expect to sell them back to Athens for around 35 cents on the euro -- a tidy little profit.

Elsewhere, however, investors would appear to be unimpressed by the deal. Markets across the world were down on Wednesday and the euro lost value early against the dollar, with Greece cited -- along with US debt troubles -- as one of the reasons for the uncertainty. Investors, it would seem, see the Greece deal as yet another attempt by European leaders to muddle through the crisis rather than take steps toward a lasting solution.

That pretty much sums it up. This story was posted on the German website spiegel.de yesterday...and it's Roy Stephens' second offering in a row. The link is here.

The US Treasury has issued a damning criticism of Germany’s chronic trade surplus in its annual report on worldwide exchange rate abuse, although it stopped short of labelling the country a currency manipulator.

Treasury officials told Congress that internal balances within the eurozone are disrupting the global trade structure, with almost nothing being done by north Europeans states to curb their huge surpluses.

The report said Germany’s current account surplus is running at 6.3pc of GDP, and Holland is even worse at 9.5pc. Yet the countries still cleave to fiscal austerity policies that constrict internal demand.

The EU’s new tool for cracking down on intra-EMU imbalances is "asymmetric" and does not give "sufficient attention to countries with large and sustained external surpluses like Germany".

If I were Germany, my answer to this would be to sell U.S. treasuries...and ask for all my gold back from the Federal Reserve vaults in New York. This Ambrose Evans-Pritchard blog was posted on The Telegraph's website early yesterday evening GMT...and I thank Manitoba reader Ulrike Marx for sending it our way. The link is here.

People of Jewish heritage are a "security risk" and should be registered on a nationwide list, according to right-wing extremist Hungarian politician Márton Gyöngyösi. His comments, made in the country's parliament, have sparked widespread outrage. But the government was slow to distance itself.

Conversations with the right-wing extremist Hungarian politician Márton Gyöngyösi regularly devolve into tiring marathons of relativization. He's not an anti-Semite, he insists, but the Jews … ; he's not against the Roma, but the Gypsies … ; he's not an extremist in favor of dictatorships, but liberal democracy … has failed.

The 33-year-old economist and former tax advisor is not just some random right-winger, though. He is the deputy parliamentary floor leader for the Jobbik party, which won 17 percent of the vote in Hungary's 2010 elections. Gyöngyösi's parents work for Hungarian trade associations abroad and as he was growing up, he spent time in Egypt, Afghanistan, India and Iraq. Jobbik made him the party's foreign policy spokesman.

This is certainly getting ugly...and it will be interesting to see how this unfolds as time progresses. This is another story from the spiegel.de Internet site yesterday...and also another offering from Roy Stephens. The link is here.

China’s recent leadership transition was widely depicted as a triumph for conservative hard-liners and a setback for the cause of reform – a characterization that has deepened the gloominess that pervades Western perceptions of China. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth.

Xi Jinping and Li Keqiang – the top two officials in China’s new governing council (the Standing Committee of the Politburo) – are both well educated, well traveled, and sophisticated thinkers who bring a wealth of experience to the many challenges that China faces. As so-called Fifth Generation leaders, they continue the steady progress in competence that has marked each of China’s leadership transitions since the emergence of Deng Xiaoping in the late 1970’s.

This commentary by Stephen Roach was posted on the businessinsider.com Internet site early yesterday afternoon Eastern time...and I thank Roy Stephens for his final contribution to today's column. The link is here.

The first blog is with Ron Rosen...and it's entitled "Key Targets for Gold, Silver, Miners & Common Stocks". The next blog contains data that Eric borrowed/stole from the latest Investors Intelligence report. It's entitled "Here is a Huge Key to the Markets". The last blog is with Richard Russell...and it bears the title "Bursting Bubbles Will Make Things Far Worse". The audio interview is with James Turk

Earlier this month the TMX Group was touting the 26 new issuers it welcomed in October. Ten were from the mining sector and of those 10, seven listed on the TSX-V. The TSX-V now has 2,436 companies listed, many of which are in the mining sector. What the exchange has not been touting, however, are the low prices of its battered listings. As of today, 1,266 TSX-V-listed companies, or 51.9 per cent, closed at 10 cents or under; 743 companies, or 30.5 per cent, closed at five cents or under.

This short story, which is worth the read, was posted on the stockwatch.com Internet site late on Tuesday evening...and I thank reader U.D. for bringing it to our attention. The link is here.

BMO Financial Group is expanding its Canadian precious metals deposit service offering with the addition of the BMO Vaulted Physical Silver Deposit Program. BMO launched its Gold Deposit Program in September 2011.

"Since the launch of our Gold Deposit Program, there has been an overwhelming amount of demand for real physical precious metals products in the Canadian marketplace," said Simon Carling, Managing Director, BMO Capital Markets. "Physical silver offerings that completely avoid the use of derivatives, unallocated metal, or certificates are surprisingly difficult to find-which may explain why they are so highly sought after."

BMO's vault-based programs are designed to take the guesswork out of a physical precious metal investment. All programs are backed on an ounce-for-ounce basis with real, physical bullion at all times.

This is just another brick in the wall for JPMorgan/Scotiabank et al. I thank reader 'Mike' for sharing this short read with us...and the link is here.

Yesterday's commentary by Ross Norman of Sharps Pixley Ltd., the London bullion brokerage, notes today's "counterintuitive" smash down in gold on the opening of the New York futures market, which he writes was probably a "short play" trying to trigger sell stops with the sudden dumping of 24 (paper) tonnes of metal.

Of course GATA partisans are tediously familiar with such "counterintuitive" moves in gold. At GATA's Gold Rush 21 conference in Dawson City, Yukon Territory, Canada, in August 2005, South African gold market analyst Peter George said: "In the last 10 years central banks have effectively shown that when there's a real crisis, gold actually goes down. It's so blatant, it's a joke."

The link to Ross Norman's commentary from yesterday is embedded in this GATA release...and it's definitely worth reading. The link is here.

MineWeb's Lawrence Williams marvels at yesterday's sudden pummeling of gold at the New York open and figures that it was great advertising for GATA.

Williams writes: "We have seen this happen in silver and in gold from time to time -- talk about ammunition for those who suggest the gold price is being suppressed or manipulated by central banks and allied bullion banks. There seems to be little other logical explanation for this kind of activity. It could even turn long-term suppression deniers into GATA adherents - and if you do start trending toward this viewpoint, the few-and-far-between GATA-organized conferences are much more fun and interesting than the mainstream gold ones, even if some of the views expressed by audience members (and the odd speaker) may stretch credulity in the other direction."

Williams adds: "You probably shouldn't let the manipulators, whether government-backed or not, put the frighteners on you but see such short-term price falls as an opportunity to buy rather than as a reason to get out of gold."

I thank Chris Powell for wordsmithing "all of the above"...and I thank Ulrike Marx for being the first reader through the door with this mineweb.com story from yesterday. Even your humble scribe gets a mention...and the link to this must read article is here.

China aims to have domestic gold production reach 450 metric tons by the end of 2015, a rise of around 25% from 2011, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology said Monday.

The ministry forecast rising domestic demand for gold and a "huge amount of room" for the industry's development due to gold's safe-haven and wealth-preserving properties, it said.

Still, domestic consumption is likely to exceed 1,000 tons by the end of 2015, "widening the fundamental market shortage," the ministry noted.

This rather short item was filed from Beijing on Monday...and is posted on the marketwatch.com Internet site. I found the story in a GATA release yesterday...and it's another must read...and the link is here.