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The Mexican Government Audit Office has issued an official statement, criticizing the Bank of Mexico for not auditing the gold it has supposedly bought and stored at the Bank of England. The auditors ask the Central Bank of Mexico to “make a physical inspection with the counterparty that has the gold under its custody, in order to be able to verify and validate its physical wholeness and compliance with the terms and conditions of dealing with this asset.” Global Financial Intelligence and the Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee report that the actions of the Mexican Government Audit Office are the result...

Rep. Matt Salmon (R-AZ) paid a visit to CBS’ Face the Nation this past weekend, and argued that a government shutdown would do us all some good. Referring back to the 1995, Salmon argued a shutdown could bring about some real progress on the fiscal front. “I was here during the government shutdown in 1995,” Salmon said, noting that there was a divided government at the time, with Democratic President Bill Clinton and a Republican Congress. “I believe that that government shutdown actually gave us the impetus, as we went forward, to push toward some real serious compromise,” he added....

(snip) The LIBOR scandal is "so big I don't think people have got their minds around it," says Jim Rickards, a partner at JAC Capital Advisors and author of Currency Wars: The Making of the Next Global. "This is the largest financial scandal I've seen in my career." If $500 trillion of swaps are based on LIBOR and the rate was manipulated by 10 basis points over five years, that's $2.5 trillion of fraudulent transactions -- more than the combined capital of the nation's five largest banks, Rickards explains. "Congress may have to step in to limit the damages because...

From Wikipedia about Moroni: "a religious and military leader from the Book of Mormon who rallied people to successfully defend their freedoms and religious freedoms against enemies from within who wanted to overthrow a government by the people in favor of establishing a king." "According to the Book of Mormon, Captain Moroni was an important Nephite military commander and patriot... He is perhaps best known for raising the "Title of Liberty" as a call to arms for his people to defend their country, family and religion." . . . Moroni was "only twenty and five years old when he was...

This video clip makes a compelling case for why corporations must retain constitutional rights - in order to protect the rights of those who own them and who work in and benefit from them. Click on the Cato Institute source link above for the streaming video or for the mp3 download ...

... Mitt Romney said he was "not concerned about the very poor" but would fix America's social safety net ... But if he wants to see a welfare system that lets almost no one fall through the cracks while at the same time ensuring that its beneficiaries don't become lifelong dependents, he could look to his own church. (snip) Launched during the Great Depression, the Mormon welfare system was designed by church leaders as a way to match the ... unemployed faithful with ... temporary labor. As storehouse manager ... explains, goods and services were traded so that if a...

Instead of looking out for MF Global investors – and customers who are still waiting for their money – it looks like regulators and the bankruptcy trustees are busy suppressing information. Instead of full transparency, regulators and the trustees are holding onto crucial details that might tell us all who was asleep at the wheel when the broker/dealer and futures commission merchant (FCM) headed over the cliff. Bob English, an independent trader and contributing editor to the blog, Economic Policy Journal, published a post this morning that raises serious questions about the Securities and Exchange Commission’s program of regulation for broker/dealers...

Financial markets are in a precarious place, with European banks and sovereign balance sheets in the cross-hairs. Bank regulators are becoming increasingly aggressive, and euro-zone borrowing costs are rising as the debts of years past are coming due. In this environment, policy makers are finding their authority, credibility and firepower being tested. In turn, they are finding it tempting to pursue "financial repression"—suppressing market prices that they don't like. But this is bad policy, not least because it signals diminished faith in the market economy itself. Markets are not always efficient, but the market-clearing prices for stocks, bonds, currencies and...

Today, in advance of their sworn testimony, each witness to the Senate Agricultural Committee's MF Global hearing was requested to disclose what their prepared remarks would be. Sure enough, CME executive chairman Terry Duffy did that, and his prepared testimony can be found here. In and of itself there was nothing unexpected about said speech, the relevant section of which has been transcribed below. Where things got very ugly for Corzine, is when Duffy literally veered from the script, and added three unexpected sentences, catching everyone in the committee off guard (including those who had given up on the testimony...

Laurie: R. Ferber has quite a resume. She is currently the general counsel of MF Global Holdings, the New York-based futures and commodities brokerage that filed for bankruptcy on October 31, listing some $40 billion in liabilities. Before joining MF Global in 2009, a year or so before Jon Corzine became its chairman and chief executive officer, Ferber was general counsel and chief regulatory officer at the International Derivatives Clearing Group LLC, which clears interest-rate swaps. Before that, she spent more than 20 years at Goldman Sachs Group, where first she was general counsel for J. Aron & Company, a...

So, you think that there isn't a group of people really trying to figure out how to create a single, global system of governance? And, that they won't try to use world economic woes as a way to achieve that end - global governance not accountable to the governed? Well... guess again, and skim this article. These people are serious. http://tinyurl.com/67k7neq

Fellow Freepers, Are you interested in learning about hard asset investing, and about how to be successful applying a financial world view that is different from the Wall Street MBA crap that many of us have been steeped in for decades? I want to share links to various free podcasts that have helped me to learn and earn since the economy started to tank. Years ago I earned an MBA from a highly ranked graduate school, but in more recent years I have learned that the Wall Street paradigm still taught in business schools is very incomplete and even...

Congressman Ron Paul points out that during the one-hour long Ben Bernanke press conference the dollar plummeted roughly 1.5% as measured against gold and that the ludicrous nature of his statements about the Fed wanting a strong dollar is just that – ludicrous. As Ron Paul points out "prices always go up for some other reason than Fed monetary inflation." As Paul candidly states, "We need a stable currency … We need to take away the power of the Fed to buy the debt … Congress needs to quit spending money …But as long as the Fed is the lender...

Gerald Celente on Jeff Rense radio (audio), 28 Apr 2011. Ok, so Gerald can be "over the top..." But directionally he generally does have something... (42 minute excerpt from show). Some initial talk about birth certificate... Link to Gerald Celente Audio on YouTube

Australian Fund Manager and Advisor explains how currencies are being debased around the world while precious metals are once again taking their historical place and being recognized as real money which cannot just be printed endlessly at will for the benefit of those doing the printing. Free markets really do not exist any more. Link to Video Clip

Former Fed official explains how the corrupt, secretive Federal Reserve is deceitfully acting in the best interestes of the big banks while pretending to act in the public interest. Billions in subsidies are given to those banks by the Fed paying them interest on their reserves. Link to Video Here

U.S. households are now getting more in cash handouts from the government than they are paying in taxes for the first time since the Great Depression. Households received $2.3 trillion in some kind of government support in 2010. That includes expanded unemployment benefits, as well as payments for Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and stimulus spending, among other things. But that’s more than the $2.2 trillion households paid in taxes, an amount that has slumped largely due to the recession, according to an analysis by the Fiscal Times. Also, an estimated 59% of the 308.7 million Americans in this country get...

Inquiring minds wonder.

On the third Wednesday of every month, the nine members of an elite Wall Street society gather in Midtown Manhattan. The men share a common goal: to protect the interests of big banks in the vast market for derivatives, one of the most profitable — and controversial — fields in finance. They also share a common secret: The details of their meetings, even their identities, have been strictly confidential.

China's Hayman declaration 30 Aug 2010 In most years something very memorable occurs at the Australian Leadership Retreat on Hayman Island. Last year the Chinese were stopped from attending because China discovered that the then Prime Minister Kevin Rudd would be in attendance. Rudd had fallen out with the Chinese leadership (Building bridges with China, September 1 2009). In 2010 Rudd was not there and the Chinese came in force and some of their messages are still ringing in my ears. By far the most dramatic was the declaration that China did not plan to buy any more US treasury...