"I think this deal's a disaster," said Peter Huntsman, chief executive of chemical producer Huntsman Corp.

"We're just living in a fantasy land. We're borrowing more and more money. This did absolutely nothing to address the fundamental issue of the debt cliff."

Former Wells Fargo CEO Dick Kovacevich said the agreement confirms that Washington and both parties are totally out of control.

"I think it's a joke," Kovacevich said of the deal. "It's stunning to me that after working on this for months and supposedly really getting to work in the last 30 days that this is what you come up with."

Kovacevich and others said business leaders need to consider a different approach, one that either bypasses lawmakers or lays out a much more specific plan for deficit reduction.

This article showed up on the moneynews.com Internet site early yesterday morning Eastern time...and I thank West Virginia reader Elliot Simon for our first story of the day. The link is here.

The United States risks a debt crisis just like Europe’s if we don’t get our act together soon on the budget, says Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala.

He was one of eight senators to vote against the fiscal cliff agreement.

“We’re always wanting to spend and promise and spend and borrow, but not cut,” he told Fox News Wednesday. “We’ve got to get real about this. We’re headed down the road that Europe’s already on.”

This is the second story in a row from Elliot Simon...and also the second story from the moneynews.com Internet site...this one from late Wednesday afternoon Eastern time. The link is here.

The United States must do more than the recently passed fiscal cliff measures if the country is to rescue its Aaa debt rating from its current negative outlook, rating agency Moody's Investors Service said.

Standard & Poor's said the deal does not affect its negative view of the U.S. credit outlook, and said more work remains ahead for policymakers.

The last minute deal passed on Tuesday to avert potentially devastating tax hikes and spending cuts clarifies the medium-term deficit and debt trajectory of the federal government, Moody's said in a statement.

However, it does not provide a basis for meaningful improvement in the government's debt ratios over the medium-term, Moody's said.

Well, dear reader, they deserve a junk-rated status as they, just like every other sovereign nation on earth...as they will never, every repay their debts. And if they do, it will be in a currency that is worth pennies on the dollar compared to what the dollar is today.

This is the third story in a row from the moneynews.com Internet site...and the third and final offering of the day from Elliot Simon. The link is here.

It was a stereotypically "risk-on" day (stocks up, dollar down, etc.) until the Fed minutes came out.

The minutes revealed (apparently to the market's surprise) that several members of the FOMC were reluctant to keep Quantitative Easing far beyond the middle of the year.

So the risk-on-move reversed itself and became a very un-QE day. Stocks fell. The dollar shot up. Gold fell. Yields at the long end of the curve started to rise.

In light of this move, Citi's Steven Englander warns of a '1994'-like scenario.

This Joe Weisenthal commentary was posted on Bloomberg late yesterday evening...and is definitely worth reading. It's courtesy of Roy Stephens...and the link is here.

San Bernardino, California, has gone from being the birthplace of McDonald's, one of the world's most successful companies, to a mound of unpaid debts. It's a sad example of what a lack of infrastructure investment and an almost religious aversion to higher taxes have done to cities across the United States.

On August 1, 2012, San Bernardino filed for bankruptcy. Today this city, located an hour's drive east of Los Angeles, is one of the poorest, most violent cities in the United States. Once the setting for one of America's greatest success stories, the city can no longer even afford to pay its police officers and is rotting in its own waste.

The situation is a catastrophe for everyone who hasn't packed up and moved away. It is also representative of the bankruptcy of a country that failed to use its prosperous decades to sustain a functioning government. Funds are short at all levels, from Washington to the states to the cities and towns. The US is no longer investing in its infrastructure, weakening the foundation that gives all Americans a chance to have a piece of the American Dream.

This short, but interesting essay, showed up on the German website spiegel.de yesterday...and it's courtesy of Roy Stephens as well. The link is here.

Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner finds himself in a familiar position: eager to resume life outside government and facing contentious negotiations with Congress over raising the federal debt ceiling.

The last time he was in this predicament, in June 2011, President Barack Obama persuaded him to stay. This time, Geithner has indicated to White House officials he wants to carry through with his plan to leave the administration by the end of this month, even if a deal on the debt limit isn’t in place, according to two people familiar with the matter

Geithner’s departure would increase pressure on the president to name his successor at Treasury. White House Chief of Staff Jack Lew remains the leading contender for the Treasury job, according to the people, who requested anonymity to discuss the private talks.

This Bloomberg story appeared on their website very early yesterday evening Mountain Time...and it's courtesy of Marshall Angeles. The link is here.

The Treasury Department’s inspector general has threatened to punish JPMorgan Chase & Co. for failing to turn over documents to regulators investigating the bank’s ties to Bernard Madoff’s Ponzi scheme.

Inspector General Eric Thorson gave the largest U.S. bank a Jan. 11 deadline to cooperate with the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency probe or risk sanctions for impeding the agency’s oversight. JPMorgan, according to the Dec. 21 letter, contends the information is protected by attorney-client privilege.

The previously undisclosed OCC probe adds to the lender’s troubles in Washington, where several agencies and lawmakers are investigating the bank’s loss of at least $6.2 billion on botched derivatives trades. The losses have prompted regulators including the Federal Reserve to consider tightening proposed restrictions on proprietary trading.

This Bloomberg story was posted on their Internet site late last night Mountain Time...and it's the first story of the day from Ulrike Marx. The link is here.

International Monetary Fund data show that emerging nations have cut the weighting of EMU bonds in their reserves to 24.7pc from a peak of 30pc at the onset of Europe’s crisis three years ago, with a record drop in the third quarter of 2012.

“They have lost their appetite for peripheral EMU bonds, and some have simply cut Italy and other countries from their benchmarks,” said Jens Nordvik, currency chief at Nomura.

The IMF data also show a record $19bn (£12bn) surge in holdings of sterling by advanced central banks to $98bn, the biggest three-month jump ever recorded. Analysts say this is almost certainly caused by the Swiss National Bank as it takes extreme measures to hold down the franc. The SNB has already bought an estimated $80bn-worth of euro bonds and is increasingly switching to other assets.

“There aren’t many places to go in this 'ugly contest’ if you don’t like the euro, dollar or yen,” said HSBC’s David Bloom.

Well, how about gold and silver? It wouldn't take many billions to bury JPMorgan et al where their bodies would never be found. This Ambrose Evans-Pritchard offering was posted on the telegraph.co.uk Internet site yesterday evening GMT...and I thank Ulrike Marx for her second offering of the day...and it's definitely worth reading. The link is here.

It seems you can’t debase your coinage these days even if you try.

The Bank of England is straining every sinew to drive down sterling with quantitative easing, and what happens?

The Swiss National Bank trumps Threadneedle Street with an outright blitz of Gilt purchases. They just print it, and buy.

The Swiss and UK central banks are effectively fighting a "low intensity" currency war against each other. It has come to this.

It's a race to the bottom that nobody wins...and only the precious metals will remain standing. This AE-S blog from The Telegraph yesterday, is a parallel story to the one just above it and, it too, is worth reading. It's also courtesy of Ulrike Marx...and the link is here.

President Vladimir Putin has signed a decree granting Russian citizenship to French film star and tax exile Gerard Depardieu, who is renouncing his French citizenship to search for an easier tax climate outside of his native country.

­The Academy Award-nominated Depardieu is a regular in Moscow. The actor made headlines across the world when he announced in late December that “Putin has already sent me a passport!” The statement was a joke, but it soon became reality.

The day after the announcement, Putin told a press conference that the French bon vivant was a welcome guest in Russia: “If Gerard Depardieu really wants to have Russian residence permit or a Russian passport, we can consider the issue resolved positively."

Putin also said that he has long had “kind, friendly, personal relations” with the leading light of French cinema.

On the morning of January 3, the Kremlin released a statement announcing that "Vladimir Putin has signed a decree granting Russian citizenship to France's Gerard Depardieu."

This article showed up on the Russia Today website yesterday afternoon Moscow time...and I thank Roy Stephens for sending it. The link is here.

The eyes of the financial world are on Greece and other heavily indebted euro-zone countries. But Japan is in even worse shape. The country's debt load is immense and growing, to the point that a quarter of its budget goes to servicing it. The government in Tokyo has done little to change things.

For years, the world's third-largest economy has been unapologetically living on borrowed cash, more so than any other country in the world. In recent decades, Japanese governments have piled up debts worth some €11 trillion ($14.6 trillion). This corresponds to 230 percent of annual gross domestic product, a debt level that is far higher than Greece's 165 percent.

Such profligate spending has turned Japan into a ticking time bomb -- and an example that Europe can learn from as it seeks to tackle its own sovereign debt crisis. Japan, the postwar economic miracle, has never managed to recover from the stock market crash and real estate crisis that convulsed the country in the 1990s. The government had to bail out banks; insurance companies went bust. Since then, annual growth rates have often been paltry and tax revenues don't even cover half of government expenditures. Indeed, the country has gotten trapped in an inescapable spiral of deficit spending.

This essay appeared on the spiegel.de Internet site yesterday...and is definitely worth the read. It, too, is courtesy of Roy Stephens...and the link is here.

It's no secret that Europe's automobile industry isn't exactly booming. Several carmakers on the Continent are struggling as demand has fallen off during the euro crisis, particularly in southern European countries, where austerity programs have taken a bite out of prosperity.

In China, however, more and more cars are flying off the lots. And in 2012, for the first time ever, Chinese consumers purchased more automobiles than did buyers in Europe, according to the daily Süddeutsche Zeitung, citing an unpublished report by Germany's VDA automobile industry association. The report indicates that whereas 13.2 million cars were registered in China in 2012, in Europe, the total fell from the previous year's 13.6 million to just 12.5 million.

The reasons, of course, are many. On the one hand, China's middle class continues to swell rapidly, even as the economy there grew more slowly last year than it had in previous years. For the increasing number of those who can afford them, cars offer both greater mobility and an important status symbol.

Here's another story from Roy that posted on the spiegel.de Internet site yesterday...and the link is here.

The first is with Egon von Greyerz...and it's headlined "Gold to See 186% Gain as System Collapses & Silver Hits $150". The second blog is with Louise Yamada...and it's entitled "Incredibly Important Chart & Commentary on Gold".

Annual sales of American Eagle silver bullion coins totaled 33,742,500 ounces in 2012, down substantially from the sales of 39,868,500 ounces in silver bullion coins reported by the Mint in 2011. Nevertheless, December 2012 American Eagle silver bullion sales were the third highest in the Silver Eagle’s history.

December 2012 American Eagle silver bullion coin sales totaled 1,635,000 ounces, down 18.6% from the 2,009,000 ounces sold in December 2011.

Of course the reason that silver eagle sales weren't higher in December, is because the mint didn't have any to sell...not because the sales weren't there...a fact that wasn't pointed out in this article posted over at the mineweb.com Internet site yesterday. The link is here.

Mineweb readers were more than a little fixated on silver in 2012 and, well they might be. After spending much of 2011 above $40 an ounce silver dropped below $30 in December of that year and started 2012 at $27.82.

There was much expected from the metal during the year but, other than a high of $36.96 on February 29, the metal was content to vacillate between the mid $20 and mid $30 level for much of the year.

But, as is evident from the year's best, third-best and eighth best-read stories: "Silver's outperformance over gold to be staggering long term - Butler", " Silver gives you more - at least potentially" and "New innovations boost silver demand, but could price be taken down again?", Mineweb readers remained hopeful that, longer term, the poor man's gold will outperform.

It should come as no surprise to you, dear reader, that two of silver analyst Ted Butler's commentaries made the top 10...#1 and #3. If you missed them, or any other of the eight commentaries on the list, you can make up for it now. The link is here.

Manappuram Finance Ltd. surged the most in more than two years and Muthoot Finance Ltd. rallied to a record after a central bank report eased uncertainty about Indian gold-loan companies’ business.

Asset quality, bad loans, capital adequacy and borrowing sources of these companies aren’t a cause for concern, a panel set up by the Reserve Bank of India said in a report released after markets closed yesterday. Manappuram soared by the 20 percent limit, the steepest climb since August 2010, to 40.60 rupees at 12:14 p.m. in Mumbai. Muthoot jumped 16 percent to a record 242.15 rupees.

“The report provides legal status to the gold loan business,” Espirito Santo analysts Santosh Singh and Nidhesh Jain wrote in a report today. The panel report “removes the regulator uncertainty and overhang.” The analysts maintained their Nov. 26 recommendation to buy Manappuram shares with a target of 45 rupees. Muthoot isn’t tracked by the brokerage.

Assets at non-bank lenders such as Manappuram and Muthoot have increased 20 percent annually for the past five years to $670 billion, according to a November report by the Basel, Switzerland-based Financial Stability Board. That makes India the world’s fastest-growing market after Indonesia for lending outside the banking system, according to the report. It also poses risks for a country where 65 percent of the population and 92 percent of small businesses don’t have access to banks, World Bank and government data show.

This story showed up on the Bloomberg website minutes before midnight on Wednesday Mountain Time...and I thank Ulrike Marx for her final offering in today's column. The link is here.