bank

In one of the day's more puzzling developments, the Mexican peso tumbled on news that the head of the Mexican central bank, Augusten Carstens, who several years ago competed against Christine Lagarde for the top IMF post, announced he would unexpectedly stand down from his post next July. The term of the 58-year-old Carstens, who headed the central bank since 2010, was due to conclude at the end of 2021, which makes today's announcement particularly surprising.

Having claimed the job of CEO John Stumpf, the Wells Fargo cross-selling fiasco continues to reverberate within the org chart of the scandal-ridden bank. Reuters reports that James Strother, the general counsel of Wells Fargo, who had originally planned to retire at year-end, will be forced to stay on indefinitely in the position to deal with fallout from the bank's sales scandal, according to a bank spokesman.

We previously detailed the looming reality crisis facing Mario Draghi over his actions (or inactions) about potentially devastating losses at Italy's largest bank, and now we have another update as more questions are being asked.

Via GolemXIV,

So could it really be that after years of stonewalling, Draghi, the ECB and the cabal of central bankers and regulators, are finally being dragged blinking in to the light?

In these volatile times, gold is more important than ever. Bonner & Partners' Bill Bonner explains in this two-part series (Part 1 here), the importance of 'real money' and why you need it now...

Why You Will Need Gold

What troubles my sleep is what is not in the textbooks.

Submitted by Jayant Bandari via Acting-Man.com,

When Money Dies

In part-I of the dispatch we talked about what happened during the first two days after Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi banned Rs 500 and Rs 1000 banknotes, comprising of 88% of the monetary value of cash in circulation. In part-II, we talked about the scenes, chaos, desperation, and massive loss of productive capacity that this ban had led to over the next few days.