Here’s where things stood as of last night as Greek officials deliberated:

Understandably, Reuters appears to be confused by what’s going on in this very fluid situation. Between the time that this URL was copied for the links post a few minutes ago until the time it was posted, the title changed from “Greece heads to Brussels empty-handed” to “Greek political leaders agree on bailout reforms: sources”, however, they were careful not to use the word “imminent” in the updated story.

At issue is the Fed’s continuing policy of bond-buying. While the central bank has stopped expanding its balance sheet with new asset purchases, it is engaged in a plan to sell short-dated Treasury bonds and replace them with a like amount of long-dated government debt. The result? Ten-year Treasury borrowing rates are around historic lows, and with them, mortgage rates.

For Bernanke, this is by design, not accident. He told Toomey a significant aim of the Fed is to gobble up enough risk-free Treasury debt so that investors are forced into riskier investments that will in principle generate better levels of growth.

“We don’t want to go too far,” Bernanke told the committee. He said the Fed was “very attentive” to signs that its stimulus was in the process of generating imbalances, and added the central bank had “greatly expanded” its surveillance of financial markets, in a bid not too be caught off guard.
…
“The effects of Fed policy, independent of all the other factors, on Treasury rates [are] modest,” Bernanke said. The bigger problem is investor confidence in future government borrowing. “Rates will rise eventually, and if investors were to lose confidence in U.S. federal fiscal policy, there is nothing the Fed can do to stop those rates from rising”.

If memory serves, it was Ken Rogoff (of This Time is Different fame) who observed that, throughout history, there is virtually no warning for when the bond market turns on a nation’s sovereign debt (so much for the Fed’s “attentiveness”) and, when combined with Bernanke’s warning above that there’s little they’ll be able to do under those circumstances, this sets the stage for one monster U.S. sovereign credit crisis somewhere down the road.

An agreement has been “imminent” for two weeks now on what are believed to be “very large haircuts” on Greek debt  that seem to get bigger with each day that goes by without a deal in what, so far, appears to be a very successful “Blazing Saddles” style of negotiating.

Note that you’ll have to read fast because you can’t slow this down, despite the appearance of those little buttons in the lower right. If you’d like to view these at your own pace, just scroll to the bottom of this Economist story about Greece and the euro.

Of course, Japan is the unquestioned leader in government debt – about double that of second place Italy – but, flipping through the tabs of this interactive graphic reveals that, overall, the U.K. is the worst of the lot … it’s a good thing they can print their own money.

If not for the swath of S&P credit downgrades in recent days, there would probably be even more sore arms in Europe from everyone patting each other on the back, that is, after a $500+ billion program of back-door money printing seems to have produced the desired effects on the red and yellow lines above.

This related item at lewrockwell.com indicates some of the nation’s brightest business minds aren’t that confused about Paul, CNN’s Erin Burnett recently noting an “astounding number of top business leaders were OK with the idea of a Ron Paul presidency”. Pimco’s Bill Gross was the only name mentioned, though, I’d love to hear who the others are.

Perhaps today, gold is acting more like a hedge against debt than inflation…

Nick’s presentation “Why Rising Debt Will Lead to $10,000 Gold” can be viewed at YouTube here and is available for download here.

This story at Spiegel Online has all the particulars about the video that has gone a bit viral, also known as “The 90th Rescue Summit” or “Euros for No One”.

In an opinion piece for the Financial Times, Greenspan argued that the political landscape in the United States was more divided than ever, resulting in political paralysis as the Tea Party’s influence had created “an effective veto of new legislation before the current heavily Republican House of Representatives”.

The failure last year of the Super Committee — a congressional committee tasked with finding spending cuts to reduce the United States’ ballooning budget deficit — to reach a deal underscores this shift in U.S. politics, Greenspan said.

“A political tsunami has emerged out of our past in the form of the Tea Party, with its ethos reminiscent of rugged individualism and self-reliance,” Greenspan wrote.

The Tea Party “has so altered the distribution of votes within Republican Party’s House caucus that the party’s center has moved closer to the Tea Party,” he added.

And with an ideological battle raging over the future of the welfare state, “Congress, having enacted increases in entitlements without visible means of funding them, is on the brink of stalemate,” Greenspan wrote.

The only viable long-term solution appears to be “a shift in federal entitlements programs to defined contribution status” — programs that require employees to make a set contribution to their pensions, Greenspan said.

Defined contribution retirement programs have worked so well for the rest of America (that is, until stocks stopped rising a decade ago), it’s only fitting recipients of government benefits have the pleasure of fretting over their future too.

By the way, I’ll try to get in as much Greenspan related material as possible over the next month or so since a new combined blog/investment website will be launching sometime in February sans the TMTGM moniker. (Yes, it’s time…)