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Revolution in Iran appears to be a matter of time, U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta predicted on Tuesday, saying the Iranian reform movement was learning from revolts in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Syria. Panetta, a former CIA director who took over the Pentagon's top job in July, was asked on the Charlie Rose television show whether the Arab Spring might spread to non-Arab Iran. Panetta responded: "Absolutely."

In our research at House Mountain, we focus on several macro themes, one being accessibility to cheap and reliable energy. It's no secret that increasing GDP and access to cheap energy go hand-in-hand. Energy storage is going to become more and more important and this is where the VRB can play a significant role. I wouldn't call VRBs an emerging technology because they were actually developed in the late 1980s, so the idea of using vanadium to store electricity has been around for a number of years. VRBs just haven't been in mass, widespread use. Growing economies in countries like China and India and even in continents like South America are becoming accustomed to an increase in the quality of life. In my opinion, to maintain and increase that quality of life, you need access to energy-cheap and reliable energy. The electricity grid has been described as the only supply chain without storage capacity. VRBs can address this.

Last Friday, Amazon took on the U.S. Post Office and opened a real world locker box service as a delivery portal for the stuff people buy on Amazon.com. The lockers, which come in several sizes, are located on a wall in a 7-11 convenience store in Seattle surrounding an ATM-like device that allows a customer to key in a PIN and pick up their Amazon package.

The additional cables, published a few days ago by Wikileaks and located by GATA's Irish friend R.M., disclose that China thinks that the United States is trying to prevent China's foreign exchange surplus from being converted into gold because the U.S. and its European allies plan a return to a gold standard that will favor them because they hold most of the world's gold reserves. China itself has acknowledged that it is rapidly building its own gold reserves to facilitate international use of its currency, the renminbi.

The Swiss take action to cap the franc: 1. Helped strengthen the Cando. 2. After a short period it will fail. 3. Safe haven is being offered to all at a discount to all. 4. Markets rule, not central banks, in a Western world monetary meltdown.

As of Monday, which may have been a holiday in the US but was anything but in floundering Europe, the ECB held a whopping €166.8 billion in its deposit facility. This is an increase of €15 billion over Friday, and is the highest since August 2010. What this means, simply said, is that European banks are so terrified of holdings cash with each other or frankly in any market conduit not explicitly backstopped by the ECB (we will spare you the LIBOR chart, suffice it to say that 3M USD Libor increased again, this time from 0.333% to 0.336% as perfectly non-shadow interbank funding is becoming rares than hen's teeth).

Finance officials in Europe are beginning to suggest that the roads to economic recovery includes an even stronger central power in the Europe.

one explanation that is consistent with recent price history is that the pricing of gasoline isn't based on WTI, but rather on Brent crude. Typically, the price difference between WTI oil and Brent oil is small, but the latest year it has increased to more than 30%. If this is the explanation then one should really question why WTI is the price that financial web sites focus on, since it seems that Brent is more important.

Colombia may auction rights to tap its coal and gold deposits after attracting investors such as billionaire Eike Batista to develop the nation's oil industry. The South American nation is seeking to spur exploration and production and also boost copper, platinum and coltan reserves to raise government income, Mines and Energy Minister Carlos Rodado said in an interview in the city of Medellin.

Facebook's 750 million users will soon be able to listen to music through the site - sharing songs in the same way that users currently share videos, television programmes, Hollywood films and news links. It's a move that could put Facebook in direct competition with Apple's iTunes service - and looks certain to cement the site's position ahead of Google as the UK's most popular web destination.

Zynga, the social games maker may delay its plans for an initial public offering until November because of poor market conditions, the New York Post newspaper reported late on Sunday.

Without citing sources, the paper said officials from the European Central Bank and European Commission are considering offering central guarantees over certain types of debt issued by banks. The paper goes onto say that the move comes after a number of European banks where shut out of international money markets.

The flow of investors' money into emerging market fixed income continues unabated, with figures showing a net inflow into EM local currency funds for the 22nd week in succession.

Friday said it may shortly begin to levy a temporary charge on Swiss franc deposits as a way of encouraging its bank customers to keep their cash in the surging Swiss currency as low as possible.

U.S. Vice President Joe Biden said on Friday the U.S. economy needed more stimulus to get it moving, putting in a plug for government measures shortly before the White House unveils new proposals to boost job growth.

The swap to shave 37 billion euros off its existing debt is now conditional on 90 percent of private sector investors agreeing to the deal, the country said in its formal letter of inquiry to other governments.

About 80% of the SMEs in Zhejiang province are using underground banking loans to fund their businesses, even though the black market interest rates in the province have surged as high as 10% monthly, Cai Hua, a spokesman of the Zheshang Research Association, which represents entrepreneurs in the province, said. Zhejiang and other eastern provinces accounted for 53% of the country's GDP last year, according to the National Bureau of Statistics. More than 7,300 companies in Zhejiang were forced to close from January to April this year due to Beijing's monetary tightening measures, according to People's Daily newspaper.

Bottom line: nothing now, QE3 now expected to be delivered Sept. 20? or not... BERNANKE SAYS FED HAS LIMITED ABILITY TO ENSURE LONG-RUN GROWTH BERNANKE DOESN'T SIGNAL NEW STEPS FOR PROMOTING U.S. GROWTH BERNANKE SAYS EXTRA DAY TO ALLOW `FULLER DISCUSSION' OF TOOLS BERNANKE SAYS FED TO EXTEND SEPT. FOMC MEETING TO TWO DAYS BERNANKE SAYS FED HAS `RANGE OF TOOLS' FOR STIMULATING GROWTH BERNANKE SAYS `FINANCIAL STRESS' WILL BE A `DRAG' ON RECOVERY

now the predominant opinion is "don't get your hopes up."

Astronomers have spotted an exotic planet that seems to be made of diamond racing around a tiny star in our galactic backyard. The new planet is far denser than any other known so far and consists largely of carbon. Because it is so dense, scientists calculate the carbon must be crystalline, so a large part of this strange world will effectively be diamond.