UK - Britain's chances of exiting the EU are ‘just under 50 per cent’ and will increase unless other member states agree to qualify the right to free movement for migrants, Sir John Major warned last night. The former Conservative prime minister – the last to win a Commons majority – used a speech in Germany to say the UK welcomed hardworking incomers but the ‘sheer scale of the influx’ had put ‘strains on our health, welfare, housing and education services’.

UK - Dozens of traders face prosecution after five banks were fined £2.6 billion yesterday for fixing currency markets. Damning transcripts of City workers bragging about making ‘free money’ and laughing at ‘numpties’ not in on their scam were published by regulators. Calling themselves ‘players’, ‘musketeers’ or members of the ‘A-Team’, the traders congratulate each other on ‘killing it’ with rigged deals.

USA - It is only a matter of time before the stock market plunges by 50% or more, according to several reputable experts. “We have no right to be surprised by a severe and imminent stock market crash,” explains Mark Spitznagel, a hedge fund manager who is notorious for his hugely profitable billion-dollar bet on the 2008 crisis. “In fact, we must absolutely expect it."

JORDAN - Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas is to meet Washington's top diplomat to discuss the upsurge in violence in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria, his spokesman told AFP on Wednesday. The meeting with US Secretary of State John Kerry will take place in the Jordanian capital at 1:00 pm (1100 GMT) on Thursday, Nabil Abu Rudeina said.

SAUDI ARABIA - Saudi Arabia's oil minister Ali Naimi has finally broken his silence on falling oil prices declaring it’s "purely business" and that recent declines are not a scheme engineered by the kingdom to either bankrupt Russia, or shut down the US shale industry.

USA - So now we know: Europe’s leaders did indeed attempt to smash Greece back into the Stone Age out of vindictive rage; conspired to withhold debt support for Italy unless the elected leader was forced out; and mismanaged the EMU crisis for three years with a level of stupidity that makes you want to weep. Timothy Geithner has revealed the details, unpleasant and alarming in equal measure. The former US Treasury Secretary hinted at some of these “short-comings” in his memoir, Stress Test: Reflections on Financial Crises. Peter Spiegel, from the Financial Times, has now obtained the raw transcripts, laced with expletives. The verdict is brutal. “I completely underweighted the possibility they would flail around for three years. I thought it was just inconceivable to me they would let it get as bad as they ultimately did,” Mr Geithner said.

RUSSIA - Russia has taken advantage of lower gold prices to pack the vaults of its central bank with bullion as it prepares for the possibility of a long, drawn-out economic war with the West. The latest research from the World Gold Council reveals that the Kremlin snapped up 55 tonnes of the precious metal - far more than any other nation - in the three months to the end of September as prices began to weaken. Vladimir Putin's government is understood to be hoarding vast quantities of gold, having tripled stocks to around 1,150 tonnes in the last decade. These reserves could provide the Kremlin with vital firepower to try and offset the sharp declines in the rouble.

VATICAN - Gay civil unions and same-sex marriages are a “Trojan horse” that fundamentally weakens the institution of the family, a senior Catholic cardinal has warned, a month after the issue was raised by Pope Francis at a ground-breaking summit in the Vatican. Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco, the head of the Italian Bishops Conference, said that civil unions between gay men and women only serve to “confuse people” and undermine traditional family life, especially if the couples go on to have children, either through adoption or through donor methods. “It is irresponsible to weaken the family by creating new forms”, the cardinal told a meeting of Italian bishops in the town of Assisi in Umbria on Monday. “It only confuses people and has the effect of being a sort of Trojan horse, undermining culturally and socially the core of humanity.” Children “have a right to a mother and a father”, Cardinal Bagnasco told the bishops.

USA - Pew released a report today detailing the extensive privacy concerns of Americans. The report, which surveyed a nationally representative sample, highlighted their skepticism towards both corporate and government data collection, Americans' enthusiasm for privacy, and Americans' need for more privacy protective tools. The study follows from previous polls showing the majority of Americans are deeply concerned about their online privacy and specifically concerned about the NSA's activities. In the newly released polls, Pew shows that close to eight in ten American adults are concerned about the government’s monitoring of phone calls and Internet communications. Fully 91% of adults 'agree' or 'strongly agree' that consumers have lost control over how personal information is collected and used by companies.

CHINA - The march of global de-dollarization continues. In the last few days, China has signed direct currency agreements with Canada becoming North America's first offshore RMB hub, which CBC reports analysts suggest "could double maybe even triple the level of Canadian trade between Canada and China," impacting the need for Dollars. But that is not the week's biggest Petrodollar precariousness news, as The Examiner reports, a new chink in the petrodollar system was forged as China signed an agreement with Qatar to begin direct currency swaps between the two nations using the Yuan, and establishing the foundation for new direct trade with the OPEC nation in the very heart of the petrodollar system. As Simon Black warns, "It’s happening... with increasing speed and frequency."

USA - It’s no coincidence that during the same week in which the US Supreme Court heard arguments in Yates vs United States, a case in which a Florida fisherman is being threatened with 20 years’ jail time for throwing fish that were too small back into the water, Florida police arrested a 90-year-old man twice for violating an ordinance that prohibits feeding the homeless in public. Both cases fall under the umbrella of overcriminalization, that phenomenon in which everything is rendered illegal and everyone becomes a lawbreaker. As I make clear in my book A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, this is what happens when bureaucrats run the show, and the rule of law becomes little more than a cattle prod for forcing the citizenry to march in lockstep with the government.

USA - A new study from Princeton spells bad news for American democracy — namely, that it no longer exists. Asking “who really rules?” researchers Martin Gilens and Benjamin I Page argue that over the past few decades America’s political system has slowly transformed from a democracy into an oligarchy, where wealthy elites wield most power. Using data drawn from over 1,800 different policy initiatives from 1981 to 2002, the two conclude that rich, well-connected individuals on the political scene now steer the direction of the country, regardless of or even against the will of the majority of voters. “The central point that emerges from our research is that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on US government policy,” they write, “while mass-based interest groups and average citizens have little or no independent influence.”

UK - HSBC, Royal Bank of Scotland, Swiss bank UBS and US banks JP Morgan Chase and Citibank have all been fined. A separate probe into Barclays is continuing. The UK's Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and the US regulator, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) issued the fines. Separately, the Swiss regulator, FINMA, has penalised UBS 134 million Swiss francs. Barclays, which had been expected to announce a similar deal to the other banks, said it would not be settling at this time. The massive market, in which $5.3 trillion worth of currencies are traded daily, dwarfs the stock and bond markets. About 40% of the world's dealing is estimated to go through trading rooms in London.

UK - The foreign exchange market is not easy to manipulate. But it is still possible for traders to change the value of a currency in order to make a profit. As it is a 24-hour market, it is not easy to see how much the market is worth on a given day. Institutions find it useful to take a snapshot of how much is being bought and sold. This happens every day in the 30 seconds before and after 16:00 in London and the result is known as the 4pm fix, or just the fix.

ISRAEL - The American-born rabbi and Temple Mount activist who was shot by an Arab jihadist on October 29 continues to recover in a Jerusalem hospital, but his supporters are accusing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of failing to support the rabbi’s cause. The rabbi has advocated for Jewish prayer rights on the Temple Mount, considered Judaism’s most holy place, for more than 20 years as chairman of the Temple Mount Heritage Foundation. WND reported on November 2 that 14 other Temple Mount activists besides Glick were the targets of threats by radical Muslims posted on the Internet. They posted a graphic showing the pictures of 15 activists, with a caption in Hebrew that reads: “We, the Muslims, will not allow anyone to touch Al Aqsa. Your actions are liable to drag the entire region into war. The Al Aqsa mosque is for Muslims only, and we will not allow you to control it.”