Germany tentatively has a government after months of negotiation between Angela Merkel's coalition which fell short of a majority, and a team from the Social Democrats, SPD, which played up the fact that it is the only possible partner for the Christian Dems and their Bavarian allies. The Greens said 'nein' and the ex-Communists are not 'salonfaehig' (socially acceptable.)

Playing a strong hand, the SPD now will get its members to vote on the program it hammered out with Merkel's reps. It includes lots of socialism. There will be a national minimum wage, something Germany has never had, which will hurt those who are not worth paying it, mostly in East Germany. There will be rent controls (German cities do not have coops or condominiums but merely rental apartments), which will discourage new housing construction. Pensions will be raised. Infrastructure spending will increase. Germany will not take on more Euro debt from its southern neighbors.

The Euroland markets are in an optimistic mood today on the deal. By and large the German 'grand coalition' platform includes no tax increases despite a euros 20 bn spending spree. With one exception.

The exception is a nasty bombshell for us. The vexed Tobin tax on financial transactions is back, forced into the platform by the SPD. This tax has to be extra-territorial, or else all trading in German stocks, bonds, currencies, derivatives, investment assets, and financial instruments will move out of the country imposing it. The idea of a punitive fee on trading to finance bank bailouts has been kicking around the Euro-zone for 3 years, vigorously opposed by US and British market players like depositary banks, brokerages, and even some Euroland issuing companies.

The proposed tax applies if any of the participants in a financial instrument trade come from the taxing country: the company whose stocks or bonds are traded, the seller, the buyer, or the intermediary bank or broker. The originator of the financial transaction tax, France, has now backed off on the advise of its Finance Ministry. The European Union has accepted that a broadly applicable FTT will hurt markets and may be illegal.

Germans, apart from not owning apartments, also do not own shares or bonds like other rich populations. So there the FTT is alive and dangerous. It is on the platform SPD party members will vote upon to accept joining Angela Merkel in governing the country. There are 474,000 of them who will be polled by mailed ballot by Dec. 14.

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It is a legitimate operation, with The World Gold Council among the shareholders in the company which has $2 bn in custody for its 48,000 customers. The World Gold Council (a promoter of investing in gold owned by the mining industry) is also a shareholder and promoter of SPDR Gold Shares ETF, GLD.

People agonize about whether to buy GLD or the Sprott Physical Gold Trust, PHYS. Both have higher fees than BullionVault which benefits from cheap insurance.

The London twice-daily gold fixing (which sets the benchmark price for the yellow metal) is now under scrutiny from the UK Financial Conduct Authority. The suspicion is that the fixing is fixed. The rate is gathered via telephone to 5 banks, one of which we own shares in. While they are being polled on the phone for up to one hour each time, the banks also are trading gold, which clearly involves a conflict of interest.

The probe follows revelations of banking shenanigans in fixing the London Interbank Offer Rate (LIBOR) and other interest rates, and in figuring out major foreign exchange cross-rates.

More for paid subscribers follows from around the world before I go over to gobble up the gobbler. News from Israel, Scotland, Belgium, Denmark, Britain, Canada, and South Africa, plus a few other places where Thanksgiving doesn't count.

*From the Naspers conference call yesterday, its internet commerce officer Basil Sgourdos confided that the South Africa media firm is developing its business to consumer marketing business by improving fulfillment and delivery in European, Indian, and Middle Eastern markets. In addition to its internet sales, NPSNY is becoming a marketing intermediary like Amazon. Naspers already offers price comparison tech and now it will be opening to third-party sellers of stuff. Unlike information, the margins for marketing and logistics are low but the businesses are likely to grow fast.

I expect that Naspers will also offer help selling in China, Russia, and Brazil as this new business line grows.

*Johnson & Johnson got US FDA approval of its new drug application for Olysio against hepatitis C. The drug combines Medivir AB's protease inhibitor which JNJ acquired from GlaxoSmithKline with a drug it developed in house and treats genotype 1 hep C without interferon. It has been approved in Japan and is under review in Europe. MDVRF of Denmark retains rights to the drug for the Nordic countries.

*Galapagos NV and GSK plan a phase II trial of a GLPYY-developed drug, now GSK2586184, against ulcerative colitis, following earlier trials against psoriasis and lupus. It is a JAK1 (Janus Kinase) inhibitor of inflammation developed by Galapagos which is due to get euros 34 mn up front plus milestones for turning over the drug. The colitis tests will run to Nov. next year to try to conquer the most widespread inflammatory bowel disease. GSK is British; GLPYY is not Ecuadorian but Belgian.

*Just in time for St. Andrew's Day (Nov. 30), Royal Bank of Scotland is under criminal investigation for allegedly forcing small UK businesses which borrowed from RBS into bankruptcy to take over their assets on the cheap. RBS did this during the global financial crisis after it was 82% taken over by the UK government. We own the preferred shares not the common but the Serious Fraud Office probe will probably hurt us too. We have lightened up on RBS and Nat West prefs just to spread our risk and take some profits. We should have done more.

*It is Bank of Nova Scotia which is one of the targets of the British investigation of the London gold fixing. The process of polling banks goes back to 1919 when the telephone was high tech. BNS.

*The Histadrut, the powerful Israel union group, has declared a labor dispute over the plans at Israel Chemicals to fire 130 workers at its Dead Sea plants producing magnesium, bromine, and potash.

Our recommendation for ISCHF, having been tipped yesterday by Dick Davis Dividend Digest, was then featured on the home page of www.moneyshow.com today. You can also go directly to http://www.moneyshow.com/investing/article/29/Global-33189/Israel-Chemical:-A-Metziah/ [1] (Metziah is Hebrew for bargain.) Thanks to editors Chloe Lutz Jensen and Steven Halpern for helping me sell more subscriptions. Steve says he didn't copy Chloe. It is just that "we both know how to spot a really noteworthy feature." What lured them in is the decision by Israel Chemicals to list on the NYSE next year.

*Another Israeli firm threatened with strikes is Teva. TEVA got FDA orphan drug exclusivity for injected Treanda for treating indolent B-cell non-Hodgkin lymphoma which has progressed during or within a half year of treatment with rituximab.

Its chairman of the board its involved with a merger of Biozone Pharma into Cocrystal in which Teva has invested alongside other companies Dr. Philip Frost has interests in. Ironically enough, Dr. Frost, having engineered the firing of Teva CEO Dr. Jeremy Levin, said in his statement on the new deal that he likes "to encourage management". That is something like pleading for a lower sentence as an orphan after killing your parents. Dr Frost invested in Cocrystal with his Opko Pharma as well.