In the gold-is-manipulated script, governments and their bullion bank proxies push the price to levels where they know hedge funds and other traders have stop-loss orders, which kick in and send the price careening lower. Then the manipulators buy back their short positions, thus gaining a two-fer: fleecing the flock for a nice profit, and crushing the spirits of stackers and preppers and regular folks who value honest money.

Which brings us to the following article, published by a major bullion dealer:

Read More at 24hgold.com . By John Rubino.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has made Dwolla, a mobile payments company, stop making payments to Mt. Gox, the largest and best known Bitcoin exchange.

The Bitcoin is a digital currency that doesn’t involve a central authority or issuer. The currency surged higher last month before dropping back down.

The DHS and the U.S. District Court of Maryland have commandeered Mt. Gox’s Dwolla account, the payments company said, therefore, it can’t process any more payments for Mt. Gox.

Dwolla, a start-up based in Des Moines, Iowa, raised $16.5 million in funding two weeks ago.

“In light of the court order, procured by the Department of Homeland Security, Dwolla has ceased all account activities associated with for Mutum Sigillum [Mt. Gox],” Dwolla said, according to Softpedia.

Read More at moneynews.com . By Dan Weil.

Today a legend in the business told King World News there is a continued massive run on physical gold and silver as premiums in Shanghai have now soared to a stunning level (see below) for physical gold. Keith Barron, who consults with major companies around the world and is responsible for one of the largest gold discoveries in the last quarter century, also spoke about extraordinary situations unfolding at gold, silver, and art auctions in New York and Zurich, and what this means for investors. Below is what Barron had to say in this remarkable interview.

Barron: “I’m at an auction today in Zurich (Switzerland) of ancient Greek and Roman coins. The most expensive item so far has gone for 800,000 Swiss francs. The auction is shattering all of the previous records. I think this is very significant.

Also, today in New York Christie’s had a contemporary art auction and they sold $495 million of art. That’s the highest total in auction history. They established 16 new world auction records. Nine works sold for more than $10 million, and twenty-three for more than $5 million….

“This is very symptomatic of what’s going on. We see a lot of manipulation taking place in the gold and silver markets, but the big money is going for portable wealth, and they are doing that in the form of buying hard assets. They are getting it out of dollars and other paper currencies, and they are putting it into tangibles, especially portable wealth.

I’m not talking about real estate, although if you try to buy an apartment facing Central Park it will cost you a great deal of money, and the same thing is true if you want to buy a flat in Mayfair, in London. But what is happening is high end people are looking to protect their wealth.

Read More at KingWorldNews .

As millions of students and their parents are preparing for life after commencement, they’re also preparing to deal with massive student loans. Increasingly, people are concerned about the student debt situation brewing on college campuses. The present state of student debt is not a pretty picture.

According to a report published by the New York Federal Reserve Bank, college students are borrowing more than ever and debt delinquency is on the rise. Student debt almost tripled between 2004 and 2012 and is now just over $1 trillion. In fact, student debt is the only kind of household debt to rise during the Great Recession and is now second only to mortgage debt in magnitude. At the same time, for all age groups the share of borrowers who are more than 90 days delinquent on their student loan repayment has almost doubled.

Some, like Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, claim that student debt is not inflating a higher education bubble that will cause a financial crisis, because the vast majority of student loans are backed by the U.S. government. The taxpayers are on the hook and not the banks, so banks will not be in financial distress if students default.

Bernanke’s claim is revealing. It’s clear that he thinks that the financial system is the economy. It seems that if the financial system is afloat, everything is okay. Such reasoning ignores that what helps people achieve their ends is not money per se but the actual producer and consumer goods that are produced throughout the social economy.

Alas, investment made possible by subsidized loans of newly created money contributes to an unproductive use of resources. Thus the economic problem with government-guaranteed student loans. Consider:

Read More at OfficialWire . By Dr. Shawn Ritenour.

Tony Daltorio: Thanks to the hit gold prices took in mid-April, other precious metals also got caught in the downdraft – but some still look to be among the best investments of 2013.

Take platinum, for example.

It is currently trading at about $1,500 an ounce, well off its 52-week high of $1,734 an ounce. During the height of the selloff last month, it touched a low of $1,381 an ounce.

Investors sold it along with all other precious metals, even though the fundamentals for platinum may be better than ever.

While platinum’s long-term outlook is bright, a short-term price catalyst is about to take place, as early as this week.

Read More at ETF Daily News . By Tony Daltorio.

Today one of the wealthiest people in the financial world spoke with King World News about what he is telling the affluent investors and professionals they should be doing with their money at this time. Rick Rule, who is business partners with billionaire Eric Sprott and the CEO of Sprott USA, also tells KWN readers what he is doing with his own money at this time. Below is what he had to say in this fascinating interview.

Rule: “Investors have the choice right now between an asset which is nobody else’s liability, which is gold, and the anti-gold, which is the US 10-Year or 30-Year Treasury. I personally am going to gold with my own money. That’s what I am doing.

I obviously feel very different than the market….

“I’m reminded in times like these that Ben Graham famously said, ‘In the short-term the market is a voting machine. In the long-term it’s a weighing machine.’ I would suspect that many of your readers and listeners understand that statement because most of them feel the way I do about how other people vote.

Sentiment numbers are mob numbers. One of the things that I’ve tried to do in the course of my life is pay very good attention to what George Soros said, ‘You make real good money by finding a commonly held perception that’s wrong and betting against it.’

Read More at kingworldnews.com .

The economics world has been having a lot of fun with hedge fund managers.

After several such managers at a recent conference denounced the aggressive money-printing policies of Ben S. Bernanke, the Federal Reserve chairman, the economic blogosphere rose up to mock them.

Many hedge fund managers have been predicting that high inflation and fleeing creditors would send interest rates skyrocketing. Stanley Druckenmiller, Paul Singer, J. Kyle Bass and David Einhorn — all big names in the investing world — have warned against the supposedly runaway central banker. Mr. Druckenmiller said that Mr. Bernanke was “running the most inappropriate monetary policy in history.”

And they have been wrong. Those silly hedge fund managers. They don’t understand macroeconomics! As Paul Krugman (and many others) have explained, the lack of demand explains why there isn’t any inflation and why interest rates haven’t risen despite all the money-printing.

Economists and bloggers have been competing to figure out why these supposedly smart guys are so confused. In an astute post, a Berkeley economist, Brad DeLong, explained his theory: hedge fund managers thought they could muscle the Fed into caving on its big trade, much like they got JPMorgan Chase to cave on the “London Whale” trades. But they fought the Fed, and the Fed won.

Read More at The New York Times . By Jesse Eisenger, ProPublica.

Whoa! Investors are acting as if it were 2007 all over again.

USA Today has the story:

Emboldened by soaring stock prices and record-low borrowing costs, stock investors are taking out loans against their portfolios at the fastest pace since before the Great Recession hit.

So-called margin debt hit $379.5 billion in March, the highest level since July 2007 when such debt hit an all-time record of $381.4 billion, according to the most recent data available compiled by the New York Stock Exchange.

The trend signals that investors are more comfortable with stocks and are more willing to use borrowed money to buy more securities in hopes of garnering fatter returns in a hot market that has pushed the Dow Jones industrials up more than 15% in 2013.

Read More at Lew Rockwell . By Bill Bonner.

Kaye: “This is not a good setup. This is a setup in which gold has been suppressed, and paper instruments that people own have been artificially inflated. So when the system collapses on itself, and it will, the inevitable result will be that gold will be reset upwards (in price) somewhere between $5,000 and $10,000….

“Stocks, bonds, etc, will collapse on themselves. We are about to enter an economic ‘Ice Age,’ and it’s going to be very frightening for most people. The average American has too much debt. The average American has little to no precious metals.

Read More at King World News .

The meeting comes in the aftermath of an investigation by a Treasury inspector general that found that the IRS, in examining applications for tax exempt status, improperly selected conservative groups for further review.

Also part of the Wednesday discussion will be Deputy Treasury Secretary Neal Wolin. Lew was to participate by phone because he was out of town observing the Jewish holiday of Shavuot.

Carney sidestepped a question about whether Obama still had confidence in Acting IRS Commissioner Steven Miller, saying he wouldn’t discuss personnel matters. He said Obama has expressed his overall view that IRS personnel had acted inappropriately.

“He wants to see that the actions taken, as revealed by the Treasury report, that are inappropriate, are met with consequences,” Carney said. “He will make clear to Treasury Department leaders that he expects action.”

Read More at OfficialWire . By Jim Kuhnhenn.