A new gold rush in Texas?

Editor's note: Mark Leibovit is one of the investment world's top-rated gold timers, and helps investors anticipate and benefit from both the ups and the downs of the precious metals markets with his Leibovit VR Gold Letter (available to WND readers at a huge discount).

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From Star-Telegram.com:

A gold rush in Texas?

AUSTIN – Texas, long known for cattle, cowboys, and oil, could soon be on the map for something much different.

Gold.

State Rep. Giovanni Capriglione asked the Legislature to create a Texas Bullion Depository, where Texas could store its gold, which is now in New York, and where others could keep their precious metals.

The Southlake Republican must have the golden touch, because the House and the Senate have signed off on his plan and his bill appears headed to Gov. Greg Abbott for consideration.

"We are not talking Fort Knox," Capriglione said. "But when I first announced this, I got so many emails and phone calls from people literally all over the world who said they want to store their gold ... in a Texas depository."

Read the rest of the report>

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From Kitco.com:

Gold price outlook 'generally weak' next week

According to the latest Kitco Wall Street Versus Main Street Weekly Gold Survey, 211, or 60 percent are bearish on gold next week; 106 or 30 percent are bullish on prices next week and 33 voters or 10 percent are neutral. This week, 350 people participated in Kitco’s online survey.

The results of the Wall Street survey were a lot closer, ending in a statistical tie with a slight bias to the downside. Out of 33 market experts contacted, 19 responded; of those, nine participants, or 47 percent, see lower prices, eight experts, or 42 percent, see lower prices and two, or 11 percent, are neutral on the gold market.

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From the New York Sun:

Jeb Bush on the dollar and currency manipulation

We were just sitting down at the typewriter to tap out an editorial on the failure of any of the Republican contenders to address the crisis in respect of the dollar when an email hit our screen from the editor of the Future of Capitalism about the remarks over the weekend by Jeb Bush. The former governor of Florida was making an appearance at WMUR-TV in New Hampshire when he was asked whether, as Future of Capitalism characterized the question, "foreign currency manipulation had put American manufacturers at a disadvantage."

Mr. Bush responded that there might be some manipulation by foreigners. But, he added, "you can make a case that in the last few years, given our monetary policy, we've been manipulating our currency. We've never had a time where our central bank is just printing money like nobody's business. And that depreciates our currency. It lowers our interest rates and depreciates our currency."

Mr. Bush acknowledged that there exist some protections against foreign currency manipulation already and noted that an eventual trade pact may yet add more.

Read the whole editorial here.

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From Money Week:

The time is ripe for digital gold

By James Turk, founder of GoldMoney (recently acquired by BitGold), responding to Dominic Frisby’s take on BitGold from Thursday’s Money Morning:

Dear Dominic,

I am writing in response to your latest article about BitGold’s purchase of GoldMoney. I would like to clear up some points, so that your readers understand this transaction. BitGold is not a "bitcoin company" – if you need a comparison, it is much more "PayPal" than "bitcoin," but BitGold can be better understood as a "digital gold" company, which of course is what GoldMoney invented and patented.

The digital gold currency being offered by BitGold is a technological advancement upon the service GoldMoney provided until January 2012. The profitability of a high velocity payments business like PayPal dwarfs that of gold ETFs and custody businesses. When GoldMoney launched 15 years ago, its payment service was ahead of its time. Today the market is ripe for innovation.

Read the whole report.

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From SilverDoctors.com:

The Eastern Bloc locks down remaining gold, while the West snoozes

The most serious wars of our time aren’t fought militarily, but financially. The massive stealth gold acquisition by Russia, China and others is not merely a means to defend their currencies, but to weaponize them.

As another week just passed by, with mainstream "economists" and "media" chuckling at gold, laughing harder at silver, and just plain "keeling over" at the thought of stackers actually still buying those metals, a few noteworthy items went under the radar. These stories are very pertinent both to stackers, as well as to the ongoing fight between the Eastern Bloc and the Western banksters.

While the Mainstream Media would rather distract you by pointing to gold’s price, they’d really rather you forget the ominous headlines indicating that future gold supply is threatened. We all know that the South African gold producing industry has been in a long, steady fall from grace. That’s no secret. As you can see below, things have been deteriorating for South African gold mining for decades. Yes, it appears that even Australia’s production fell 7 percent in the first quarter of the year, coming in at 70 tonnes. Remember folks, that while 70 tonnes of gold may sound like a lot, the Shanghai gold exchange alone would burn through that three-month mining total in about 10 days.

Due to the ongoing market rigging in precious metals, we are continuing to slowly witness the likely advent of peak gold and silver. Russia and China both know that future supply of gold isn’t a guarantee, and are moving in to secure whatever fresh supply can be had.

Read the rest of the report here.

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First Majestic Silver CEO complains to CFTC about market manipulation

Keith N. Neumeyer, president and CEO of First Majestic Silver, just about the only executive in the monetary metals mining industry who complains openly about market manipulation that suppresses the price of gold and silver, has heeded market analyst Ted Butler's latest call to write to the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, a call noted by GATA last week.

Neumeyer's letter is posted in pdf format at GATA's Internet site here – and investors in the monetary metals mining industry who are not hopelessly demoralized might do well to bring it to the attention of the companies in which they have invested.

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From BullionStar.com:

U.S. government lost 7 Fort Knox gold audit reports

Seven of the official audits of the U.S. gold reserve have disappeared, or at least that's what the U.S. government has told gold researcher and Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee consultant Koos Jansen, who filed freedom-of-information requests for access to them.

Jansen's experience is reminiscent of GATA's request to the Federal Reserve in 2009 for access to the Fed's gold records. The Fed purported to be unable to find records GATA already had found on the Fed's own Internet site and sought to conceal most other such records.

Jansen's commentary is headlined "U.S. Government Lost 7 Fort Knox Gold Audit Reports" and is posted at Bullion Star here.

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From King World News:

3 possible scenarios for monetary metals prices

Sprott Asset Management's John Embry, interviewed by King World News, offers three scenarios for monetary metals prices:

"They will either remain viciously suppressed, as they have been for nearly four years, or they will explode higher as the paper market suppression is finally overcome by the realities of the physical market," Embry says. "We also cannot rule out an overnight resetting of the price of gold after China discloses its massive gold hoard to the world. The timing of all this is imprecise but it is getting inexorably closer by the day."

Check out the entire interview here.

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From SeekingAlpha.con:

Gold supply tightness spreads from London to New York

Tightness in the physical gold market seems to have spread from London to New York, securities lawyer Avery B. Goodman writes, noting that more gold could be claimed for delivery in the June gold futures contract on the New York Commodities Exchange than there is registered gold in Comex warehouses, a circumstance that Goodman thinks may be unprecedented.

Goodman writes that a default on Comex contracts is unlikely because the U.S. government almost certainly would make gold available surreptitiously, perhaps through the secret gold swap arrangements whose arrangements the Federal Reserve confirmed, perhaps inadvertently, to GATA in 2009. But if the gold price is not allowed to rise significantly, Goodman adds, there will be bigger supply problems.

Read the whole report here.

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From the UK Independent:

Southwest England was scene of prehistoric gold rush, new research says

New archaeological research is revealing that southwest Britain was the scene of a prehistoric gold rush. A detailed analysis of some of Western Europe's most beautiful gold artifacts suggests that Cornwall was a miniature Klondyke in the Early Bronze Age. Geological estimates now indicate that up to 200 kilos of gold, worth in modern terms almost L5 million, was extracted in the Early Bronze Age from Cornwall and West Devon's rivers -- mainly between the 22nd and 17th centuries BC.

Read more.

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