NaturalNews.com | Two more countries have taken a bold stand against genetically-modified organisms (GMOs), according to new reports. The South American nation of Venezuela is currently in the process of crafting legislation to bar transgenic seeds and crops from entering the country, while biotechnology giant Monsanto has completely withdrawn all of its business efforts from the European nation of Denmark, where food companies and the genera public have wholly rejected GMOs.

RT | Detroit said it will stop making payment on $2.5 billion of the city’s massive $18.5 billion debt and has asked creditors to accept 10 cents in the dollar of what the city owes them in a bid to avoid the largest municipal bankruptcy filing in US history.

NBC News | In Rochester, N.Y., city court is a busy place – for debt collectors. Plaintiff’s lawyers seeking judgments against alleged debtors consume 89 percent of the court docket -- 7,148 of the 8,032 lawsuits heard in city court during 2011 involved debt collection, a remarkable number. But not unique. In Buffalo, 76 percent of cases involved debt collection. In the Capital District near Albany, 77 percent did. Even in Nassau County, just outside New York City, where nearly 20,000 civil cases were filed, almost 9,000 involved debt.

Zero Hedge | Those tens of thousands of outstanding delivery requests against JPM are finally starting to make their way through the pipeline: following the withdrawal of 28,380 ounces of gold after nearly one month of radiosilence out of the vault located below 1 CMP, today the CME reported that another 21k troy ounces of eligible gold were withdrawn from the bank (coupled with the reallocation of another 8.8K registered into eligible), taking the total to a fresh record low of 767,752 ounces.

MarketWatch | One of Wall Street’s many witty quips recommends you buy when there’s blood in the streets. Well, these days, the blood in the streets isn’t red — it’s silver. From late November through late May, the spot price of silver has bled nearly 35%. This sharp and protracted six-month plunge in the value of the metal has many causes, but the primary factor contributing to the silver selloff is the rotation away from precious metals and into stocks of all varieties.

Wired | The founder of digital currency system Liberty Reserve has been indicted in the United States along with six other people in a $6 billion money-laundering scheme, in what authorities are calling the largest international money-laundering case ever prosecuted, according to documents unsealed today. Dubbed the “financial hub of the cyber-crime world,” authorities say Liberty Reserve had more than 1 million users worldwide and processed more than 12 million transactions annually as the favored money-laundering service for carders, hackers and other cybercriminals in the digital underground who used it to transfer money around the world effortlessly and anonymously.

The Blaze | Everyone’s favorite billionaire investor is back in the spotlight, and this time he has a few people wondering what he’s up to. George Soros has dumped his position with several major banks including JPMorgan Chase, Capitol One, SunTrust, and Morgan Stanley. He has reduced his exposure to Citigroup and decreased his stake in AIG by two-thirds.

Forbes | “Zero Hour” is what I call the moment when the price of real, physical gold starts to break away from the quoted price on the commodities exchanges. That is, the “physical price” becomes much higher than the “paper price” on CNBC’s ticker. The catalyst would likely be when a major metals exchange defaults on a gold or silver contract, settling in cash, instead of metal.

Futuresmag.com | It has been an interesting week for gold. On Tuesday, open interest on Comex fell sharply by 6,961 contracts. The action was in the June contract, which fell 12,072, only 3,000 of which appear to have been rolled into the next active month (August). The bulk of the fall in the June number must have been from bears closing their shorts ahead of Ben Bernanke’s testimony to Congress on Wednesday, but we can see from the numbers that the big bullion banks did not supply the stock (see below).

Silverseek.com | A subscriber recently commented that the Oligarchs who rule Russia only wish they got to run things as efficiently as how JPMorgan and the big banks control our financial markets, particularly in the trading of precious metals. Based upon the last few days, it’s hard to argue with that. On Sunday evening shortly after 6 PM, the price of silver was taken down 10% within a few minutes on an insignificant number of contracts (1600), evoking memories of the infamous 13% ($6) decline on the May 1 Sunday evening of 2011. If the Russian criminals oversaw silver trading and not the CME Group and the CFTC they could not possibly have rigged prices more corruptly.

Cnn.com | The power of all the computers networked together to maintain the digital currency's system far exceeds the combined processing strength of the top 500 most powerful supercomputers. Easily. The matchup isn't even close. There have been lots of stories about Bitcoin in the past few months thanks to its rapid price rise -- from $5 a year ago for 1 bitcoin to a record high of $266 in April, before falling back to around $122 today.

MarketWatch |  The “Dr. Boom” scenario: America is about to “unleash a spending spree. Years of self-denial give way to pent-up demand,” predicts UBS economist Maury Harris in USA Today’s bold lead story. His clue? Consumer sentiment: “Harris estimates that in the next five years, catch-up consumption will boost annual consumer spending growth by a half point to above 3% from about 2%.”

ZeroHedge.com | Two years ago, Zero Hedge first made the observation that the bulk of Fed reserves (also known simply as "cash created out of thin air" because money is first and foremost fungible no matter what textbook theoreticians may claim, and the only cash allocation preference is the capital allocation IRR analysis) had been parked not with US banks, but with foreign banks with US-based operations.

SilverSeek.com | This has been one of the worst stretches for gold and silver pricewise in quite some time, no secret there.  I have to go back to when silver was in single digits to find a comparable period.   The question on precious metals investors’ minds is whether this bad stretch is going to continue much longer.  Are the past few months setting the stage for a pronounced rebound in prices or has the tide changed for the worse for an extended period of time?  I think the answer can be found in analyzing the following facts.

Numismaster.com | A man who attended a financial conference earlier this year told me that the famous speaker began his presentation by asking the audience how many thought that the price of gold had peaked. He was stunned that almost everyone other than him raised their hands.