Will gold pass $1,000 an ounce next week?

See here why to pile into physical precious metals before the rest of the herd.

More: Gold on verge of historic breakout?

And more: Ambrose Evans-Pritchard: Gold bugs at last have their perfect trinity. Excerpt: "...Gold prices tend to slide in late May and languish through the summer, because of the seasonal ups and downs of jewellery demand. The trader reflex would be to short gold at this stage after its $90 vault to $959 an ounce over the past month. They may think again this year...gold has outperformed Wall Street's S&P 500 index by 500 percent so far this century, as if able sniff out trouble in advance. Such runs tend to finish with a "parabolic" blow-off before they die."

Even silver is a good buy: America lost 94% physical silver in 50 years

Trifecta of Post-imperial Doom

California desperately needs $24 billion to prevent total social collapse:

"California faces its day of fiscal reckoning"

Schwarzenegger Plans to Completely Eliminate Welfare for Families in California

"...Once governor Arnold Schwarzenegger ("it is only a plant") starts thinking about taxing cannabis in California you know it must be really bad. Wasn't the war on drugs all about the dangers of the first plant that was cultivated by humans more than 6,000 years ago, leading to the highest prison population - a good part of them jailed for possession of a few ounces - in the world, far ahead of non-democratic China?..." Source
But the party of Drone-bombing We Can Believe In is too busy pissing away another hundred billion on Lost War Number 2:

"Senate Approves $93.1 billion funding for Afghanistan War"

Senate OKs war funding, blocks release of detainee pictures

Obama's War: Drunk, Bored Trigger Happy Mercenaries Kill Afghan Civilians

Obama Is Considering Doing Something Even Bush Didn’t Try: “Preventive Detention” of People Who Will Never Get a Trial

...while borrowing costs for T-bills just skyrocketed, a sign that foreign creditors are running out of patience with Geithner's "Zombie banks? What zombie banks?" act:

"US 10-year note falls most since June"

Comeuppance: United States may lose AAA credit rating, deficits out of control

Some of the latest news from ICH

Senate OKs war funding, blocks release of detainee pictures:

The Senate late Thursday easily passed a $91 billion spending bill for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. After stripping it of funds to close the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and placing restrictions on the transfer of its detainees, the bill was adopted 86 to 3. The Senate included an amendment to prevent the public release of photographs that reportedly document the mistreatment of post-Sept. 11 detainees in U.S. custody.

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Conservative radio hosts gets waterboarded, and lasts six seconds before saying its torture:

Chicago radio host Erich "Mancow" Muller decided he'd get himself waterboarded to prove the technique wasn't torture. It didn't turn out that way. "Mancow," in fact, lasted just six or seven seconds before crying foul.

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Change.... What change?

Obama Endorses Indefinite Detention Without Trial for Some:

President Obama acknowledged publicly for the first time yesterday that some detainees at Guantanamo Bay may have to be held without trial indefinitely, siding with conservative national security advocates on one of the most contentious issues raised by the closing of the military prison in Cuba.