[Editor's Note: The following post is by TDV senior analyst, Ed Bugos]

Can gold be the money of the free market if the violent monopoly of government gets behind the effort? This utterly wrong notion is what Ralph Benko seems to be suggesting in his recent article on NationalInterest.org titled "How to Go Gold".

Dear TDV readers and subscribers,

I've just returned from the sold-out Global Escape Hatch conference on the beach in Ambergris Caye, Belize.  It was, as I expected, an amazing time of meeting with like-minded people who, like us, have had their spidey-senses firing off like a rigged slot machine about the coming years in the western world and The End Of The Monetary System As We Know It (TEOTMSAWKI) and have chosen to begun to take action to not only protect themselves from the fallout but find ways to profit from it.

[Editor's Note: The following post is by TDV Editor-in-Chief, Jeff Berwick]

Another rich US subject is getting ready to flee the growing predation of the taxman. This week John Paulson of hedge fund Paulson & Co. is taking a long, hard look at a move to Puerto Rico for the explicit purpose of eliminating taxes on $9.5 billion in gains he invested in his own hedge funds.

[Editor's Note: The following post is by TDV Editor, Gary Gibson]

The end of civilization is already here. Most of humanity has been turned into an unthinking mass of economic zombies that are looking to feast on the still living flesh of the few survivors. This may explain the increasing popularity or obsession with all things zombie. From fiction to pub crawls, the zombie apocalypse seems to be on a lot of minds, probably as an unconcious manifestation of economic reality.

According to Clemson University professor Sarah Lauro in a recent AP article:

[Editor’s Note: The following is by TDV contributor, Wendy McElroy]

Hello from the belly of the beast,

A very dear friend from Europe has had a run of health problems and it has started to interfere with this friend's ability to keep earning an income. I've spent a couple of years talking to this person about freedom and free markets. Inevitably brought up then is the command-and-control commercial Communism of both the European continent and the Amerikan, as well as the destructiveness of taxation and government programs and the immorality of the violence upon which they base themselves.

Hello from the beach in beautiful Ambergris Caye in Belize,

We appreciate Rand Paul's lengthy talk to offer some resistance to the trial-less assassination of Americans via drone. But we're going to keep things shorter here and allow for a little bit of feedback. Read on below...

FINANCES AND TDV

[Editor's Note: The following post is by TDV contributor, Justin O'Connell]

So you're in an African prison and being tortured after being stripped of your citizenship while on vacation with your family. And then, during your kidnapping, you are forced to sign a Soviet-style confession at the hands of the CIA. That could be your fate if what is happening to British citizens is any sign. But it doesn’t end there…

When your family goes to the State Department or Foreign Office for help, your captors will tell your family there is nothing they can do. After all, you had been stripped of your citizenship.

Ben Bernanke must have been smirking and nodding smugly all day yesterday. The Dow hit an all-time high at 14,286 and closed at 14,253.77. What's even more impressive is that this is double where the Dow stood just four years ago. And it only took five and a half years and previously unmatched amounts of new money creation to do it.

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