Oh by the way, I got the Coinbase brush off this morning...the message about exceeding limits. But I just now bought 0.2 BTC with no problem. Not sure if it means they resolved the issue or if the buy was just so small.
I think the Coinbase issue was causing no buy support at Bitstamp. I tried to login several times at 510 then 500 but got that exceeded limits error (blessing in disguise).
Then, once it hit the 490's it started working again and I was finally able to purchase.
Wonder if this is some form of manipulation.