Watching the metals lately, as soon as they start to get a bounce going, someone steps in with a smack down. It's pretty obvious.
Rickards has said that the US has been trying to help China accumulate gold so they can reach rough parity with the US in gold reserves. He said the US has 8000 tons and China likely has 5000 tons and is climbing fast. The closer China gets to parity, the easier it will be to transition to the SDRs, which is why the US is helping them.
Not sure if that is what caused the recent suppression of gold though. Since the big drop in gold coincided exactly with the yuan's inclusion into to the SDR basket (early Oct), another possibility is that the Fed feared there might be a growing move away from the dollar toward the yuan, which would be exacerbated by rising gold prices, so they torpedoed gold just in case.
Obviously the Fed's plan to raise rates in December by itself would tend to weaken gold, but the timing and the suppression of any bounce suggests that something else is going on. I'm not complaining much though since it will allow more time to accumulate.
