Well, there are some who admit that TA is pretty useless in the face of this kind of intervention: Peter Degraaf doesn't mind admitting it--

from his Friday evening email:

Featured is the daily gold chart. Gold closed just above the 850 support line during a washout caused by the performance of a US dollar that defies belief. Without any improvement in fundamentals, the dollar rose 132 points today. The largest gain in years! Despite a banking crisis, low interest rates, huge deficits, money supply running in double digits, housing sector in shambles, the US dollar has now risen 8 out of the last 9 days. Someone please convince me that this is not rigged. Meanwhile at $855.00 the gold price is back at $323.00 expressed in 1980 dollars!

Late in July a central bank dumped 30 tonnes of gold, without apparently caring much about the price, (whereas a savvy trader would have trickled to gold into the market during rallies). This may have started the avalanche in gold, at about the time the dollar began its rally. With this kind of tinkering it becomes almost impossible to apply technical analysis.