Hey Baires, It's either government or the private guys have been manipulating it. I can't see how manipulation of the pog to the upside benefits government (I'm including central banks)! If manipulation to the downside has been a factor in reducing inflation and stabilizing currencies (which was presumably the point of manipulating it in the first place so that money printing could go ahead without causing inflation), do you think the manipulators (agents of the government and the fed) will suddenly turn around and increase the price of gold to start to control inflation? What conditions would cause this?

But why would keeping the price of gold down prevent inflation when usually the way to prevent inflation would be by raising the price of gold? In this scenario it would be because the government/fed wants to eliminate gold as a factor in currency markets.

If on the other hand you think it's the private guys who are manipulating it for their own future benefit (jack it up again when the time is ripe), and the government/Fed is not involved (as evidenced by their prosecutions of the manipulators), then I think we are in agreement, but the critical factor in that case is demand in the market! We are basically in agreement if so. This would be priming the pump by the private guys taking advantage of pent-up demand in conditions where there is demand-driven upward pressure on the gold price. But this is based on an assumption that the source of manipulation is not the government/fed but the private market manipulators. And either way we need the market to kick in, don't we? I.e., either overcoming government/fed control or responding to the private manipulators. Go Blue Jays!

The brain boggles late on Friday afternoon!

Ike