If we didn’t know any better, and we don’t, we get the impression that there has been a large-scale collaborative effort underway by certain Western powers (in which we include Japan) to prevent rapidly rising demand from driving the gold price up.
This would typically sound like conspiracy theory except for the fact that it’s been done before.
The London Gold Pool
In 1961, a group of 8 western central banks, led by the United States, joined together for this exact purpose. It was known as the London Gold Pool and also included Germany, the U.K., and Switzerland.
The purpose was to protect the old global fixed rate currency exchange mechanism established at Bretton Woods in the closing stages of World War II. A rising gold price put this mechanism at risk.
The gold pool was successful to varying degrees for several years. But it was unsustainable, as are similar efforts today, and ultimately collapsed in a heap in 1968. The collapse featured runs on gold reserves, currency devaluations, geopolitical conflict, and the 2 week closure of the London gold market.
It was these events which ultimately led President Nixon to close the U.S. gold window in August 1971, and which caused the collapse of the Bretton Woods monetary system.
http://www.kitco.com/ind/Andres/2013...rs-Weekly.html
cartel signaling minutes prior to dumping 17,000 paper gold contracts on the market between Oct 11 8:43 and 8:45am: triggering a stop of Comex gold trading as the market went dark for 20 seconds!
http://www.nanex.net/aqck2/4455.html