The damage done to gold on Friday was due to skillfully timed flash crashes rather than powerful selling.  – John Brimelow, JB’ Gold Jottings Report

As a wider audience of market observers becomes aware of the flagrant use of the paper gold market to manipulate the price of gold, the degree of intervention in the gold market by the Fed/Treasury becomes more openly aggressive.

Eric Dubin of the News Doctors wrote a useful commentary on the current effort by the “gold cartel” to take down the price of gold:

The cartel is acting aggressively this week on top of the mountain of paper-based gold issuance into the COMEX market they’ve been shoveling into the short side already – for weeks – in an effort to slow momentum. Now, as you see today, with traders getting nervous considering sky high commercial short positions and an FOMC meeting starting tomorrow, is it any wonder that the cartel was able to get some traction to the downside?

You can read the rest of his analysis here:  The News Doctors