I’ve given up trying to work out all the motives and the mechanisms, but on the whole I’m allergic to conspiracy theories. The full story on this (posted many times here and at the mother-site nby) is available if you need a headache right now, but there was an intriguing piece at Jesse’s Cafe Americain yesterday – pointed out to me by comment threader Doing A Gordon With the Gold.

JCA’s point is that the gold sloshing around the world in a generally unaudited manner is down to an IMF/BIS scam whereby (basically) the US can dump its gold into the market undetected.

A lot of what Jesse says is a convincing explanation of how the Americans do it – something which has always puzzled me – but I don’t buy the conspiracy.

Fort Knox has probably been piling ‘deep-reserve’ gold into the markets for years, as a means of defending the Dollar – and latterly, stop a stock market meltdown. This is US geopolitical necessity, not a global conspiracy.

That said, Jesse’s technicals are spot-on: at $1260 just a week ago and now $119o, none of this makes sense because (as he notes) you can’t get any bullion for love nor money – only the paper trackers.

How long the US can keep it up is anyone’s guess; gold should be at around $2300 at the moment. As ever, there will be Canute’s advisors telling Odrama he has to do this. I rather hoped that when Mr Clean got into the White House, it’d stop – but clearly I was over-optimistic re that one.