It’s interesting how gold got taken down hard yesterday before the news broke today about the ECB not exending liquidity for European banks.

Let’s see… today equities are down 3% and gold looks like it isn’t benefitting from a flight to safety because it lost $30 yesterday. Mighty strange behavior indeed.

Draw your own conclusions. Mine is that the banks anticipated the carnage today and kicked the legs out from under gold to make sure it didn’t run away to the upside.

Supporting this view is the fact that the dollar is relatively weak. Sure, the Euro has suffered but it’s still at roughly 1.22, well above where it was when equities were this low last time. The pound is hanging tough, and the dollar is sinking against the Yen. And considering oil is getting whacked, the dollar is hardly rising against the CAD.

On the other hand, Euro gold got whacked yesterday of course but is climbing quickly today and looking like it just hiccupped slightly. After the last NFP, with the pathetic new jobs figure, the dollar has been in trouble, and the banks know it.

It’s very late in my day but about lunch time in NY and it looks like dollar gold is catching a bid. So far, it seems that another round of manipulation has kept the safe haven play muted, but just barely.

Last week was an exercise in gold dropping then regaining the same level above $1250 by end of week. It seems like the manipulation game is not really working. At some point, something’s gotta give.

That’s just my view, of course. You can - and should - draw your own conclusions.