I also agree it was due to happen technically and just needed a reason for the next impulse leg up.

Also, the dollar going down or up has a correlation more often than any other fundamental correlation (more than direction of stock market, more than money supply, more than black swan events, and even slightly more than the positive correlation between gold and oil – which is fairly strong).

So here is the pattern that has been repeating ever since the PMs topped in 2011 and entered the bear leg of the last 3 years: During a Black Swan Crisis the following sequence happened each time: (Step 1) flight for cash at the expense of all other asset classes {general markets, commodities}, (Step 2) Gold returns to safe haven status as cash looks for a safe home after liquidation, (Step 3) PMs start inverse relationship to dollar on an hourly basis {dollar up then gold/silver down – or – dollar down then gold/silver up} as things tread sideways until the next crisis, (Step 4) Rinse and repeat…..

When big events happened like Egypt, Libya, Fukushima, Debt Ceilng/government shutdown, Cyprus, then 1) First – majority of money fled the general markets and commodities at first and ran to the US dollar or Swiss Franc. This initially put pressure on PMs each time of a crisis during the liquidation phase at the very beginning; however, eventually gold would reverse for a few days and rise in tandem with the dollar, while the market corrected even further. Finally after the public got bored with the news story, then the “normal” daily pattern became the standard inverse relationship of the dollar to gold that would carry us through the rest of that crisis. It is pretty clear that if the dollar goes up, gold gold down, and if the dollar goes down gold goes up, (on the majority of days ~ 80%)

Yeah. I liked what Peter had to say about debt. It is simple. Get out from under it as soon as you can.