Gold and Silver Market Manipulation?

Doug Casey, Casey Research writes: For many years now, a meme has been floating around that the prices of gold and silver are being manipulated, which is to say suppressed, by various powers of darkness. This is not an unreasonable assertion. After all, the last thing the monetary powers-that-be want is to see is the price of gold skyrocketing. That would serve as an alarm bell, possibly panicking people all over the world, telling them to get out of the dollar. It's assumed, by those who believe in the theory, that the US Treasury is behind the suppression scheme, in complicity with a half-dozen or so large bullion banks that regularly trade in the metals. The assertion is bolstered by the fact that governments in general, and the US in particular, are always intervening in all kinds of markets. They try to control the price of wheat and corn with various USDA programs. They manifestly manipulate the price of credit (interest rates), now keeping it as low as possible to stave off financial collapse. And they may well be active, through the so-called Plunge Protection Team, in propping up the stock market. They were largely responsible for the boom in property, through numerous programs and parastatals like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Why, therefore, shouldn't they also be involved in the monetary metals? Central banks regularly intervene in (i.e., manipulate) each others' currencies. So it's not unreasonable to imagine they'd try to manipulate gold as well.

Source: The Market Oracle, 18 May 2012