Gold is not a Safe Haven - Manipulation at work?

Traditional investing approaches are not working with Gold as a hedge, why?  Try lack of demand and manipulation.

James Conrad wrote a great article about the manipulation of gold prices this week.

His article is very long, but the points he makes are valid and should be considered:

The net effect is that the U.S. dollar, in spite of terrible fundamentals, is now King of the Currencies once again, at least temporarily. The rising value of the dollar happens also to support naked short sellers of gold and silver, on COMEX, and these are old friends of the Federal Reserve. Supply and demand ultimately determine the price of gold but, in the shorter term, it is inversely tethered to the dollar. When the dollar is artificially high, gold prices will often plunge artificially low.
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It is only a matter of time before gold is allowed to rise to its natural level. Assuming that about half of the current increase in Fed credit is eventually neutralized, the monetized value of gold should be allowed to rise to between $7,500 and $9,000 per ounce as the world goes back to some type of gold standard. In the nearer term, gold will rise to about $2,000 per ounce, as the Fed abandons a hopeless campaign to support COMEX short sellers, in favor of saving the other, more productive, functions of the various banks and insurers.

Mr. Conrad is very bullish on gold and like anything you read or hear from today's accomplished media to rising blogging stars, it is what it is.

Pick a Gold analyst at random and you'll find both bulls and bears regarding the outlook and price of gold, its a mixed bag forecast.

What can't be questioned is that gold is rapidly approaching the $700 level.  We haven't seen gold at these prices since last year before the huge run all the way up $1,000 an ounce back in March.

If there is any merit or belief that gold is still a classic inflation play, then its time to review the biggest and best gold stocksout there, by market cap, here's the top 10: