I'm sure I'm far from the first person to say this, but I Haven't seen anyone talk about it yet, so here goes.
The US government and most bullion depositories have lied about their gold reserves.
Most large institutional investors have known this for years, but figured that the US government would always take care of their needs somehow. This system has worked for years now without any problems.
Now in the past 6 months, Germany, Texas University and other groups are now asking for their gold back from the bullion depositories in New York and such places so they can monitor it themselves. I suspect that they've finally got to the point they want to be the first ones to get their gold, before everyone else finds out that there isn't enough in reserves to meet the demand.
So, the US government has seen the writing on the wall and doesn't want the rest of the world to know they're broke.
So, they do the only thing with a chance of fixing all their gold woes - They attempt to crash the gold price so severely that they can buy back in at a much lower amount, in the process making some cash over the massive short.
Problem is though - the whole thing has backfired. The demand for gold at $1300 was significantly higher than anyone could have ever dreamed, and instead of a outright metals crash, we've had a sizable dip and potentially already reached the bottom.
I have no proof, just opinion.