The markets are smelling blood, I think. Gold is creeping up as I write this, after Bear reported that its funds went belly up and INTC published a disappointing earnings report. That report is causing the Nikkei to drop as well, on selling of tech shares over there.
Meantime, and most importantly for gold, the dollar dropped sharply after the Bear report. It's already pierced a more than decade-old support line on the Fed's Major Currencies Index. We're about as close to an actual, all-out currency crisis as you can get without actually having one.
<a href="http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/DTWEXM/chart?cid=105&fgid=&fgcid=&ct=&pt=&cs=Large&crb=on&cf=lin&range=Max&cosd=1973-01-02&coed=2007-07-16&asids=+%3CEnter+Series+ID%3E" target="'">Major Currencies Index</a>