THe sky doesn't seem to be falling, the world economy doesn't seem to be collapsing, and USD seems stablized, and the US economy appears to be doing pretty good among developed economies. People wake up to find central banks in countries which need bail-out may need to sell assets to shoulder some cost, and gold is an obvious asset, which can turn CBs from buyers to sellers. While it is impossible to evaluate the intrinsic value of gold, people suddenly realize from 1802-2001 gold's real return is nothing but 0.0 %, meaning in long time frame, gold correlate inflation very well, and case can be made that gold's last 12 years run is far far ahead of inflation and thus its future expected return may not be so attractive.