Gold was unchanged in the first hour of New York trading on Friday, but that was as good as it got, with the metal plummeting nearly $25 by mid-morning, after which a rally to the late Comex was abruptly snuffed out and the price limped to a finish at $954.60/oz., down $25.80. For the week, gold slipped 2.6%.
Platinum peaked in Hong Kong, then traded choppily through the day but with a general down bias, ending at $1263, down $28. For the week, platinum was up 6.3%.

Silver was already declining when it hit the same strong morning selling as gold, and it dropped briefly below $15.20 at mid-morning, a low that it nearly revisited as it remained weak through the day to close at $15.27, down 61 cents. For the week, silver skidded by 3.4%. (Click here for charts)

The precious metals capped an up-again, down-again week by visiting the down end of the seesaw, as a strengthening dollar clipped off all of the rebound gains turned in on Thursday.

The Hightower Report summed up a disappointing day for gold in this way: “After an early rally into the US Non farm payroll data, the August gold contract fell back sharply. With the US numbers potentially seen as supportive to recovery and or inflationary views, it was somewhat surprising to see gold prices fall back so sharply. However, in addition to a partly overbought short term technical condition in the gold market, it is possible that gold was undermined by the sudden and rather distinct rally in the US Dollar. Just to disappoint the bulls even more, gold prices even failed to benefit from a temporary rise above the psychological $70.00 level in crude oil.”

Despite the zigzag nature of gold’s recent path, many analysts believe they are seeing a sea change in the way the metal is being viewed around the world. It’s not just about investment value any more, they say.

In other words, gold is money.

As Mark O’Byrne, executive director at Gold and Silver Investments Ltd., puts it, “Gold will likely be increasingly used as a safe-haven monetary asset to protect and bolster national currencies as it has been throughout history.”

“As the common currency to the world [the dollar] devalues, then gold by extension has to gain in value,” said Marcus Hudson, president at Hudson & Associates.

We couldn’t agree more.

Source: Precious Metals Take Some More Lumps

Last 5 posts by Doug Casey

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• Gold Pushes Through $950 - July 27th, 2009