I think Engdahl is right that markets are manipulated and that includes teh gold market. But this is nothing new. Markets and banks have alsways been rescued as contortionist said, and the Plunge Protection Team was set up in 1988 under Reagan
"In March 1988, five months after the worst one-day stock market plunge in history, President Ronald Reagan signed Executive Order 12631. Order 12631 created the Working Group on Financial Markets, known on Wall Street as the ‘Plunge Protection Team’ because its job was to prevent any future unexpected financial market panic selloff or ‘plunge’."
Engdahl says that there is a financial battle going on between two sides and he is probably right.
"In effect a war, a financial war, is underway between the Wall Street giant banks and their close allies, including the major City of London banks and banks like Deutsche Bank on the one side, using paper gold derivatives trading in the unregulated COMEX, with covert support of the US Treasury and Fed. On the other side are real investors and Central Banks who believe that the world financial system, especially the dollar system, is teetering on the brink of disaster and that physical gold is the historical best safe haven in such a crisis."
But the real question that he doesn't ask is who will win this war. I think it will be the United States side and not the Chinese side. As Engdahl said about the 'socialist' Strauss-Kahn
"France’s Dominique Straus-Kahn, demanded an independent audit of the Federal Reserve gold after the US refused to deliver to the IMF 191 tons of gold agreed to under the IMF Articles of Agreement signed by the Executive Board in April 1978 to back Special Drawing Rights issuance. Immediately before he could rush back to Paris, he was hit by a bizarre hotel sex scandal and abruptly forced to resign. Straus-Kahn had been shown a secret Russian intelligence report prepared for President Vladimir Putin in which ‘rogue’ CIA agents revealed that the US Federal Reserve had no gold reserves and only lied that it did."
If the American elite want to win, then they will win.
The real determining factor is power and in the end military power. With power you can get money, but with money you cannot get power. America can dictate what will happen and if the stakes are really high, then America can use its power.
People like Max Keiser pretend that Bitcoin, which is scam in my opinion, can "end the Fed". He is not stupid, so I can only assume he is lying. He seems to ignore the power that lies behind the Fed and the power of the global banks, and a digital currency that can be collapsed and manipulated cannot ever threaten the Fed or real power.
However, I do also believe the conspiracy theorists (not Max kesier because he is merely a financial conspiracy theorist and not a political one who also take account of factors such as the power of the Fed and of military power etc) that the New World Order's ultimate aim (along with the global warming scam etc) is to one day bring in a one world currency and one world government, and they believe that this will require teh collapse of our current financial system in order to bring in the new system of the new age and the new world order. I don't know if they will achieve it or when it might happen. I hope it won't be happening in my lifetime, but one never knows.
But if that is not on the immediate cards, and if America wants to win the battle, then I have no doubt that America will win.
America has the power and has often in the past devalued the dollar in order to wipe out its debt. It may do so again, but in the long run, that will harm China and America will return even stronger.