Reports in the Wall Street Journal late Friday cited the Fed presidents of Dallas and Philadelphia as being keenly interested in winding down QE3, saying the Fed is looking at blueprints for such action. Come Monday trading, this helped to drive gold down, which dragged silver along with it.

There is only one problem with the pointless, slipshod story. 

Neither Richard Fisher of Dallas nor Charles Plosser of Philly are voting members of the Federal Open Market Committee. They do not join the voting cadre on the FOMC until 2014. And even then, they will scarcely round out a hawkish majority. 

Additionally, as Chairman Ben Bernanke and co-big dog, William Dudley of the New York Fed, have repeatedly said, just because QE# ends that does not mean that monetary intervention of some sort is a dead issue.

One would think that the WSJ is lining up with big players in New York to help talk down the price of gold. 

The reaction in the gold market was somewhat muted, but the article serves to create more uncertainty in the precious markets, not what we need.

The continuing story is the shorting of shares in gold ETFs by major investment houses, which will help to push down spot and futures contracts in the real gold markets. 

"Without an end to this persistent ETF liquidation, the upside for gold in our opinion is severely constrained," Marc Ground, a commodity strategist at Standard Bank Plc in Johannesburg, said in a report published by Bloomburg. "Clearly, the futures market is not convinced that gold can sustain significant upside."

Worse, the Indian government, whose banking system is virtually defunct, has forbidden loans that allow everyday citizens there to borrow money to buy gold. State monopolies are generally a bad idea. This move can only serve to further undermine Indians' confidence in their central banking system and the government overall. For the rest of us, it beats up a major physical buying force during Indian festival time. As they always do, the people of India will find a way around the ludicrous, anti-market directive and buy gold anyway.

Gathered in Aylesbury, England, over the weekend, leaders of the G7 nations seemed to stand pat on Japan's monetary stimulation, which pushed the dollar to a four-year high against the yen. Japan, as you may well know, has struggled for 20 years with deflation and stagnant economic growth.

The G7 silence does not mean that any individual member cannot act on its own, as the group is not a policy-setting one but more of a forum for global economic ideas. So, we should not rule out a currency war, although the only countries that could effectively wage one are the United States and Germany, the latter in partnership, perhaps with other E.U. partners.

Should a currency war break out, it could be good for gold prices, except we have to believe that it would be a stealth war without many headlines because above all else the G7 and variations on the group (G8, G20) like to preserve amicability and not start slapping colleagues around in public. 

Michael Corleone to the Senator from Nevada in The Godfather Part II:  "We're all part of the same hypocrisy, Senator."