when you see the gas price at pumps and food price in stores, you know there won't be recovery. people won't have extra money to do traveling or other activities to boost consuming. but fed still insists that the recovery is ongoing and inflation is still low and the taper will be continued and interest rate will be raised. it gives bankers good excuses to smash the gold. All the above they do is actually to save the confidence in us dollar, which is close to the tipping point due to massive QE and treasuries being dumped by foreign creditors. But things will only get worse as they taper and interest rate therefore keeps raising. The insolvent us gov will default if the interest reaches above some point. so they either default or find another excuse to increase QE. There are a few hot spots right now, syria, iran and ukraine. will be the war the excuse to increase QE? i don't know. anyway even though goldman sach plans to smash gold to 1050 this year. I still believe 2014 is good year for gold and silver.