PinnacleGold

Precious metals have fallen alongside essentially all other assets and the timing almost entirely relates to the Fed's recent policy statement. The Fed indicated that they would not be pursuing a much anticipated third quantitative easing program (QE3) as of yet:

Money Printing By the Fed: Chart of Assets on the Fed's Balance Sheet

Instead, the Fed re-instituted a program called 'Operation Twist', which is designed to flatten the yield curve (make short term interest rates closer to long term ones) by swapping short term securities on their balance sheet for longer term ones in the open market. The unintended consequence of this policy is the minimization of the profits banks traditionally earn by borrowing at short rates and investing at longer, ideally higher yielding, maturities.

The lack of a balance sheet expansion by the Fed and the lack of incentives for banks to expand their balance sheets couples together to form a credit deflation threat. When credit unwinds, currency performs well because the actual quantity of liquid dollars in the system is outweighed by the credit structure built above it. The implosion of the house of credit leads to increasing demand pressure on its base, liquid money foundations and this is what drives up the price of dollars.

See the quantity of narrow money (Monetary Base) in existence versus total outstanding credit:

When the blue line falls, the pressure on the red line, liquid dollars, is significant until the Fed comes around and prints up a ton of liquid dollars, or the demand wanes. What is likely to happen is that the Fed will print up a mass amount of currency AND the demand for dollars will fall, meaning precious metals will rise significantly as the dollar collapses over time.