There are two distinct gold markets, paper and physical, and at the moment there is quite a large disconnect between the two. Physical gold is in short supply (less than demand). At least a couple national mints have stopped production of gold coins due to a lack of supply. The amount of paper gold, like paper money, is limited only by how fast you can run the printing presses. There is an utter lack of transparency as to how much of this paper gold is backed up by physical. I think a surge in conversion of paper futures to physical by taking delivery rather than rolling over might reveal that there is a lot more paper than physical to back it up. As to the disparity in prices, it's simply a matter of shorting the market. You can short the paper market to depress prices, but not if it requires delivery of physical. Aside from manipulation by "whomever", I think the paper market is also being depressed for the same reason all stocks are being hit: people are selling whatever they can to raise cash, meet margin calls, etc. Selling physical is a bit more involved, and the type of people who have physical are unlikely to sell. After all, times like these are exactly the reason they are holding gold. And I think gold bugs are less likely to be on margin (IMHO).

Disclaimer: I'm not a gold bug, but I do think the market is manipulated. I don't attribute every movement to manipulation, especially now when there are additional factors affecting the market.