I don’t think the government would purposely want to start a speculation in gold, since it wouldn’t impress the people (voters). Governments hate gold anyways, since they can’t tax and monitor the people if everyone avoids using his bank account and starts using gold. Also, they want to pay their government bills and salaries, and by buying gold, they would have to print even more money for themselves to offset the money they already printed for gold. And last, the US doesn’t produce as much gold as South-America/Africa/Australia, so a high price would benefit those countries. Even in good faith, gold doesn’t really create any productive capacity or jobs, at least in the stock and RE bubble the beneficiaries were in the US.
There could be, however, inadvertent buying of gold by the government if things get really bad, and the dollar collapses. To restore faith, or later to be able to sell bonds, the government might slowly accumulate gold to have something real after the crash. This is in my opinion the reason why they don’t sell any now.
