The record drop gold experienced on Monday has shocked investors with huge losses and wiped $560 billion from the value of central bank reserves worldwide, which have now declined by over half a trillion dollars since the 2011 high.

Over the course of the first two weeks of April alone, bullion prices dropped almost 15% or $203.50, which means it has crashed $313.75 or 18.5% so far this year.

Analysts say Western central banks have no one but themselves to blame. Many of them, led by the US Federal Reserve and the ECB, contributed to falling gold prices in an effort to support their domestic currencies.

Since central banks own 31,694.8 metric tons, or 19% of all the gold mined worldwide, based on data from the World Gold Council and Bloomberg, they have became the main losers in the precious metal debacle.

Even former Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal, Paul Craig Roberts, dubbed the Fed’s recent move an “assault on gold.”

His views are widely shared. Stephen Leeb, a regular contributor for Forbes, writes the West seems to be desperately trying to maintain the dollar and euro as reserve currencies:

I’m not a conspiracy buff, but everything suggests that the West, in ways not necessarily illegal, hopes to kneecap gold. It may work for a while, too but eventually gold will migrate into a reserve currency basket and its price will advance many times from its current level.

He concludes that present gold and commodity trading looks like a liquidity-grab, comparable to what happened during the financial crisis of 2008.