The spike in hash rate is enough to cause speculation and an increase in Bitcoins price, like the market has seen this past week. Its somewhat of a feedback loop, higher hash rate means a higher network effect, which makes investors buy more Bitcoin, and that leads to more profitable mining conditions and therefore an even higher hash rate.
Oh, god!!!!
The hashrate has gone up by x3 since January and has gone up at every difficulty adjustment minus the one in mid-July, but contrary to this the price has always gone down, in hops indeed, but still down.
There is no loop and there is no effect hashrate > price. It's always the other way around.