I'm genuinely laughing right now  
Price on July 15 ~  9241 difficulty 17,345,948,872,516
Price right now  ~ 20700 difficulty 18,670,168,558,399
Although the price more than doubled, mikeywith was off with his top difficulty prediction by only 7%, on the other hand, I'm off by 208%. Adding insult to injury we're looking at another negative adjustment even as we speak, although it's just 8 blocks behind and only two days have passed.

So, bottom line, right now I can't think of any other explanation other than the lack of actual gear, probably there is simply no mining gear available to keep the hashrate going up and at the same time some is not mining because it's either locked in warehouses that have stopped receiving cheap energy (the ones in Yunnan we discussed earlier) and they are to selling their gear or it hasn't reached the new customers.
Probably very good news for miners right now, they can get some serious rewards with little to fear that the difficulty with suddenly spike up, no matter how many want to get into mining, they simply can't. Merry Christmas, isn't it?

LE: And thank you guys for sharing your experience about the mining gear failure rates, next time I'll start babbling around I will take two moments and take that into consideration also