I have not been into bitcoin for very long but watching the difficulty this past week it sure seemed like the large miners want to keep the difficulty where it is... hash rate of the network dropped as we got closer to the difficulty switch yesterday.

Hard to say what is happening overall. I figured network hash rate would be increase to match price increases but it seems like that is not happening. There are a few trends: New gears are slow to ship (Bitmain internal power struggles?). Last gen gears have a high failure rate. Read somewhere China is in the dry season so cheap hydro power might be unavailable. Also, rumors Chinese gov't interfering in some mining operations there to interrupt fraud and money laundering. Mining hash rates dropping off towards the difficulty adjustment yesterday. Maybe the system is stabilizing and trying to find a new profitable normal? Works for me!