I just want to say that whoever thinks that buying mats at inflated prices right now is a good way to prepare for the gold squish, is only screwing himself/herself. While I understand the reason behind this logic - people want to minimise the amount of squished gold after the event happens - it's important to note that prices on the AH drop as well, sometimes even below the 50% of the current ones. Now, I can't speak for the situation on Icecrown, but as a Lordearon player, who has played there for a couple of years, I feel confident to give you a good example for what I'm saying. As I'm currently writing this post, these are the prices of primordials on the AH:
For the sake of simplicity, let's assume that the average price of a single primordial is exactly 900g. You have 1000g and decide to buy a primo just so you use your gold before it's reduced. Now you have 100g and after the squish happens, you'll be left with 50g.
If you don't use your gold at all, you'll be left with 500g. Here comes the important part - the prices of the primordials will also drop. Now, in the first few days people WILL TRY to sell them at pre-squish prices (900g) and then at halved squished prices (400-450g), but you should ignore them and wait. Eventually, the prices will drop to 300g, some people might even sell the primos for less than that. So, if you don't do anything with your gold pre-squish, you let the staff reduce it, and you wait patiently for the prices to fall to reasonable amounts after the squish, you'll be left with more gold that way.
This is one of the tricks I use. I don't remember how much gold I let the staff take away from me last year, I think it was 5k from my 10k, but after the gold squish I was left with some "pocket money" which allowed me to find good deals which otherwise would have been impossible had I had only a few gold pieces on me. I hope that what I said above will give inexperienced players some food for thought and an incentive to re-evaluate their preparation methods surrounding the gold squish.

