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I thought this problem had been resolved (beyond my ken how).
But it isn't.
Create a folder; put on Desktop.
Create a document or cut-and-paste an article or download a .eml document; then put in folder.
Drag item back to Desktop, which then sees it snap to upper left corner of screen; do with more items from folder, and they stack up in upper left corner of screen.
Drag one or all to another spot on Desktop and they stay where they're dropped.
Put back in folder and then drag and drop onto Desktop and they now stay where they're dropped.

Summary:
When you drag a file FROM a direct subfolder of the desktop TO the desktop, and wait for the icon to change appearance before releasing it, the icon appears in the upper left corner (centered at the point (0,0)) rather than where you dropped it.

Steps to Reproduce:
FOLLOW THESE STEPS EXACTLY! Some steps that appear to be inconsequential turn out to be important.

1) Log in to the Guest account, ensuring that you're working with a pristine user folder with default settings. (The problem, whatever it is, turns out to be unrelated to Preferences, .DS_Store files, View Options, etc., but being able to reproduce the problem while logged in as Guest is the proof of that.)

2) Create a new folder on the Desktop. (You can rename it, or leave it titled "untitled folder", but it must be directly on the desktop, not in some other location in the filesystem.) For convenience, you can open a window into the folder, but don't cover up the folder icon.

3) Get some test documents. The "About Stacks" and "About Downloads" documents in the Dock will do nicely. (Those are both PDFs, but the problem occurs with any file type, even folders.)

4) Drag a test document to the desktop ICON of the folder created in step 2. It won't work to drag the document into the folder WINDOW, nor to an icon on the Dock. (The key element seems to be that you drag to an ICON on the DESKTOP. An alias on the desktop pointing to a folder located elsewhere will also trigger the bug.)

5) Drag the test document from the folder WINDOW to the desktop, but don't release the mouse immediately. After about a second, Finder will adjust the appearance of the icon to match what it will look like on the desktop. After the icon transition is complete, release the mouse (or trackpad) button, completing the drag. (The bug won't manifest itself if you drop the icon before its appearance changes.)

6) The icon will appear in the upper left corner of the desktop. Its center will be at (0,0), but there will be enough of it poking out from behind the menubar that you can drag it to where you wanted it to go. Future drags, from anywhere to anywhere, all work as expected until you repeat step 4.


Expected Results:
Icons dragged to the desktop should always appear where they're dragged to (View Options permitting).

Actual Results:
Icons dragged from a direct subfolder of the desktop to a desktop whose View Options do not imply sorting will appear at the wrong place. (The Guest Account starts with View Options for the desktop set to "Sort by none", another reason for step 1 above.)

Setting View Options for the desktop to "Sort by: Snap to Grid" provides only temporary relief. The first two files dragged to the desktop after setting that option will snap to grid positions near (0,0). The third and later files dragged to the desktop ignore the grid and move to (0,0).