The Dutch blog Vrijspreker today reports that the Netherlands secretary of the treasury has answered half-candidly the questions put to him by the Dutch Socialist Party about the disposition of the Dutch National Bank's gold reserves. According to Vrijspreker:
-- The Dutch National Bank has not loaned gold since 2008 but has sold 1,100 of its 1,700 tonnes of gold since 1991.
-- The Dutch gold reserves are vaulted in New York, Ottawa, London, and Amsterdam, but the bank would not specify how much was at each place. So it may be fairly assumed that the Dutch gold vaulted in London and New York, what the Bundesbank famously calls "gold trading centers," has been made available for surreptitious gold market intervention to suppress the monetary metal's price.
-- The Dutch National Bank or at least the Dutch treasury secretary acknowledge that gold is not just money but the best sort of money: "The DNB's physical gold holdings function as the ultimate reserve and anchor of trust in times of financial crisis."
-- The bank or the treasury secretary answer ambiguously as to why the bank records "gold and gold receivables" in the same entry on its books, as if loaned gold is still in the vault: "DNB follows the rules for valuation, determination of result, and balance sheet presentation of the European System of Central Banks. The asset 'Gold and Gold Receivables' reflects the physical gold inventory."
-- The treasury secretary says "a wide group of countries" has "sold gold in the past decade, including France, Spain, the United Kingdom, and Switzerland." While the U.K. and Swiss sales are acknowledged and well known, the French and Spanish sales are not.
The treasury secretary's answers are recorded along with some commentary at Vrijspreker here:
http://www.vrijspreker.nl/wp/2011/10/dutch-secretary-of-the-treasure-ans...
