Dutch Central Bank orders pension fund to sell its gold

The Associated Press reports that central banks are becoming ever more intrusive as they attempt to prop up failing political currencies, this time the Euro. By ordering private entities to divest their gold holdings, the central bank accomplishes a number of things: (1) it will suppress the market price of gold, (2) it will prop up the euro, (3) it will support government bond sales at artificially low interest rates (This particular pension fund holds most of its assets in the form of German and Dutch government bonds, and presumably will use the proceeds from its gold sales to add to those holdings).

When central banks can tell private entities how to invest their resources, they ratchet up their economic and political control to new heights. It’s looking ever more likely that governments will demand that private citizens surrender their gold holdings, as the U.S. did in 1933.