90% of Dutch Gold Reserve Is Held Abroad

By Jaco Schipper
Saturday, January 7, 2012

Thursday night Knot gave a live interview to the television program "Nieuwsuur" in which he announced that about 40 percent of Dutch pensioners will soon face reduced pensions. Knot also argued for mortgage tax reduction to address the excessive indebtedness of Dutch households, which is about 120 percent of gross national product. Perhaps most interesting, Knot allowed "Nieuwsuur" to film in the central bank's vault, where the Dutch audience saw what is not there.

Based on the footage shown on Thursday and additional images found at the central bank's Internet site, we had already calculated that there are some 4,500 gold bars located in the bank's vault. Our calculation showed that there are at least 56 tons of gold stored in Amsterdam, possibly more, we speculated, in the form of gold coins. We proved to be not far off, as Friday night the definitive answer was given by Knot himself.

In a follow-up by "Nieuwsuur" Friday night (see below), Knot disclosed that some 67 tons of Netherlands government gold, worth 3 billion euros, is kept in Amsterdam. Knot acknowledged on camera that this is only a small portion of the Dutch gold reserve. For practical reasons, he said, most of the 612.5 tons of official gold reserve is held abroad, so that "if the Dutch central bank wants to sell some of its gold, we don't have to ship it."

Panic Mode? The Netherlands Urged to Repatriate Gold Reserves Held Overseas

By Esther Tanquintic-Misa: Subscribe to Esther's RSS feed

January 9, 2012 12:16 AM EST

Notwithstanding how good current relations may be between the Netherlands and the U.S., once global investor confidence waned on the American dollar, the Dutch could still lose the gold reserves it placed in full trust in various strategic vaults in the US. Call it perhaps survivor's instinct.

Gold experts in the Netherlands advised the federal government it should start facilitating the repatriation of its gold reserves from the U.S. , as well as from Great Britain and Canada, after the Dutch central bank (DNB) confirmed a Dutch newspaper report by the de Volkskrant that revealed much of the country's reserves of the yellow metal are not within the country.

Dutch gold experts all the more got restless when American commentator Jim Richards, according to the Radio Netherlands Worldwide, said the US government has the power to confiscate whatever foreign gold reserves it holds in the event global interest on the dollar decelerated, still owing to the global fiscal crisis that had shaken the fiscal stability of the much developed economies.