Bernanke's claim that gold is just a trinket one can fondle with no inherent value, the local banks had gone as far as paying the local residents a dividend to "store" their gold (recall all those charges against gold that it never, ever pays a dividend....).

However, as we subsequently warned, any time a bank, and especially an entire banking sector, is willing to pay you paper "dividends" for your gold, run, because all this kinda of (s)quid pro quo usually ends up as a confiscation ploy.

Sure enough, as Dow Jones reports today, the gold, which did not belong to the banks and was merely being warehoused there (or so the fine print said), was promptly sold by these same institutions to generate cash proceeds and to boost liquidity reserves using other people's gold, obtained under false pretenses.

Now, it is time for the forced sellers to become forced buyers, as "the State Bank of Vietnam, the country's central bank, may allow local banks to buy up to 20 metric tons of gold over the next two months to improve their liquidity ahead of a ban soon on their use of gold as a means of boosting their operating capital."