american gold eagle coin rationing ...

".. If a law restricting gold ownership is impractical today, I suppose the next best thing would be to restrict the supply of gold, while shorting COMEX gold futures to suppress the gold price. If my speculation on this turns out to be correct, the scheme can’t last for more than a few months as foreigners will smell this rat and begin to corner gold by massively hoarding the metals and eventually causing the gold ceiling to explode upwards.

If the physical supply constraint persists, we might indeed see that behind all this smoke, there’s fire (i.e., the US government has run out of gold with which it’s willing to part). Time (months, not years) will tell, quite soon..."

Full article at http://www.kitco.com/ind/Lee/aug262008.html