ECB independent?

Last week I received an interesting question from someone on Twitter about the independence of the ECB. He didn't believe the ECB is independent as politicians have a lot of power. As I am confronted with more question's about this independency, it is a good subject for a post. A post which I will try to keep short and most easy to read. Leading in this will be Mr Duisenbergs' speech (ECB president 1998-2003) in may 2002. Here, "The Euro-our money", was honoured by the Charlemagne Prize association. Link

In order to come to an answer to this question about the ECB we better begin to look at the currency issued by the ECB, the Euro. Known by many as the coins and banknotes in our wallet. Now, the Euro stands for far more than this. This currency has become a symbol for underlying political vision. It was born out of a believe that in reaching peace and prosperity we should unify Europe. Also, shown by the next quote, the Euro is some kind of social contract.

Will the Dutch gold ever come home?

For years the amount of gold held abroad by the Dutch Central Bank (after this named DNB) was only to guess. Nout Wellink (former president of DNB from 1997-2011) never answered any question regarding this topic. But with the new president Klaas Knot just several months in office things have changed. During an interview with Nieuwsuur last January he stated that about 67 ton was stored in Amsterdam. Better translated as "I thought it was about 67 tonnes". Link (in Dutch)

With total holdings at 612,5 tonnes, this leaves 90% of our national gold stored abroad. And as the Ministry of Finance replied before; it is stored in London, Ottawa and New York. Link (in Dutch) 
In this post my intention is to discover what made Mr Knot make this statement. As Mr Wellink had his reasons to remain in silence, so has Mr Knot his reasons to be open. Will this eventually return our gold?

Euro vs Dollar

When people say: " The Euro and the Dollar are all the same, and the causes of the problems we face today", it's sometimes hard not to giggle. The idea comes to my mind that there are in fact a lot of similarities between these two currencies. As there are similarities, there are differences. This subject isn't  easy to explain, but I'm going to give it a try! Not with throwing difficult terms at your face or hard to grasp mind games, but with some graphs. With the idea that one picture says more than a thousand words.

As we know, money has three functions:
1. Medium of exchange
2. Unit of account
3. Store of value.