Jim Rickards of Omnis has an interesting anecdote about global gold mania.

He tells King World News of a client of a major Swiss bank who was refused access to his one ton of physical gold ($40M) and was forced to make threats to convince the bank otherwise:

“Correct, and through all of that eventually the individual did get his gold...it took lawyers, it took threats of publicity, it took a lot of pressure to do that, which my inference is that that gold was not there. The bank had to scramble, go out and find it somewhere before they could make good delivery.”

To be safe, Rickards says you should take out your gold out of the banks before governments freeze physical holdings.

The risk isn't unfeasible. Gold is already treated as a paper asset, sold in futures, options and ETFs. All you need is a government order and "gold" becomes something that isn't to be backed by real gold. At which point you'd be wise to have real gold in a treasure chest at home.