Is the U.S. Running Out of Physical Gold?

A few days back we had posed the question "Why is the U.S. Mint is always running out of gold coin inventory? In recent days, the U.S. Mint has once again announced that it is suspending sales of all one ounce gold coins due to shortage of physical gold. Now given that the U.S. government has one of the largest hoards of physical gold in the world this seems extremely strange. Especially when other government mints, the Canadian for example, don't seem to have any major problems meeting demand...so what gives?

The Golden Truth Blog offers an intriguing hypothesis, which we post below:

The Gold Bullion Act of 1985 authorizes the U.S. Mint to use U.S. Government gold reserves: "In the absence of available supplies of such gold at the average world price, the Secretary may use gold from reserves held by the United States to mint the coins issued under section 5112(i) of this title. The Secretary shall issue such regulations as may be necessary to carry out this paragraph”.
It would seem that if the United States has 8100 tons of gold, as reported by the Federal Reserve and U.S. Treasury, then there should NEVER be a shortage of gold with which to mint coins. Inquring minds want to know, where is all the gold? How come the U.S. Mint didn't foresee the same shortage everyone else in the market has been seeing and make sure that it had plenty of production blanks to meet demand? If the Comex supposedly has 9 million ounces of 100 oz. bullion bars, the Mint should have been able to take delivery of some of that gold in order to meet its legal obligation to produce gold coins in an amount that meets demand. How come the U.S. Mint is not using U.S. Government gold reserves, as per the law?
Something smells fishy here, and I think we all know what it is: the physical supply of gold is extremely tight, the paper shorts in gold (Comex, GLD, LME, etc) are in big trouble and the price of gold is now at the mercy of the physical market. I would suggest this situation is one of the primary reasons that the Federal Reserve and its supporters in Congress are going to any lengths to derail efforts to force an independent audit of the Fed, which would include a physical audit of the gold it supposedly holds.