The Most Important Geopolitical Trend of the Next Decade…Here’s How to Profit

By Nick Giambruno

The bloodbath was merciless. In 1842, 16,500 British soldiers and civilians withdrew from Kabul, Afghanistan. Only one would survive. It was the most humiliating military disaster in British history. The death toll sealed Afghanistan’s reputation as “the graveyard of empires.”

It was the desire for control of Central Asia that sucked the British Army into its Afghan disaster. For most of the 1800s, the UK and Russia pushed for power and influence in Central Asia in a competition known as “the Great Game.”

It wasn’t just to score points. The thought of losing India terrified the Brits more than anything else. India had huge economic resources, a plentiful supply of military-aged males, and strategic geography. London treasured India as “the jewel in the crown of the British Empire.”

To the Brits, the expansion of the Russian Empire into Central Asia was a threat to their control of India. Neighboring Afghanistan was their red line. If the Russians could draw Afghanistan into their sphere of influence, they would become an intolerable threat to British India.

So, in 1839, the British Army invaded. They installed a puppet regime in Kabul that would stand as a buffer to Russian influence. Every previous attempt to bring Afghanistan under foreign rule had ended badly. The Afghans are some of the toughest and most stubborn fighters in the world. The British knew that executing their plan wouldn’t be a cakewalk.

After a few years of trying and then failing to impose their will, the Brits threw in the towel. Early in 1842, 16,500 British soldiers and civilians packed up and left Kabul. As they fled through the mountainous trails, Afghan tribal fighters attacked repeatedly.

It added up to an epic massacre…..If the Afghan fighters didn’t kill you, disease and winter weather would.

After just seven days, only one man was still alive. William Brydon was bloody, torn, and exhausted. He was the only one to make it to the nearest British military outpost. That outpost was in Jalalabad, 90 miles away from Kabul. The Afghans let him live so there would be someone to tell the grisly story.

The garrison in Jalalabad lit signal fires to guide other British survivors to safety. After several days, they realized no one was left to see the light. Painter Elizabeth Butler captured the pain and desperation of the moment in her Remnants of an Army, below.

The debacle was a brutal lesson in geopolitics: geography constrains the destiny of nations and empires. Ignore that constraint at your peril. Despite their folly in Afghanistan, the British were generally shrewd players in geopolitics. It was a skill developed from a centuries-long career as an imperial power.

The godfather of geopolitical theory was British strategist Sir Halford Mackinder. Mackinder developed a general theory that connected geography with global power. To this day, planners in the US, Russia, and China study his teachings.

Mackinder argued that dominating the Eurasian landmass - Asia and Europe together - was the key to being the leading global power.

Zbigniew Brzezinski, the renowned American geopolitical strategist, echoes Mackinder on the importance of Eurasia in his book The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives: Ever since the continents started interacting politically, some five hundred years ago, Eurasia has been the center of world power.

A power that dominates “Eurasia” would control two of the world’s three most advanced and economically productive regions…rendering the Western Hemisphere and Oceania geopolitically peripheral to the world’s central continent. About 75% of the world’s people live in “Eurasia,” and most of the world’s physical wealth is there as well, both in its enterprises and underneath its soil. “Eurasia” accounts for about three-fourths of the world’s known energy resources.

A single power that controls the resources of Eurasia would be an unstoppable global superpower. If one couldn’t control all of Eurasia, the next best thing would be to dominate the world’s oceans. Control of the sea lanes means control of international trade and the flow of strategic commodities.

In 1900, the British Empire was near the peak of its strength. It was the world’s undisputed naval power. Its naval bases ringed Eurasia from the North Atlantic to the Mediterranean, from the Persian Gulf to the Indian Ocean, all the way to Hong Kong. This enabled the Brits to project event shaping military power into Eurasia.

Today, the US is far and away the world’s leading naval power. Like the British before them, the Americans have followed the geopolitical strategy of ringing Eurasia with military bases and exploiting its divisions. The aircraft carrier, with its 5,000-person crew, is the central instrument of US naval power. Putting just one of these enormous vessels into operation costs more than $25 billion.

The US Navy has 11 carriers, more than the rest of the world combined. And it’s not just ahead in quantity. The power and technological sophistication of US aircraft carriers are far beyond the capabilities of any competitor. There is simply no military force now or in the foreseeable future that could dispute US control of the high seas.....Soon, though, it may not matter.

That’s because China, Russia, and others are working on an ambitious plan. They seek to make US dominance of the seas unimportant. They’re tying Eurasia together with a web of land-based transport facilities. A constellation of supporting organizations for financial, political, and security cooperation is also in the works. If they’re successful, they’ll wipe away hundreds of years of geopolitical strategic thinking. They’ll make the current US planning paradigm obsolete. They’ll undermine the strategy that the US - and the UK before it - has relied on to dominate geopolitics. It would be the biggest shift in the global power balance since WWII.

It’s a game for the highest stakes…a real-life battle of Risk. The effort and countereffort to integrate Eurasia is the new Great Game. It’s the most important process to watch for the next 10 years. The central project to integrate Eurasia is the New Silk Road.

The World’s Most Ambitious Infrastructure Project

For over a thousand years, the Silk Road, named for the lucrative trade it carried, was the world’s most important land route. At 4,000 miles long, it passed through a chain of empires and civilizations and connected China to Europe. It was the path along which merchant Marco Polo traveled to the Orient. When he returned, he gave Europeans their first contemporary glimpse of China.

Today, China is planning to revive the Silk Road with modern transit corridors. This includes high speed rail lines, modern highways, fiber-optic cables, energy pipelines, seaports, and airports. They will link the Atlantic shores of Europe with the Pacific shores of Asia. It’s an almost unbelievable goal.

If all goes according to plan, it will be a reality by 2025. A train from Beijing would reach London in only two days.

New Silk Road Routes

The New Silk Road is history’s biggest infrastructure project. It aims to completely redraw the world economic map. And, if completed, it has the potential to be the biggest geopolitical game-changer in hundreds of years.

Tying Eurasia together with land routes frees it from dependence on maritime transport. That ends the importance of controlling the high seas. That reshapes the fundamentals of global power…and it’s exactly what the Chinese and Russians want.

In late 2013, Chinese president Xi Jinping announced the New Silk Road. The Chinese government rules by consensus. They’re careful long-term planners. When they make a strategic decision of this magnitude, you know they are totally committed. They have the political will to pull it off. They also have the financial, technological, and physical resources to do it.

The plan is still in the early stages, but important pieces are already falling into place. On November 18 of last year, a train carrying containerized goods left Yiwu, China. It arrived in Madrid, Spain, 21 days later. It was the first shipment across Eurasia on the Yiwu-Madrid route, which is now the longest train route in the world. It’s one of the first components of the New Silk Road.

As ambitious as the New Silk Road is, it’s just one aspect of the integration of Eurasia. In just the past year, a set of interlocking international organizations has emerged. These new linkages are the institutional support for a new political-economic-financial order in Eurasia.

Here are the most prominent organizations…

Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB)
China launched the AIIB in 2014 with financing for New Silk Road projects in mind. Its initial capital base is more than $100 billion.

The AIIB would be a Eurasian alternative to the US-dominated International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank. Those institutions have been standing atop the international financial system. China, Russia, and India are the main shareholders and decision makers at the AIIB.

Nearly 60 countries, mostly in Eurasia, have signed up to join the bank. Japan and the US declined to join. Then, the US government embarrassed itself by trying (and failing) to pressure allies the UK, France, and Germany into snubbing the organization.

BRICS and the New Development Bank (NDB)
The BRICS countries - Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa - are all onboard for Eurasian integration. The NDB, like the AIIB, is an international financial institution headquartered in China (but headed by an Indian banker), with $100 billion in capital. Also like the AIIB, the NDB is an alternative to the IMF and World Bank. The BRICS countries established the NDB in July 2015.

The NDB and AIIB will complement, not compete with, each other in financing the integration of Eurasia. The NDB will also finance infrastructure projects in Africa and South America. The NDB will use members’ national currencies, bypassing the US dollar. It won’t depend on US controlled institutions for anything. That reduces the NDB’s exposure to US pressure. The BRICS countries are also exploring building an alternative to SWIFT, an international payments network.

SWIFT is truly integral to the current international financial system. Without it, it’s nearly impossible to transfer money from a bank in country A to a bank in country B. In 2012, the US was able to kick Iran out of SWIFT. That crippled Iran’s ability to trade internationally. It also demonstrated that SWIFT had become a US political weapon. Neutralizing that kind of power is precisely why the BRICS countries want their own international payments system.

Eurasian Economic Union (EEU)
The EEU is a Russian-led trading bloc. It opened for business in January 2015. The EEU provides free movement of goods, services, money, and people through Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Armenia. Other countries may join. Trade discussions have started with India, Vietnam, and Iran. The EEU is gradually expanding as countries along the New Silk Road remove barriers to trade. Egypt, Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay, and Venezuela are also in trade talks with the EEU.

Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO)
In the military and security realm, there’s the SCO. Current members include China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. India and Pakistan will join by 2016. Iran is also likely to join in the future.

Putting the Pieces Together

Eurasian integration, and the US attempt to block it, will be the most important story for the next 10 years. This is the new Great Game. Oddly, the US media has barely made a peep about it. Maybe the story of Eurasian integration is just too big and complex to fit into sound bites.

The New Silk Road…the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank…the BRICS New Development Bank…an alternative SWIFT system…the Eurasian Economic Union…the Shanghai Cooperation Organization…these are the building blocks for a new world. There could be huge profits for investors who position themselves correctly ahead of this monumental trend.

There is an easy way for US investors to tap into this trend. Click here to get the latest issue of Crisis Speculator for all the details.

The article was originally published at internationalman.com.

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Capital Controls and a Bank Holiday in Greece… Here’s How You Can Profit

By Nick Giambruno

For the unprepared, it happens like a mugging….


When you hear a central banker or politician deny that something is going to happen to bank depositors, you can almost be certain that it will happen. And probably soon. Coming from a government official, the real meaning of “No, of course not” is “Could be tomorrow.”

There’s a reason for the dishonesty. The government needs to take the public by surprise. Otherwise they won’t get the results they want from capital controls or a bank holiday. The term bank holiday is a politician’s euphemism. When one happens, you won’t be celebrating. You won’t be able to access your bank account, and you’ll be worried.

How will you get by, and how long will the lockout last? And when it ends, will all your money still be there? Will any of it remain? Calling the experience a bank holiday is like calling a street mugging a surprise party. Once the banks are closed - or on “holiday,” as the government puts it - the politicians are free to help themselves to as much of the customer deposits (including yours) as they want. It’s like an "all you can steal" buffet.

A bank holiday usually dovetails with capital controls, which are restrictions on the free flow of money out of the country. Capital controls make it hard for the country’s remaining wealth to dodge a future mugging.
Bank holidays and capital controls are all about the government maximizing the amount of money available for them to confiscate during a crisis. Pen up the sheep, and they’re easier to shear.

It’s a common pattern… 1) country in financial trouble, 2) government denials, 3) surprise bank holiday, 4) wealth confiscation, and 5) capital controls.

It’s a pattern we’ve seen repeated in many countries in economic crisis.

We saw it in Cyprus during their banking crisis of 2013. The trap slammed shut without warning on an otherwise ordinary Saturday morning. The government declared a surprise bank holiday. Capital controls and a bank deposit confiscation followed. It occurred despite repeated promises from the highest Cypriot politicians that bank deposits would be safe.

And now we are seeing the same pattern in Greece.

For the past month, Greece’s government has been denying that it intends to impose capital controls. Yesterday, Sunday morning, the Greek Finance Ministry repeated the denial yet again. Then on the same day - a few hours later - the Greek government declared a weeklong bank holiday. And they would impose capital controls after all.

But don’t worry. The Greek Prime Minister promised that bank deposits would be "completely safe.”
Rather than being “completely safe,” they are far more likely to be harvested by the Greek government, which is free to do as so many troubled governments have done… take the money and run.

Given Greece’s years of chronic financial weakness, none of this should come as a surprise.

There was ample time for any Greek citizen to protect himself from what the government is now doing. But now, with the bank holiday in place, it’s too late. Moving money into something that Greek politicians can’t steal with a couple taps on a keyboard - like a Greek bank account - would have bought a large measure of protection.

A bank account in another EU country like Austria, a piece of real estate in South America, some physical gold in Singapore or a brokerage account in Hong Kong would have been just what the doctor ordered. Most people understand that it’s foolish to keep all their eggs in one basket. Yet they fail to go far enough in applying the principle. Diversification isn’t just about investing in multiple stocks or in multiple asset classes. Real diversification - the kind that keeps you safe - means holding assets in multiple countries, so that you’re not overexposed to the economic and political risks that are present in every country.

The problem is, despite having options available to them, many Greeks had a “this can’t happen here” mentality. So they did nothing to prepare. The reality is, what happened in Greece can happen in any country, as it has happened throughout history.

But could it really happen in the US? According to Judge Andrew Napolitano, the troubling answer is YES. The judge is a legal expert. He knows all about bank holidays, capital controls, and other shenanigans politicians pull. The judge has said, “People who have more than $100,000 in the bank are targets for any government that’s looking for money to shore up its own inability to manage its finances.”

The whole ordeal in Greece is yet another example of why international diversification is so important. It’s a prudent strategy because it frees you from absolute dependence on any one country. Achieve that independence, and events or policies where you live can never dominate your life. Wealthy families have been doing it for centuries. Today, with modern communications, international diversification is within everyone’s reach.

International Man’s mission is to help you protect your personal freedom and make the most of financial opportunity around the world. Global diversification is at the heart of it. Discovering the best investment opportunities around the world is another. And, ironically, the best opportunities often show up after a government has done its worst to a country. For example, in places like… Greece.

Investor sentiment in Greece is nearing the point of maximum pessimism… the point at which almost nobody wants to buy. Prices of Greek stocks have already crashed headfirst into the pavement, so we may be getting close to the best time to buy. As Baron Rothschild advised: Buy when the blood is in the streets.

That’s what crisis investing is all about, and it’s enormously profitable.

Seeking out home runs in crisis markets is exactly what Doug Casey and I do in each monthly issue of Crisis Speculator. Back in 2013 there was another crisis in a Mediterranean country… Cyprus. Doug and I put our boots to the ground in Cyprus to search the rubble for investment bargains that would be too good to resist. And we found them.

Despite all the ugly headlines, sound, productive, and well run Cypriot businesses continued to produce earnings and pay dividends. Anyone with a little money and a cool head could have bought their stocks on the ultra cheap.

One of the Cyprus companies we recommended has more than tripled as of this writing. Another has more than doubled. Two others have come close to a double. Our readers have loved the experience.
We expect that even bigger bargains are emerging nearby, in Greece.

The financial crisis in Greece is not going to destroy the solid companies operating there. But it is going to make their stocks extremely cheap. And that could mean huge profits for you.

For full coverage of this rich profit opportunity, be sure to check out Crisis Speculator by clicking here.

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The Biggest Lesson from Microsoft’s Recent Battle with the US Government

By Nick Giambruno, Senior Editor, InternationalMan.com

A court ruling involving Microsoft’s offshore data storage offers an instructive lesson on the long reach of the US government—and what you can do to mitigate this political risk.

A federal judge recently agreed with the US government that Microsoft must turn over its customer data that it holds offshore if requested in a search warrant. Microsoft had refused because the digital content being requested physically was located on servers in Ireland.

Microsoft said in a statement that “a US prosecutor cannot obtain a US warrant to search someone’s home located in another country, just as another country’s prosecutor cannot obtain a court order in her home country to conduct a search in the United States.”

The judge disagreed. She ruled that it’s a matter of where the control of that data is being exercised, not of where the data is physically located.

This ruling is not at all surprising. It’s long been crystal clear that the US will aggressively claim jurisdiction if the situation in question has even the slightest, vaguest, or most indirect connection. Worse yet, as we’ve seen with the extraterritorial FATCA law, the US is not afraid to impose its own laws on foreign countries.
One of the favorite pretexts for a US connection is the use of the US dollar. The US government claims that just using the US dollar—which nearly every bank in the world does—gives it jurisdiction, even if there were no other connections to the US. It’s quite obviously a flimsy pretext, but it works.

Recently the US government fined (i.e., extorted) over $8 billion from BNP Paribas for doing business with countries it doesn’t like. The transactions were totally legal under EU and French law, but illegal under US law. The US successfully claimed jurisdiction because the transactions were denominated in US dollars—there was no other US connection.

This is not typical of how most governments conduct themselves. Not because they don’t want to, but because they couldn’t get away with it. The US, on the other hand—as the world’s sole financial and military superpower (for now at least)—can get away with it.

This of course translates into a uniquely acute amount of political risk for anyone who might fall under US jurisdiction somehow, especially American citizens. A prudent person will look to mitigate this risk through international diversification.

So let’s see what kinds of lessons this recent court ruling offers for those formulating their diversification strategies.

The Biggest Lesson

The most important lesson of the Microsoft case is that any connection to the US government —no matter how small—exposes you to big risks.

If there’s anything connected to the US, you can count on the US government using that vulnerability as a pressure point. Microsoft, being a US company with a huge US presence, is of course exposed to having its arms easily twisted by the US government—regardless if the data it stores is physically offshore.

Now let’s assume the company in question was a non-US company, with no US presence whatsoever (not incorporated in the US, no employees in the US, no servers or computer infrastructure in the US, no bank accounts in the US): then the US government would have a much more difficult time accessing the data and putting pressure on the company to comply with its demands.

It’s important to remember that even if a company or person is more immune to traditional pressures, there are plenty of unconventional ways the US can respond.

The US government could always resort to hacking, blackmail, or other acts of subterfuge to access foreign data that is seemingly out of its reach. This is where encryption comes in. We know from the Edward Snowden revelations that when properly executed, encryption works. For all practical purposes as things are today, strong and proper encryption places data beyond the reach of any government or anyone without the encryption keys.

Of course, there is no such thing as 100% protection, and there never will be. But using encryption in combination with a company that—unlike Microsoft—is 100% offshore is the best protection you can currently get for your digital assets.

Once you get the hang of it, encryption is actually easy to use. Be sure to check out the Easy Email Encryption guide; it’s free and located in the Guides and Resources section of the IM site.

How easily the US can access your offshore digital data will also come down to the politics and relationship between the US and the country in question. You can count on the UK, Canada, Australia, and others to easily roll over for anything the US wants. On the other hand, you can bet that a country with frosty relations with the US—like China or Russia—will toss most US requests in the garbage. This political arbitrage is what international diversification is all about.

The lessons of the Microsoft case extend to offshore banking.

It’s much better to do your offshore banking with a bank that has no branch in the US. For example, if you open an HSBC account in Hong Kong, the US government can simply pressure HSBC’s large presence in the US to get at your Hong Kong account—much like how the US government pressured Microsoft’s US presence to get at its data physically stored in Ireland.

Obtaining the Most Diversification Benefits

Most of us know about the benefits of holding uncorrelated assets in an investment portfolio to reduce overall risk. In a similar fashion, you can reduce your political risk—the risk that comes from governments. You do this by spreading various aspects of your life—banking, citizenship, residency, business, digital presence, and tax domicile—across politically uncorrelated countries to obtain the most diversification benefits. The optimal outcome is to totally eliminate your dependence on any one country.

This means you’ll want to diversify into countries that won’t necessarily roll over easily for other countries. This is of course just one consideration, and it needs to be balanced with other factors. For example, Russia isn’t going to be easily pressured by the US government. But that doesn’t mean it’s a good idea to bank there.

Personally, I’m a fan of jurisdictions that are friendly with China—which helps insulate them from US pressure—but have a degree of independence and are competently run, like Hong Kong and Singapore.
Naturally, things can change quickly. New options emerge, while others disappear. This is why it’s so important to have the most up-to-date and accurate information possible. That’s where International Man comes in. Be sure to check out our Going Global publication, where we discuss the latest and best international diversification strategies in great, actionable detail.

The article The Biggest Lesson from Microsoft’s Recent Battle with the U.S. Government was originally published at Casey Research

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Peter Schiff Shares His Offshore Strategies

By Nick Giambruno

I’d bet that most International Man readers are familiar with Peter Schiff. He is a financial commentator and author, CEO of Euro Pacific Capital, and is known for accurately predicting the 2008 financial crisis.

He also has a very keen understanding of internationalization. Peter shares with me his strategies in this must read discussion below that I am happy to bring exclusively to International Man readers. (If you are not already a member, you can join for free here.)

Nick Giambruno: Peter, do you see the potential for another financial crisis in the U.S. playing out in the not so distant future?

Peter Schiff: Unfortunately, yes. I mean, how soon is very difficult to tell. In fact, right now you’ve got a high level of complacency. The stock markets are rallying to new highs, nominal highs. People seem to be convinced that the worst is behind us, that the central banks of the world have solved their problems by papering them over. But, you know, I don’t think they’ve solved anything. I think they’ve compounded the underlying problems that caused the last crisis, and so now the next crisis will be that much worse because of what the central banks did, in particular the Federal Reserve.

The Fed is right now trying to prop the economy up, the housing market up with cheap money, and it is operating under the delusion that one day it can take that cheap money away and the economy and the housing market will just sustain on their own, but that’s not possible. The Fed is building an economy that is completely dependent on that cheap money. And so if you take it away, the economy implodes, but if you don’t take it away, then it’s worse.

Nick Giambruno: So what measures do you see coming into place—things such as capital controls?

Peter Schiff: Well, certainly as currencies depreciate, governments look to try to find ways to stop the bleeding. What’s really is going on with inflation is that you have a huge transfer of wealth from savers and lenders to debtors, and of course the US government is the world’s biggest debtor, but a lot of American voters are in debt too.

If you’re a saver and you don’t want to watch your assets confiscated through the printing press, then you’re going to try to protect yourself. You might do that by moving your dollars abroad, converting them to foreign currencies, trying to get out of harm’s way, and that’s when you have the government potentially coming in with capital controls.

Putting taxes on foreign currency transactions or maybe outright prohibiting them altogether, that will make it more difficult for you or more expensive to take protective measures. I think we’ve already got the beginnings of capital controls in the United States. The government is making it very difficult for Americans to do business abroad. Many foreign financial institutions, banks, and even bullion depositories are refusing to do business with American citizens for fear of retaliation by the IRS or other government agencies.

Nick Giambruno: So what can Americans and others living under a desperate government do to minimize this risk?

Peter Schiff: Well, the first thing that you could do is minimize your purchasing power risk. So you don’t have to get your money into a foreign bank or foreign brokerage account to get out of the dollar. I help Americans diversify globally within a US account, but their portfolio consists of foreign assets, whether it’s foreign bonds, government bonds, corporate bonds, foreign stocks, dividend-paying stocks, commodities, or precious metals. These are all things that will protect purchasing power in an inflationary time period, and things that the federal government—the Federal Reserve—can’t levy the inflation tax on.

If you’re more worried about political risk—about the US government seizing your assets—then you want to take the next step. This is not just getting out of the dollar, but getting your money out of the country. But again, the US government is making that more difficult right now.

I know personally. I set up a foreign brokerage firm as a subsidiary of my foreign bank, which I also set up, called Euro Pacific Bank. I did this predominantly for foreigners who were having trouble investing with my US brokerage firm. The securities rules and regulations are now so onerous that it almost caused me to view any foreigner as a terrorist. So if somebody in Australia wanted to open up an account with me, there was so much paperwork involved that oftentimes they would just give up halfway through the process. So what I did is I set up this foreign bank so that I wouldn’t have to operate under those confines, so I can be more competitive to a foreign investor, but I can’t offer these services to Americans.

My foreign bank is no different than many other foreign banks. In order to really protect the privacy of my foreign customers, I can’t accept American customers. And if I accepted American customers, my compliance cost would be so high that I would have to charge my foreign customers more for transactions to try to stay in business. So to mitigate all that regulation and the potential of having to share all the information on my foreign clients with the US government, I’m just not taking American customers with my foreign bank.

Nick Giambruno: So Euro Pacific Bank, where is it headquartered and why did you choose that jurisdiction?

Peter Schiff: It’s in St Vincent and the Grenadines (the Caribbean). I did it for a number of reasons: it’s close to me, but also because of the banking laws. You have secrecy, privacy, and you have no tax. They’re not going to impose any income tax on my company as an offshore bank, they’re also not going to impose any taxes, any withholding taxes on my bank’s customers’ interest income or their capital gains. And no one is going to pierce the wall of secrecy. You’re going to have to go in to a St. Vincent’s court and get a local court order to get any information from my bank.

The bank is regulated, but it’s not nearly as onerous as the type of regulations that I would face trying to do this business from the United States. In fact, some of the things we’re doing offshore might be completely impossible because they would no longer be economically viable if I tried to do them in America, but I can do them offshore because the government doesn’t impose these artificial barriers.(Editor’s Note: You can find out more about Euro Pacific Bank here.)

Nick Giambruno: Generally speaking, which countries are you particularly bullish on?

Peter Schiff: It’s kind of like a monetary or economic triage; I’m always looking around the world to see which countries are in the least bad shape, which countries are the least reckless and the least irresponsible. You really can’t find any one country that’s doing it perfectly. You just have to find the ones that are making the fewest mistakes.

And I think high on that list are Singapore and Hong Kong. Those markets are relatively free of regulation, free of taxation. I mean, it’s not nonexistent, but on a relative basis you have a lot more freedom there, and so you have a lot more prosperity there. You have much better economic fundamentals. And not just in those two places, but in Southeast Asia in general, in a lot of the emerging economies, you’ll find a lot less government and a lot more freedom. People are working harder, they’re saving, they’re producing, and they’re exporting. You don’t have these trade deficits, budget deficits, and you don’t have armies of people looking to retire on government entitlements. In Europe, we still like Switzerland even though they are making mistakes tying their currency to the euro. I think eventually they will change that policy. Scandinavia, we have been investors in Norway, we’ve been investors in Sweden. Also Australia and New Zealand have been longtime favorites. We’ve been investing down there or even closer to home in Canada. We do have some investments in South America. We’re diversifying around the world trying to get into the right countries, the right currencies, the right asset classes.

Nick Giambruno: On a different note, we’ve seen the number of US citizens renouncing their citizenship sharply increase. We have also seen high-profile people like Tina Turner and Eduardo Saverin give up their US citizenship. Would Tina be eligible to use Euro Pacific Bank?

Peter Schiff: Yes, once you renounce your US citizenship. The only people who can’t bank with me are American citizens, or green card holders. So once you are no longer an American citizen, as long as you don’t reside in the United States, then you are welcome at the bank.

I think a lot of people are doing this obviously for tax reasons, although they can’t necessarily claim it’s for tax reasons. You have to fill out a form if you want to renounce your citizenship—which, by the way, you can only get from a foreign embassy or consulate. Those forms used to be free. Now they’re $500 apiece. So think about that. If they can charge you $500 for that form, they could charge $5,000, they could charge $5,000,000. They could basically make it impossible for you to leave. And they’re trying to make it more difficult ever since Eduardo Saverin from Facebook went to Singapore.

Now the government is trying to come up with all sorts of ways to punish Americans who try to give up their citizenship, and this really is the sign of a nation in decay. Fifty years ago, nobody would want to give up American citizenship. They would cherish it. The fact that so many people are paying tremendous amounts of money to get this albatross off their neck shows you how much times have changed, that an American passport is not an asset to be cherished but a liability that people are willing to pay to get rid of.

Nick Giambruno: And what about yourself? Do you believe you are adequately diversified internationally?

Peter Schiff: I think my investments are; I own a lot of foreign stocks. I have a lot of precious metals, I have a lot of mining shares. But I still live in the United States, so I’m obviously still vulnerable here. My family is here, so I haven’t done anything about a physical exit strategy. Although I do think I have financial resources that would afford me the ability to relocate, but I haven’t actually taken any steps other than setting up a foreign business. I have the foreign bank in the Caribbean. I have a brokerage firm Euro Pacific Canada, and so I’ve got offices up there.

I’m also thinking about opening up an office in Singapore and trying to move more of my business—particularly my asset management business—to move it from the US. Not only because of favorable tax treatment outside the US, but because of the regulatory environment. If you want to be globally competitive, you need to be in an area where you can minimize these costs because if I have those costs and my competitors don’t, then I am at a disadvantage. And also because I think that over time people are going to be more and more hesitant about sending their money to the United States. So if I’m going to manage money, I might have to manage it offshore, because I think people will be worried about sending it here. They might be worried that the US government might take it.

If it ever gets really, really bad that you feel that you have to leave, by then it might be illegal to take any gold or silver out of the country. Right now you can take more than $10,000 worth of cash or cash equivalents—which would include gold bullion—out of the country as long as you tell the government that you’re taking it. And if you don’t tell them and they catch you, there’s a big fine and jail penalty. But one day it might not be the case. It might be that you are prohibited from taking any significant amount of money out of the country, and who knows what the penalty might be if they catch you. But if it’s already out of the country, then you don’t have to worry, because you’re leaving with nothing and the money is on the other side of the border waiting for you.
 
Nick Giambruno: So the idea is to preempt capital controls?

Peter Schiff: Yeah, well, you get out the window before they slam it shut. That’s the whole idea, and right now those windows are shutting all around as more and more offshore institutions are saying “no thank you” to an American customer. But the other reason that you want to act sooner too is if they impose exchange controls or fees on purchasing precious metals. They don’t ban them, but they have a big tax on the transaction or a big tax on the foreign exchange. If you want to buy Swiss francs, they can have a transaction tax. You want to get your money out of the dollar before those taxes are imposed, because if you wait until they’re imposed, then you can’t get as much money out, because a lot of it is being lost to taxes.

In getting out of the dollar, you’re trying to avoid the inflation tax, but they’re hitting you with some other kind of tax in the process because that’s really what they are trying to do. A lot of people are worrying about the income tax or the estate tax and they go through elaborate means to try to minimize those taxes, but then they leave themselves vulnerable to what might be the biggest tax of all: and that’s the inflation tax. So you have to act to protect yourself before so many people are trying to protect themselves that the government makes it almost impossible to do so.

Editor’s Note: Internationalization is your ultimate insurance policy. Whether it’s with a second passport, offshore physical gold storage, or other measures, it is critically important that you dilute the amount of control the bureaucrats in your home country wield over you by diversifying your political risk.

You can find Casey Research’s A-Z guide on internationalization by clicking here.

The article Peter Schiff Shares His Offshore Strategies was originally published at International Man

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