Prove You’re Not a Terrorist

By Jeff Thomas

Recently, France decided to crack down on those people who make cash payments and withdrawals and who hold small bank accounts. The reason given was, not surprisingly, to “fight terrorism,” the handy catchall justification for any new restriction governments wish to impose on their citizens. French Finance Minister Michel Sapin stated at the time, “terrorism feeds on fraud, money laundering, and petty trafficking.”

And so, in future, people in France will not be allowed to make cash payments exceeding €1,000 (down from €3,000). Additionally, cash deposits and withdrawals totaling more than €10,000 per month will be reported to Tracfin—an anti-fraud and money laundering agency. Currency exchange will also be further restricted. Anyone changing over €1,000 to another currency (down from €8,000) will be required to show an identity card.

Do you need to make a deposit on a car? That might be suspect. Did you just deposit a dividend you received? It might be a payment from a terrorist organisation. Planning a holiday and need some cash? You might need to be investigated for terrorism. And France is not alone. In the US, federal law requires banks to file a “suspicious activity report” (SAR) on their customers whenever a customer requests a suspicious transaction. (In 2013, 1.6 million SAR’s were submitted.)

As to what may be deemed “suspicious,” it may be any transaction of $5,000 or more, but it may also mean a series of transactions that, together, exceed $5,000. The reader may be saying to himself, “But that’s just normal, everyday banking business—that means anybody, any time, could be reported.” If so, he would be correct. Essentially, any banking activity the reader conducts could be regarded as suspect.

In Italy, in 2011, Prime Minister Mario Monti began working to end the right of landlords, tradesmen, and small businesses to perform large transactions in cash, which critics say help them evade taxation. In December of that year, his government reduced the maximum allowed cash payment from €2,500 euros to €1,000.

Spain has outlawed cash transactions over €2,500. The justification? “To crack down on the black market and tax evaders.”

In Sweden, the country where the first banknote was created in 1661, the use of cash is being steadily eliminated. Increasingly, expenses are paid and purchases made by cellphone text message, and many banks have stopped handling cash altogether.

Denmark’s central bank, Nationalbanken, has another justification for ending its use of banknotes—producing paper money and coinage is not cost effective.

Israel also seeks to end the use of cash. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s chief of staff has announced a three phase plan to “all but do away with cash transactions in Israel.”

Individuals and businesses would initially continue to be allowed to make small cash transactions, but eventually, all transactions would be converted to electronic forms of payment. The justification being used in Israel is that “cash is bad,” because it encourages an underground economy and enables tax evasion.

Across the Atlantic, banks and governments are on a similar campaign. A 2012 law in Mexico bans large cash transactions, with a maximum penalty of five years in prison.

In August 2014, Uruguay passed the Financial Inclusion Law, which limits cash transactions to US$5,000. In future, all transactions over that amount will be required to be performed electronically. The crying need for such a law? The stated reason was to improve the country’s credit ratings.

The Elimination of Paper Currency

In recent years, in commenting on the inevitability of currency collapse in those countries that are indebted beyond the possibility of repayment, I’ve made the prediction that governments and banks would jointly resort to the elimination of paper currency and replace it with an electronic one.

Some readers have understandably regarded the prediction as “alarmist.” After all, the idea is so farfetched—paper currency may be conceptually flawed, but it’s been around for a long time. But banks and governments seek total control of money, and this can only be achieved if they possess a monopoly on the flow of money.

If a worldwide system can be implemented in which currency transactions can only take place electronically through banking institutions, the banks will then have total power over the ability of a people to function economically. But why would any government allow the banks such dictatorial monetary control? The answer is that governments would then realise a long held, but heretofore impossible dream: to have access to a record of every monetary transaction that takes place for every single individual.

Governments have been both more proactive and bolder than I had anticipated and are simply imposing the restrictions worldwide under the justifications previously stated. As yet, there hasn’t been any backlash, and it may be that people worldwide may simply swallow the pill, not understanding what it means to their economic liberty.

If the public are not treating the new system as serious business, governments most assuredly are. Bankers on both sides of the Atlantic have forcibly become unpaid government spies. If they don’t comply, they can be fined and/or lose their banking charter. Directors can be imprisoned.

The US Justice Department already wants to take this overreach even further. Banks are now being asked to call the authorities whenever something “suspicious” occurs, presumably so that immediate action may be taken. What we are witnessing is the creation of totalitarian control of your finances. The implication that you may have some sort of terrorist involvement is a smokescreen.

As the above information attests, if for any reason you object to any of these measures, you have already been forewarned—you may be suspected of money laundering, tax evasion, or even terrorism. If you use cash for any reason—to pay your rent, to buy a used car, or (soon) to pay for your lunch—you may trigger an investigation. (The onus of proof that you are not guilty good will be on you.)

The take away from this discussion? Totalitarian control of currency is an inevitability, and it will take place sooner rather than later. The only question is whether the reader can retain some control of his wealth. Fortunately, wealth may still be held in land and precious metals, but these are only safe if they’re held outside a country that seeks totalitarian rule over its people. The ability to retain wealth still exists and, as always, internationalisation remains a key element to its continuation.

Editor’s Note: The ultimate way to diversify your savings internationally is to transfer it out of the immediate reach of your home government. And we've put together an in depth video presentation to help you do just that. It's called, "Internationalizing Your Assets."

Our all star panel of experts, with Doug Casey and Peter Schiff, provide low cost options for international diversification that anyone can implement - including how to safely set up foreign storage for your gold and silver bullion and how to move your savings abroad without triggering invasive reporting requirements. This is a must watch video for any investor and it's completely free.

Click here to watch Internationalizing Your Assets right now.

The article was originally published at internationalman.com

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Good Reason for Doom and Gloom

By Doug French, Contributing Editor

Predicting the future, like getting old, ain’t for sissies. Questioning the bull market is even more treacherous.
Howard Gold, writing for MarketWatch, makes fun of seers who made what he calls “the four worst predictions to gain traction over the past few years.”

Gold says the last six years have been a disaster for those who stayed out of the stock market. He claims there’s a bull market in doom and gloom, referring to a column by his colleague Chuck Jaffe, who points out, “The fortune-tellers … know that the more outrageous the prediction, the more attention they get. They can highlight any forecasts they get right, knowing that their misfires are forgotten quickly. Thus, calamity and catastrophe sells. Right now, it’s a bull market for bearish forecasts.”

If such a bull market in doom were really happening, the market wouldn’t be hitting all-time highs. Besides, no one ever went broke being out of the market.

But more importantly, there is a very good reason people respond to gloomy forecasts. Behavioral economics pioneer and 2002 Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman explains in his bestseller Thinking, Fast and Slow that when people compare losses and gains, they weigh losses more heavily. There’s an evolutionary reason for this: “Organisms that treat threats as more urgent than opportunities have a better chance to survive and reproduce,” Kahneman explains.

Most people, when given the opportunity to win $150 or lose $100 on a coin flip, decline the bet because the fear of losing $100 is more intense than the hope of gaining $150. Kahneman writes that the typical loss aversion ratio seen in most experiments is 1.5 to 2.5. Professional stock traders have much higher tolerance for risk, but most people investing their retirement accounts are not pros and have little fortitude for losses.

The average Joe can’t just sit tight while his retirement account drops 40%. He’s not wired that way. His retirement savings represent safety, and a market crash is the modern equivalent of a flood, a bear, or a warring tribe. When stocks start falling, survival mode kicks in. He or she sells and runs for cover.
So when someone makes a compelling case that stocks might crash, the average person rightly listens. Otherwise they don’t get any sleep.

Gloomy Forecasts

Economist and financial newsletter writer Harry Dent predicted the DJIA would crash to 3,000 and told investors to bail out between early 2012 and late 2013. Some people likely took him up on it. In July 2010, Robert Prechter of Elliott Wave fame predicted the DJIA would fall to well below 1,000 over the ensuing five or six years.

“I’m saying: ‘Winter is coming. Buy a coat,’” Prechter told the New York Times. “Other people are advising people to stay naked. If I’m wrong, you’re not hurt. If they’re wrong, you’re dead. It’s pretty benign advice to opt for safety for a while.”

While Prechter sees massive deflation on the horizon, Marc Faber, editor of the Gloom, Boom & Doom Report, says Zimbabwe-style hyperinflation is on the way. Gold calls this “the single worst prediction of the past five years.” Gold calls Faber wacky for telling Bloomberg in 2009:

I am 100% sure that the U.S. will go into hyperinflation. Not tomorrow, but the problem with the government debt growing so much is that when the time will come and the Fed should increase interest rates, they’ll be very reluctant to do so and so inflation will start to accelerate.

Peter Schiff’s call for $5,000/oz gold also has Mr. Gold laughing. Schiff sees the Fed printing more to stimulate the economy, which will send the yellow metal soaring.

“Back in the real world,” sneers Gold, “new Fed Chairwoman Janet Yellen is actually winding down the Fed’s extra bond buying (quantitative easing, or QE), and she’s on pace to finish by fall.”

Europe’s economic problems had establishment news outlets like The Economist saying in November 2011, the euro “could break up within weeks.” President Obama’s former chief economist, Austan Goolsbee, said “there probably isn’t” any way to hold the eurozone together.

And the ultimate establishment voice, Alan Greenspan, told CNBC the divergent cultures using one currency “simply can’t continue to work.”

So it’s not just wackadoodles wearing tinfoil hats missing the mark, as Mr. Gold implies. He writes, “But too many people have lost precious time and a chance to make real money by listening to these fear mongers. They’re probably kicking themselves now, or should be.”

However, nearly all of the gloomy prognostications Gold makes fun of are in response to the actions of central bankers, who have been at least as wrong as anyone else in their predictions.

Big financial-services companies should be kicking themselves for paying Greenspan $100,000 a speech these days. The Maestro reportedly hauled in an $8.5 million advance for his book, The Age of Turbulence. That’s a lot to pay for someone who whiffed on the housing bubble. In 2002, Greenspan said, “Even if a bubble were to develop in a local market, it would not necessarily have implications for the nation as a whole.”

Ben Bernanke, who used to make $200,000 a year, now makes “that in just a few hours speaking to bankers, hedge fund billionaires and leaders of industry,” the New York Times reports. “This year alone, he is poised to make millions of dollars from speaking engagements.”

He hasn’t exactly been an accurate predictor either. In 2005, Ben Bernanke was asked if the housing market was overheated. “Well, I guess I don’t buy your premise,” he replied. “It’s a pretty unlikely possibility. We’ve never had a decline in house prices on a nationwide basis.”

Even former Treasury Secretary and ex-New York Fed President Tim Geithner is getting in on the action, receiving $100,000 to $200,000 per talk. Plus he likely received a large advance for his book Stress Test.
Geithner admits he didn’t see the financial crisis coming. In his review of Geithner’s book, Flash Boys author Michael Lewis writes, “The story Geithner goes on to tell blames everyone and no one. The crisis he describes might just as well have been an act of God.”

They Warn for a Reason

Mr. Gold believes that economic catastrophes have natural causes. “Bad things happen in life,” he writes. “Hurricanes and tornadoes destroy communities. Nuclear war and climate change are big long-term dangers. And there will be bear markets and deep recessions in the years ahead.”

Inflation to any degree is not an act of God. Neither are currency nor stock market crashes. Central bankers create these calamities and then ride off into the sunset, earning six-figure speaking fees and multimillion-dollar book deals. The positive reinforcement they receive ensures they’ll repeat the same mistakes over and over again.

Thus, warnings must be issued constantly. Bad things are going to happen to the finances of individuals who aren’t prepared.

It’s not a matter of if, but when. Better scared than sorry.

(Editor’s Note: How quickly a crisis can creep up on you is demonstrated in our Casey Research documentary, Meltdown America. If you haven’t watched it yet, you should. Click here to watch this free video.)

The article Good Reason for Doom and Gloom 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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