“US Government Asset Seizures on the Rise”
…or so claimed the headline of an article in the Wall Street Journal last week. This set me to thinking about what the dickens to do in case the fur really began to fly.Then I came across an article written by Bill Bonner in the Daily Reckoning, a newspaper with an admittedly alarmist penchant, that contained the following piece of advice I thought I should share with you in spite of its decidedly exaggerated tone.
Here is what Bill Bonner wrote:
I’ve long advocated for an internationalization strategy: diversifying various assets and interests overseas so that no one single government has total control over your livelihood.
Store your gold in Switzerland. Open a bank account in Hong Kong. Register your company in the BVI. Establish a ‘backup’ residency in Chile. Expand your business in Brazil. Get a better job in Singapore. Obtain a second passport in Malta. Open a brokerage account in the Cayman Islands.
This approach is NOT just for the super rich.
Taking some simple steps to protect yourself will give you extraordinary peace of mind. You’ll know that, without doubt, you have some savings socked away that NOBODY can touch. You’ll know that you have a solid emergency backup plan. You’ll know that everything you’ve worked for won’t vanish in an instant.
Bill Bonner is not exactly an optimist. He went on to relate the following story:
I had dinner at a London pub last night. My companion was Dylan Grice, an analyst with Societe Generale.
The subject of discussion was Yeats’ poem — ‘Sailing to Byzantium.’ We agreed that whatever Yeats intended, we saw it as a farewell to the growth economies of the Western World — including Japan.
I said ‘They are all fastened to a whole herd of dying animals. An archaic social welfare model. Debts that cannot be paid. Promises that cannot be kept. The declining marginal utility of oil. Zombies everywhere — including in education, finance, healthcare, defense and other major industries. De-leveraging in the private sectors. Impending bankruptcies in the public sectors. Insolvent banks. Corrupt and incompetent governments.’
WHAT A CHARMING AND ATTRACTIVE PICTURE OF THE WEST!
