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Sovereign Man, Notes from the Field Date: March 30, 2012 Reporting From: Santiago, Chile

In China, Constitution of The United States, Gold, Gold bulion, Government, International Diversification, Jobs, Public Debt, Santiago, Social Security, United States Debt on March 30, 2012 at 4:56 pm

Notes from the Field


Date: March 30, 2012
Reporting From: Santiago, ChileOne the more interesting investments I’ve made over the last few years was buying a sizeable chunk of a successful baby products company; our products sell around the world and in top retailers like Target, Babies R Us, Bed Bath and Beyond, etc.The managing partner forwarded me a letter yesterday from one of our international manufacturing agents; the letter explained that, over the last two years, prices have risen substantially in the developing world where many of our products are manufactured.

China, for example, has seen wage increases of 44.6% since 2010. Vietnam- 39.1%. The polyethylene resin that we use has gone up in price 40.3%.  Naturally, the rise in oil prices has also increased transportation costs substantially as well.

inflation.jpg

The letter pummeled us with this data about rising wages and input costs, and then followed it up with a polite assertion that they would be increasing their prices as a result.

It reminded me of the notices I get every year from my health insurance company– they usually start out with something like “Due to the continually rising cost of health insurance…” punctuated with a price increase on the order of about 20%.

And they say there’s no inflation.

This is a direct consequence of the rapid expansion of the money supply. When you print trillions of dollars, euros, renminbi, etc., there are consequences… namely, rising prices.

At first, it’s the developing world that suffers the most.  Central bankers in countries where the entire economy is based on cheap manufacturing feverishly expand their own money supplies in an effort to keep pace with the dollar and euro. If they don’t, the fear is that their currencies will rise, killing the manufacturing industry.

Since these countries have tiny bond markets and lack reserve currency status, all the new money they print goes straight into the local economy. This pushes prices up.

At first, it’s usually raw materials, intermediate goods, and staple commodities. I remember being in Sri Lanka last year where the price of turnips had recently gone up nearly 40%, and people were demanding higher wages.

As wages in the developing world rise, it eats into the manufacturer’s profit margins. Eventually, the manufacturers capitulate and pass the inflation back to their customers in the developed world.

You can probably guess that, since we’re now paying more to have our products manufactured, we have to raise prices for our retailers and end users.

It takes a while for all of this money to make its way through the system… but rest assured, it does come home to roost. No doubt, inflation is very much with us.

Precious metals are still the best inflation hedge, bar none. But I’m also interested in other assets that can be more than just a store of value.

That’s one of the reasons I enjoy owning an 1,100 acre farm; productive agricultural land is a great hedge that grows in nominal value to keep pace with inflation… but I also get the added benefit of an organic food supply.

To give you an example, we recently harvest over 800,000 pounds of plums, which were then dried into prunes and sold to a local distributor at a handsome profit. The harvest yield was about 20% higher than last year… and even better, the unit price I received from the distributor was about 20% higher than last year.

Meanwhile, we have a thriving organic garden, an orchard of fruit and nut trees, egg-laying chickens, and a host of livestock.

If you’re not into agriculture, another interesting inflation hedge that also has functional merit beyond a store of value is… ammunition.  Ammo has actually been a better investment than gold over the last few years, and over time, it holds its value in much the same way.

I wonder if that’s why the US Department of Homeland Security is openly purchasing up to 625 million rounds of ammunition– as an inflation hedge.  Perhaps as a matter of coincidence, buying up to 450 million .40 caliber hollow point rounds and up to 175 million .233 caliber rounds is enough to double-tap every man, woman, and child in the country.

Similarly, I’m sure the NSA’s new $2 billion Utah Data Center is just an inflation-hedge real estate play as well. At more than one million square feet, the center is designed to collect, archive, and analyze ‘yottabytes’ worth of data– our Google searches, phone calls, email traffic, etc.

[Note- a terabye (TB) is about 1,000 gigabytes (GB). A yottabye is about 1 TRILLION terabytes. To put this in perspective, the entire iTunes store constitutes about 250,000 GB... so the Utah data center should be able to host the equivalent of about 5 - 10 BILLION iTunes stores.]

Ah, the land of the free.

To close this week out on some good news, I’m pleased to announce that my partners and I will be hosting our third annual Liberty and Entrepreneurship Camp this summer.

If you’re a relatively new subscriber, each summer we host a 4-day workshop for university-aged students in the picturesque Lithuanian countryside that focuses on Austrian economics, investing, entrepreneurship, international diversification, and actionable success skills.

I bring out some of my closest friends, all successful entrepreneurs and investors, to lecture and engage in small group instruction.  Last year’s camp had an extraordinary group of 50-students from more than 35-countries around the world…. and to put it mildly, it changed many lives.

I’m interested in attracting the most motivated, energetic young people I can find… so if you’re between the ages of 18 and 25, you can read more about what we’re doing and how to apply at BlacksmithCamp.com.

Until tomorrow,
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Simon Black
Senior Editor, SovereignMan.com 

This article appears courtesy of SovereignMan.com: Notes From The
Field
, a free newsletter dedicated to individual freedom,
internationalization, asset protection and global finance. For a
complimentary subscription, visit http://www.SovereignMan.com

Sovereign Man, Notes from the Field Date: March 29, 2012 Reporting From: Santiago, Chile

In Business/Political Trends Worldwide, Constitution of The United States, Continental Travel, Money and Finances, Offshore accounts, Opportunity, personal and business, Sovereign Man, Taxes, Travel on March 29, 2012 at 5:32 pm


Notes from the Field

Date: March 29, 2012
Reporting From: Santiago, ChileIt wasn’t too long ago that nearly every human being lived their entire lives without traveling more than 10-miles from home. For the small handful of people who actually did venture out, you could make it across the globe with no official documents whatsoever.This began to change rapidly in the 1920s. The newly formed League of Nations began meddling in the business of international travel and worked to standardize an international identification document that would be required by travelers to cross most borders.The ominous phrase, “Papers, please”, was born from this standardization.

These days, international travel is big business for governments. Think about all the massive bureaucracies that have been created as a result of national borders: Immigration checkpoints. Customs. Border patrol. Passport offices. Even the IRS is involved in passport application procedures.

As much as it would be nice to go back to the days when people were free to criss-cross the world without such inconveniences and indignities, this just isn’t going to happen. So since we can’t go back to a zero passport world, the next best solution is a multiple passport world.

Let me explain.

Nearly everyone on the planet becomes a citizen of some country at birth… either due to the citizenship of their parents or the country that they were born in. Most people live their entire lives with this sole citizenship, and usually reside in the same country.

In a way, this is akin to having all of your eggs in one basket– living, working, banking, etc. in the same country of your citizenship. And history is full of colorful examples of those baskets breaking… from economic hardship to social turmoil to natural disaster to all-out genocide.

Ultimately, the concept of having multiple citizenships is about having more baskets… and spreading your eggs around. It means having more flexibility, no longer being constrained by the limitations of a single country. For example:

1) Safety. As I’m fond of saying, nobody ever hijacks an airplane and threatens to kill all the Lithuanians. There are no evil men in caves plotting terrorist attacks against Uruguayans. Nobody is burning Panamanian flags in the streets of Pakistan to protest innocent deaths at the hands of Panama’s fleet of unmanned Predator drones.

Simply put, some nationalities are a bit more high profile due to the actions of their governments. Others aren’t.

2) Travel freedom. Did you know that a US or Canadian passport isn’t particularly useful to travel to South America? US and Canadian citizens have to obtain a visa, in advance, just to travel to Paraguay! Or Brazil. Plus Argentina and Chile both charge ‘reciprocity fees’ on arrival (since the US and Canadian governments do the same thing.)

Other nationalities are welcomed with open arms. Singaporean citizens, for example, enjoy visa free (or visa on arrival) travel to nearly every country on the planet. Singapore is the only passport in the world that commands visa free (or visa on arrival) travel to the US, UK, European ‘Schengen Area’, China, and India.

Further, did you know that you can be barred from traveling to some Middle Eastern countries if you have an Israeli immigration stamp in your passport?

Once again, multiple passports means more options, and more freedom… in this case, the freedom to travel.

3) Business and investment freedom. If you’re a US citizen, foreign banks don’t want to deal with you, foreign brokers don’t want to deal with you, and most foreign investors don’t even want to risk getting in bed with you.

FATCA, Dodd Frank, etc. all make it too difficult for foreigners to deal with US citizens; nobody wants to risk the IRS or SEC knocking on their door. As a result, many US citizens have been kicked off the boards of foreign companies, had their foreign bank accounts closed, and been disallowed from buying into lucrative foreign IPOs.

Having another citizenship normally circumvents these hurdles.

4) ‘Citizen benefits’. If national healthcare is your thing, there can be a lot of benefit in having a second citizenship– in many cases, you’ll enter the public healthcare and pension system, giving you a potential backup in case you need it.

5) Relocation and work possibilities. With a second citizenship, you’ll always have the right to live and work in another country. Imagine, for example, having a European passport, entitling you to work anywhere in the EU. If you’re living in the US or Canada now, that could potentially open up an entire new line of lucrative opportunities to pursue.

6) The insurance policy. Ultimately, having a second passport is like having an insurance policy. You might not ever need it… but you’re going to be really glad that you have it in case you ever do.

Again, history is full of catastrophic events that have caused tremendous turmoil in nations… and people who have been trapped inside with no way out have had their lives turned upside down.

A second passport can be that ticket out… safe passage for you and your family to a new place where the opportunities are better, safer, and brighter. It’s a scenario that no one can really imagine… but history shows that few people ever do.


You probably have the foresight to understand that the western world is entering another period of severe turmoil.  You might even already be thinking about second citizenship. If so, I really want to encourage you to take advantage of my exclusive Emergency Offshore Survival Kit. The Emergency Offshore Survival Kit is a crash course… everything you need to know to begin taking action on important steps like obtaining a second passport. Click here to read more about it, as well as our limited-time special offer that expires tomorrow.

Until tomorrow,
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Simon Black
Senior Editor, SovereignMan.com 

This article appears courtesy of SovereignMan.com: Notes From The
Field
, a free newsletter dedicated to individual freedom,
internationalization, asset protection and global finance. For a
complimentary subscription, visit http://www.SovereignMan.com

Sovereign Man, Notes from the Field Date: March 28, 2012 Reporting From: Santiago, Chile

In Business/Political Trends Worldwide, Chile, Constitution of The United States, Continental Travel, Entrepreneurship, Expatriation, Gold, Gold bulion, Government on March 28, 2012 at 7:53 pm


Notes from the Field

Date: March 28, 2012
Reporting From: Santiago, ChileDumbfounded.That’s the only way to describe the reaction that future historians will have when they look back and study the utter perversion that is our global financial system.

We live in a time when a tiny handful of people have their fingers on a button that can conjure trillions of dollars, euro, yen, and renminbi out of thin air. In the United States, it comes down to one man. Just one.

With a single decision, he controls the lever that dominates the entire economy. When you control the money, you control everything– financial markets, consumer prices, risk perceptions, investment habits, savings rates, hiring decisions, pay raises, sovereign debt, housing starts, etc.  One man.

This irrational, arrogant system presupposes by design that a central banker is smarter than everyone else; that markets are incapable of determining appropriate risk and value; that he is more effective at allocating our time, capital, and labor than we are.

Future historians will probably also be dumbfounded when they see how long people allowed worthless, unbacked fiat paper to pass as money.  It’s extraordinary that most people today happily accept a digital abstraction of paper currency controlled by a single individual as ‘valuable’.

It was more than 5,000 years ago that primitive commodity money was used in Mesopotamia, and it’s been over 3,000 years since metal coins began circulating.  For more than 99.2% of human civilization, money actually meant something… right up until 1971 when Richard Nixon ended any remaining link between the dollar and gold.

Ever since, the US government has refused to acknowledge precious metals as money… yet if the Treasury’s financial statements are to be believed, Uncle Sam is still holding  261,498,900 troy ounces of gold. Let’s dismiss the tungsten possibilities for now and presume that it’s real gold. At today’s prices, the value would be about $437 billion.

Meanwhile, M2 money supply at last count was about $9.8 trillion as of March 12, 2012. This means that roughly 4.46% of US dollars in circulation are ‘backed’ by gold, the rest backed by false promises and goodwill.

In the UK, the government’s Exchange Equalisation Account shows 9,971,000 troy ounces of gold on the books. At today’s market value (1,054 British pounds) and the Bank of England’s most recent statement on reserve balances and notes (259.5 billion pounds), Britain’s gold supply constitutes roughly 4.05% of pounds in circulation.

Simply put, the price of gold would have to rise 20-25 times in order for the US and British governments’ gold assets to match the supply of money in circulation.

In fairness, very few countries hold meaningful gold positions when compared to their money supplies. Even Singapore, generally regarded as having one of the healthiest balance sheets on the planet, holds a mere 2% of its money supply in gold.

(Singapore does, however, consistently run budget surpluses and control two sovereign wealth funds which manage the equivalent of 130% of GDP…)

Lebanon is an exception. According to Banque du Liban statistics, the value of Lebanon’s gold holdings is equivalent to nearly 50% of the country’s money supply. To boot, Lebanese banks tend to have very high liquidity ratios and are willing to open accounts for most nationalities.

The problem with Lebanon is that the country is deep in debt– well over 100% of GDP.

With an additional $30 billion in foreign reserves on the books (i.e. other people’s paper), though, Lebanon does have the capacity to pay off over half of its debt. And there are a number of state-owned companies that could be privatized to generate even more revenue.

Given the how sophisticated government corruption is in Lebanon, though, such solutions may never come to pass. Go figure… the one place on earth where the currency is actually backed by something becomes the next shoe to drop.

Fortunately there is another place worth considering. For now, gold only comprises about 5% of Mongolia’s $4 billion money supply. Not much. But the important thing to pay attention to is the trend.

A few months ago, the government of Mongolia nearly doubled its gold holdings to 3.5 tons. This is a huge move.

Given the massive resources in the country (coal, copper, gold, oil, uranium, etc.), Mongolia is set to become one the world’s richest countries. And I think we can expect them to continue trading out paper reserves for the gold that’s already under their soil.

It’s possible that, if the trend holds, Mongolia’s gold holdings will back 10% to 25% of the tugrik money supply in just a few years’ time. Over the same period, gold holdings in the US, UK, and Europe will probably decline to less than 2% of their perpetually inflating money supplies.

Moreover, bank accounts denominated in the Mongolian currency (tugrik) yield an impressive 13% to 15% for savers.  As far as paper goes, this one actually may be worth betting on.

Until tomorrow,
sig.jpg
Simon Black
Senior Editor, SovereignMan.com 

This article appears courtesy of SovereignMan.com: Notes From The
Field
, a free newsletter dedicated to individual freedom,
internationalization, asset protection and global finance. For a
complimentary subscription, visit http://www.SovereignMan.com

Sovereign Man, Notes from the Field Date: March 27, 2012 Reporting From: Santiago, Chile

In Business/Political Trends Worldwide, Chile, Government, Medicine, Money and Finances, Taxes on March 27, 2012 at 6:52 pm


Notes from the Field

Date: March 27, 2012
Reporting From: Santiago, Chile

As you may be aware, there were two reasonably strong earthquakes in central Chile over the weekend. I think we must have the kindest subscribers on the planet, because our customer service team had a flood of well-wishing emails and inquiries to make sure everything was OK.

Most people seemed to have the idea that we were digging ourselves out of rubble, that entire cities lay waste in ruin, and that some imminent tsunami was about to wipe this entire civilization off the planet.

No such luck.

Not exactly the utter chaos and devasation that was reported...

Not exactly the utter chaos and devasation that was reported…

The first earthquake we had was Friday night / Saturday morning about 4:30am. It was measured at a magnitude 5.2 by the University of Chile’s seismology lab, and it had an epicenter about 40km from Santiago.

No doubt, I felt it. It woke me up at night as if I was being shaken awake by an excited friend who wanted to tell me some good news. And then it was over. I was conscious long enough to check the time, and then my head flopped back on to my pillow for a few more hours of Zzzzzz.

Sunday evening around 7:30pm, another earthquake hit. This one was measured at a magnitude of 6.8 on the Richter scale, with an epicenter a few hours south of Santiago near where my farm is located.

[The US Geological Survey says it was a 7.2. I couldn't care less what the US government says.]

Someone sent me an article later from an Edmonton, Canada based news site which made heavy use of the words ‘alarm’, ‘panic’, and ‘devastation’. Leave it to gringo news media to overblow a story thousands of miles away that they have no understanding of.

Down here, the weekend’s events were no big deal. Local news reported on the earthquakes and then moved on to more important things– like soccer, President Pinera’s trip to Asia, and the Aysen hydroelectric struggle.

Earthquakes are simply part of the landscape here. Chile is in the ring of fire, a seismic zone that runs from southern Chile up the coast to California and northern Alaska, across the Bering Strait, down the coast of China and Japan, across to Indonesia, and down to New Zealand. There’s no avoiding nature.

Chileans, however, have learned this lesson. Things here are built to last. Not so much as a picture frame fell over in my apartment, and there wasn’t a speck of damage at my farm either.

Consequently, there’s a big difference between a 6.8 earthquake in Chile, and a 6.8 earthquake in Haiti. In Chile, people stop what they’re doing briefly, say, “hey that was an earthquake”, and then go on with their lives.

As I write this note, in fact, most of my local staff is down in Talca (near the epicenter of Sunday’s quake) conducting meetings with contractors, negotiating to sell my wine grapes at a tidy profit, and carrying out business as usual. I’ve stayed back in Santiago for a few meetings and to prepare for my trip to Asia.

Sure, in a perfect world, I’d be able to snap my fingers and eliminate all earthquakes in Chile. But since I can’t do that, I simply have to learn to manage a risk that is… quite manageable.

For me, this is a much more desirable scenario than being trapped in a police state where I have very little influence over what happens. It may not be everybody’s cup of tea… and that’s fine. The world is a big place, and chances are you’ll be able to find exactly what you’re looking for.

Until tomorrow,
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Simon Black
Senior Editor, SovereignMan.com 

This article appears courtesy of SovereignMan.com: Notes From The
Field
, a free newsletter dedicated to individual freedom,
internationalization, asset protection and global finance. For a
complimentary subscription, visit http://www.SovereignMan.com

Sovereign Man, Notes from the Field Date: March 26, 2012 Reporting From: London, England

In Business, Business/Political Trends Worldwide, Chile, China, Constitution of The United States, Continental Travel, currency, Expatriation, Fuels, Gold, Interesting places, International Diversification, Offshore accounts, Opportunity, Personal, Social Security, Sovereign Man, United States Debt on March 26, 2012 at 6:22 pm

 

Notes from the Field

Date: March 26, 2012
Reporting From: London, England

 

[Editor's note: Tim Price, a frequent Sovereign Man contributor and Director of Investment at PFP Wealth Management in London, is filling in for Simon today.]Acclaimed screenwriter William Goldman (The Princess Bride, among many others) famously began his autobiography with three telling words: “Nobody Knows Anything.”

The same logic would seem to apply to much conventional reporting of the financial markets. Any investor looking for informed analysis of market developments can therefore save themselves a few minutes every day by choosing not to read any of the ‘Companies and Markets’ section of the FT, which typically constitutes a fantastic piece of fiction.

(If there is a more thankless task in finance than trying to explain why certain markets did what they did yesterday, we don’t know what it is… unless it’s working in the PR department at Goldman Sachs.)

But as Soc Gen’s Dylan Grice has frequently pointed out, human beings are suckers for stories. We seek meaning from just about everything, and financial markets are no exception. Why else would otherwise rational people shell out ~£2.50 every weekday just to read a selection of vapid and contradictory speculations about recent market price action?

————————————————————————————————–

Is this How America Will End? For several years, S&A Founder Porter Stansberry has been predicting the “End of America.”

Not the literal end to our nation or political system, mind you… but rather a loss in the world’s faith in the U.S. dollar system.

And now, Porter says he knows exactly how this will all play out. He’s published brand-new research to bring you up to speed. You can access the full file here.

————————————————————————————————–At the risk of going out on a limb, here is our own inherently subjective “take” on the current market environment: Investors seem to believe that the euro zone debt metastasis has gone into remission. There is an uneasy calm to both equity and bond markets — it feels like the calm before the storm.

Both Goldman and Barclays have issued research notes recommending equities over bonds. It is certainly difficult to get excited about G7 government bond markets except from the perspective of shorting them. As Stratton Street recently observed, there are over $10 trillion in marketable US government securities, yet their average yield amounts to less than 1%.

But it might yet be dangerous to adopt Goldman’s binary response which is to advocate blanket support for stocks. This is not a black vs. white issue; just because most government bond markets are uglier than sin does not automatically justify going ‘all in’ on the stock market, even as deposit rates remain painfully thin.

We nurse an ongoing fear that equity markets are being largely supported by the inflationist antics of central banks. This may have led to many investors becoming addicted to the effects of cheap credit, and they may not like it when cheap credit is ultimately withdrawn.

But whatever is driving equity sentiment, there are undoubtedly pockets of value for those with the stamina and patience to embrace them. In Don Coxe’s latest and typically excellent letter, “All Clear?”, he highlights the opportunity in precious metals mining companies:

“If there were one over-arching theme at the BMO Global Metals & Mining Conference, it was that the gold miners are upset and even embarrassed that their shares have so dramatically underperformed bullion…

“On the one hand, they were delighted in 2011 when it was reported that since Nixon closed the gold window, a bar of bullion had delivered higher investment returns than the S&P 500 for forty years– with dividends reinvested. But some gold mining CEOs find it an insult that what they mine is more respected than their companies’ shares…

“In our view, we have entered the most favourable era for gold prices in our lifetime, and the share prices of the great mining companies will eventually outperform bullion prices.”

Gold remains one of the most widely misunderstood assets in the investible world. Indeed, it may be better to refer to it as a means of saving that does not expose the saver to counterparty or credit risk or to the depredations of the monetary authorities.

As Don Coxe makes clear, governments are running deficits “beyond the forecasts of all but the hardiest goldbugs five years ago; central banks are printing money and creating liquidity beyond the forecasts of all but the most paranoid goldbugs a year ago.”

The choice for the saver is essentially binary: hold money in ever-depreciating paper, or in a tangible vehicle that has the potential to rise dramatically as expressed in paper money terms.

Gold prices have now softened, offering investors yet another chance to get back on board what is perhaps the most compelling form of money- and portfolio insurance available.

Why large cap gold miners are being so undervalued by equity investors relative to gold is an open question that takes us back to the realms of stories. That the discount exists is undeniable; all that is required to crystallise that value, we believe, is patience.

Tim Price
Director of Investment
PFP Wealth Management

This article appears courtesy of SovereignMan.com: Notes From The
Field
, a free newsletter dedicated to individual freedom,
internationalization, asset protection and global finance. For a
complimentary subscription, visit http://www.SovereignMan.com

Sovereign Man, Notes from the Field Date: March 22, 2012 Reporting From: Santiago, Chile

In Business/Political Trends Worldwide, Chile, Constitution of The United States, currency, International Diversification, Personal, Sovereign Man, Taxes, United States Debt on March 22, 2012 at 6:05 pm


Notes from the Field


Date: March 22, 2012
Reporting From: Santiago, Chile

If you’re a US taxpayer, you’ll want to heed the following before dropping off your 1040 this year.

You see, in 2010, Congress and President Obama passed a series of new rules known as the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act, or FATCA. FATCA affects every US taxpayer who does anything overseas, as well as every single financial institution on the planet. It may be the most arrogant piece of legislation ever written.

Congress had the audacity to pass a law regulating foreign banks on foreign soil. It requires every ‘foreign financial institution’ on the planet (though that term is -very- loosely defined…) to enter into an information sharing agreement with the IRS, or else face steep consequences.

Banks that don’t jump into bed with the IRS risk getting locked out of the US financial system. This is a big deal.

If you’ve ever sent a foreign wire before, you probably know that almost every bank on the planet has a ‘corresponding’ account with one of the major banks in New York.

Banco General in Panama, for example, has corresponding accounts with both Chase and CitiBank. When someone wires US dollars to Banco General, the money first hits one of those corresponding accounts in New York. If Banco General gets shut out of those accounts, it risks being cut off from the global banking system.

Needless to say, this legislation is going to rapidly reduce the significance of the US banking sector in the long run as other countries seek new financial pathways that re-route funds around New York. Congratulations, Congress!

In addition, FATCA also requires new disclosures for US taxpayers with ‘foreign financial accounts’, and it starts this year. Before you file your taxes, here are five things you need to know:

[Editor's note: The following does not constitute tax advice, rather a friendly reminder of what the requirements are. Always consult with your tax advisor.]

1) If you had a ‘Foreign ‘Financial Asset’ in 2011, you may need to file form 8938this year. 

The term ‘Foreign Financial Asset’ covers a lot of ground and is ambiguously defined.  They use terms like financial asset, financial account, and foreign financial institution to define each other.

It’s like saying, “What is dark? The opposite of light. So what is light? The opposite of dark.”

Ultimately, the onus is on the taxpayer to figure it out.

In general, foreign bank accounts and foreign brokerage accounts must be reported in Part I of the form.

In Part II of the form, taxpayers must also report interests in foreign entities that they own. For example, if you own 100% of a Cook Islands LLC, this would count as a foreign financial asset and must be reported in Part II.

*The exception here is if you are already reporting this company on form 5471 or 8865. This depends on if/how you elected to classify the entity on form 8832. For example, if you elect to classify a foreign entity as a corporation, you should report it on form 5471, not the FATCA form 8938.

2) GOLD is a bit tricky.

If you have an account with an organization like GoldMoney.com that takes in deposits from the banking system, this is akin to a financial institution and financial account. It must be reported on Part I of the form.

Perth Mint Certificates also count and should be reported as financial assets.

Physical gold stored in a safety deposit box overseas, however, is not a financial asset and does not need to be reported.

3) Foreign real estate does not need to be reported.

If you own foreign real estate -personally-, it does not count as a financial asset and does not need to be reported. If, however, you own shares of a foreign company which owns foreign real estate, you do need to report the company as a financial asset.

4) The 8938 does NOT replace the FBAR

You may already be accustomed to filing the Foreign Bank Account Reporting form TDF 90-22.1 each year to the US Treasury by June 30th. This new form 8938 does NOT replace the FBAR. You must file form 8938 in ADDITION to the FBAR.

5) There is a threshold for filing form 8938.

The two major stipulations are:

a) whether you are filing as a single taxpayer, or jointly with your spouse
b) whether you live in the United States or overseas

Then the IRS has two different thresholds– what the aggregate value of the financial assets were on the last day of 2011, and what the maximum aggregate value of the financial assets were at any time during the year.

The chart below summarizes the reporting thresholds. If you meet or exceed the threshold for your category, you’ll need to file form 8938 with your 1040 by April 18th this year.

Filling out the forms may be a pain, but it’s important to stay compliant. We can talk about the fraud of taxation and the lack of its moral or legal basis all day long… but the only way you’re going to legitimately get away with not paying US taxes is to give up your US citizenship.

Until you’re willing to take that step, you should stay compliant and keep filing the forms. Unless, of course, you have a panache for dayglow orange jumpsuits.

*** SMC members are reminded of our monthly members’ teleconference on March 30th. We’ll be covering all of these tax matters in much greater detail, and you’ll have the opportunity to ask questions to our resident tax lawyer.

Until tomorrow,
sig.jpg
Simon Black
Senior Editor, SovereignMan.com 

This article appears courtesy of SovereignMan.com: Notes From The
Field
, a free newsletter dedicated to individual freedom,
internationalization, asset protection and global finance. For a
complimentary subscription, visit http://www.SovereignMan.com

Sovereign Man, Notes from the Field Date: March 21, 2012 Reporting From: Santiago, Chile

In Business, Business/Political Trends Worldwide, Chile, Constitution of The United States, Gold, Government, Social Security on March 21, 2012 at 6:21 pm


Notes from the Field

Date: March 21, 2012
Reporting From: Santiago, Chile

This is something out of an Orwellian science fiction movie.

The Italian tax authorities are now field testing a new system called ‘redditometro’, a database thatautomatically collects and analyzes taxpayers’ tax data vs. spending data based on automated collection of credit card and banking information.

For example, if the credit card reports show that you have an expensive gym membership… or perhaps you bought too fancy of a mobile phone, then the system will flag you if your annual tax liability isn’t commensurate with such spending habits.

Big Brother would be proud.

Preliminary results showed that a full 20% of Italian taxpayers will be initially flagged , much to the delight of agency director Attilio Befera. According to Befera, “We have €120 billion of tax evasion, and to cope with this emergency, we need to take emergency measures…”

Naturally, the way to deal with fiscal urgency is to treat everyone like a suspect. Befera has dismissed criticism from privacy groups, wrapping himself up in a blanket of duty and righteousness–’desperate times call for desperate measures’ and all that nonsense.

It’s the same rationalization you see with these lowlife government agents who molest children at airports; they look in the mirror each morning and convince themselves that they’re keeping the country safe from criminal terrorists. Their mission is noble… and that justifies the means.

Italy is in a world of hurt, no doubt. Despite all the talk of austerity and eliminating the budget deficit by 2013, recently released central bank figures from Banca d’Italia showed that the 2011 state budget balance actually deteriorated by 11.49%.

Moreover, the first numbers released so far for this year show a whopping 197% increase in central government borrowing requirements from January 2011 to January 2012. Hardly the right direction.

Throughout it all, Italy’s public debt has been steadily rising and is now closing in on 2 trillion euros, much larger than the country’s economy. Meanwhile GDP actually shrank in the 4th quarter of last year by an annualized rate of 2.6%.

In typical form, the government is sticking it to the people. Buying Italian bonds has become an issue of patriotism with strong calls and intense public pressure for citizens to plunk down their hard earned savings and bail out the government. They even have footballers and celebrities endorsing government bonds.

On the flip side of this coin are the Big Brother financial tactics– shaking down every last citizen based on a computer algorithm’s judgment of their spending habits. Given that one of the categories that the tax authorities are looking at is investment spending, buying Italian bonds may very well, in fact, get people flagged by Skynet.

If you step back and look at the big picture, this system is truly mind boggling. For years, politicians have been running wild, showering themselves with power and privilege at taxpayer expense.

When the magical fairy dust ran out and it became time to pay the toll, they’ve made it a patriotic issue for society to bail out their malfeasance, and are now proceeding to milk the people dry through Draconian tax policies and collection schemes.

Serf. Slave. Milk cow. Pick your metaphor. Their privilege, our expense. It’s an absolutely absurd system that’s ripe for change.

Until tomorrow,
sig.jpg
Simon Black
Senior Editor, SovereignMan.com 

This article appears courtesy of SovereignMan.com: Notes From The
Field
, a free newsletter dedicated to individual freedom,
internationalization, asset protection and global finance. For a
complimentary subscription, visit http://www.SovereignMan.com

AMERICA, The U.S. Population, Wake Up…George Soros is HERE…..via e-mail to Admin..

In Business, Business/Political Trends Worldwide, Constitution of The United States, Government, History, Homeland Security, Money and Finances, U.S. Congress on March 20, 2012 at 6:02 pm
Glen Beck has been screaming about this guy for 2 years. Every one calls Glen crazy. Maybe now that CBS “60 Minutes” has investigated George Soros and came to the same conclusion as Glen, maybe America will wake up. 

Whether you like President Obama or not you should read this. 

It is quite long but very true. This guy funds hundreds of organizations doing their best to bring down America. I always said Obama was a puppet for some one and now we know the puppeteer. Ironic that Obama has blasted Wall Street and Soros made all of his money working on Wall Street in hedge funds and speculation. 

The two parts of Wall Street that has done the most damage. Speculation is one of the driving forces for the oil prices now.
Soros, One Evil HumanThis is very interesting material. Glen Beck has been developing material to show all the ties that Soros has through the nation and world along with his goals. This article begins to piece together the rise of Obama and his behavior in leading the nation along with many members of Congress (in particular the Democrats, such as the election of Pelosi as the minority leader in Congress)

If you have wondered where Obama came from and just how he quickly moved from obscurity to President, or why the media is “selective” in what we are told, here is the man who most probably put him there and is responsible. He controls President Obama’s every move. Think this is absurd? Invest a few minutes and read this. You won’t regret it.

Who is Obama? Obama is a puppet and here is the explanation of the man or demon that pulls his strings. It’s not by chance that Obama can manipulate the world. I don’t think he knows how to tie his shoe laces. After reading this and Obama’s reluctance to accept help on the oil spill you wonder if the spill is part of the plan to destroy the US ? “In history, nothing happens by accident. If it happened, you can bet someone planned it.”/ Franklin Delano Roosevelt

Who Is George Soros? He brought the market down in 2 days. Here is what CBS’ Mr. Steve Kroft’s research has turned up. It’s a bit of a read, and it took 4 months to put it together. “The main obstacle to a stable and just world order is the United States . “George Soros”

George Soros is an evil man. He’s anti-God, anti-family, anti-American, and anti-good.” He killed and robbed his own Jewish people. What we have in Soros, is a multi-billionaire atheist, with skewed moral values, and a sociopath’s lack of conscience. He considers himself to be an elitist World class philosopher, despises the American way, and just loves to do social engineering and change cultures.

György Schwartz, better known to the world as George Soros, was born August 12, 1930 in Hungary . Soros’ father, Tivadar, was a fervent practitioner of the Esperanto language invented in 1887, and designed to be the first global language, free of any national identity. The Schwartz’s, who were non-practicing Jews, changed the family name to Soros, in order to facilitate assimilation into the Gentile population, as the Nazis spread into Hungary during the 1930s

When Hitler’s henchman Adolf Eichmann arrived in Hungary , to oversee the murder of that country’s Jews, George Soros ended up with a man whose job was confiscating property from the Jewish population. Soros went with him on his rounds.

Soros has repeatedly called 1944 “the best year of his life.” 70% of Mr. Soros’s fellow Jews in Hungary, nearly a half-million human beings, were annihilated in that year, yet he gives no sign that this put any damper on his elation, either at the time or indeed in retrospect” During an interview with “Sixty Minute’s” Steve Kroft, Soros was asked about his “best year.”

KROFT: My understanding is that you went out with this protector of yours who swore that you were his adopted godson. SOROS: Yes. Yes.

KROFT: Went out, in fact, and helped in the confiscation of property from your fellow Jews, friends and neighbors. SOROS: Yes. That’s right. Yes.

KROFT: I mean, that sounds like an experience that would send lots of people to the psychiatric couch for many, many, years. Was it difficult?

SOROS: No, not at all. Not at all, I rather enjoyed it.

KROFT: No feelings of guilt?

SOROS: No, only feelings of absolute power.

In his article, Muravchik describes how Soros has admitted to having carried some rather “potent messianic fantasies with me from childhood, which I felt I had to control, otherwise they might get me in trouble.” Be that as it may. After WWII, Soros attended the London School of Economics, where he fell under the thrall of fellow atheist and Hungarian, Karl Popper, one of his professors. Popper was a mentor to Soros until Popper’s death in 1994. Two of Popper’s most influential teachings concerned “the open society,” and Fallibilism.

Fallibilism is the philosophical doctrine that all claims of knowledge could, in principle, be mistaken. (Then again, I could be wrong about that.) The “open society” basically refers to a “test and evaluate” approach to social engineering. Regarding “open society” Roy Childs writes, “Since the Second World War, most of the Western democracies have followed Popper’s advice about piecemeal social engineering and democratic social reform, and it has gotten them into a grand mess.”

In 1956 Soros moved to New York City, where he worked on Wall Street, and started amassing his fortune. He specialized in hedge funds and currency speculation. Soros is absolutely ruthless, amoral, and clever in his business dealings, and quickly made his fortune. By the 1980s he was well on his way to becoming the global powerhouse that he is today.

In an article Kyle-Anne Shiver wrote for “The American Thinker” she says, “Soros made his first billion in 1992 by shorting the British pound with leveraged billions in financial bets, and became known as the man who broke the Bank of England. He broke it on the backs of hard-working British citizens who immediately saw their homes severely devalued and their life savings cut drastically, almost overnight.”

In 1994 Soros crowed in “The New Republic,” that “the former Soviet Empire is now called the Soros Empire.” The Russia-gate scandal in 1999, which almost collapsed the Russian economy, was labeled by Rep. Jim Leach, then head of the House Banking Committee, to be “one of the greatest social robberies in human history.”The “Soros Empire” indeed. In 1997 Soros almost destroyed the economies of Thailand and Malaysia. At the time, Malaysia’s Prime Minister, Mahathir Mohammad, called Soros “a = villain, and a moron.” Thai activist Weng Tojirakarn said, “We regard George Soros as a kind of Dracula. He sucks the blood from the people.”

The website Greek National Pride reports, “Soros was part of the full court press that dismantled Yugoslavia and caused trouble in Georgia , Ukraine and Myanmar [Burma] Calling himself a philanthropist, Soros’ role is to tighten the ideological stranglehold of globalization and the New World Order while promoting his own financial gain. He is without conscience; a capitalist who functions with absolute amorality.”

France has upheld an earlier conviction against Soros, for felony insider trading. Soros was fined 2.9 million dollars. Recently, his native Hungary fined Soros 2.2 million dollars for “illegal market manipulation.” Elizabeth Crum writes that the Hungarian economy has been in a state of transition as the country seeks to become more financially stable and westernized. Soros deliberately driving down the share price of its largest bank put Hungary’s economy into a wicked tailspin, one from which it is still trying to recover.

My point here is that Soros is a planetary parasite. His grasp, greed, and gluttony have a global reach. But what about America? Soros told Australia’s national newspaper “The Australian.” “America, as the centre of the globalised financial markets, was sucking up the savings of the world. This is now over. The game is out,” he said, adding that the time has come for “a very serious adjustment” in American’s consumption habits. He implied that he was the one with the power to bring this about.”

Soros: “World financial crisis was “stimulating” and “in a way, the culmination of my life’s work.”

Obama has recently promised 10 billion of our tax dollars to Brazil, in order to give them a leg-up in expanding their offshore oil fields. Obama’s largesse towards Brazil came shortly after his political financial backer, George Soros, invested heavily in Brazilian oil (Pet rob ras).

Tait Trussel writes, “The Pet rob ras loan may be a windfall for Soros and Brazil, but it is a bad deal for the U. S. The American Petroleum Institute estimates that oil exploration in the U S could create 160,000 new, well-paying jobs, as well as $1.7 trillion in revenues to federal, state, and local governments, all while fostering greater energy security and independence.”

A blog you might want to keep an eye on is SorosWatch.com. Their mission: “This blog is dedicated to all who have suffered due to the ruthless financial pursuits of George Soros. Your stories are many and varied, but the theme is the same: the destructive power of greed without conscience. We pledge to tirelessly watch Soros wherever he goes and to print the truth in the hope that he will one day be made to stop preying upon the world’s poor, that justice will be served.”

Back to America. Soros has been actively working to destroy America from the inside out for some years now. People have been warning us. Two years ago, news sources reported that “Soros [is] an extremist who wants open borders, a one-world foreign policy, legalized drugs, euthanasia, and on and on. This is off-the-chart dangerous.”\\ In 1997 Rachel Ehrenfeld wrote, “Soros uses his philanthropy to change or more accurately deconstruct the moral values and attitudes of the Western world, and particularly of the American people. His “open society” is not about freedom; it is about license. His vision rejects the notion of ordered liberty, in favor of a PROGRESSIVE ideology of rights and entitlements.”

Perhaps the most important of these “whistle blowers” are David Horowitz and Richard Poe. Their book “The Shadow Party” outlines in detail how Soros hijacked the Democratic Party, and now owns it lock, stock, and barrel. Soros has been packing the Democratic Party with radicals, and ousting moderate Democrats for years. The Shadow Party became the Shadow Government, which recently became the Obama Administration.

Discover The Networks.org (another good source) writes, “By his [Soros'] own admission, he helped engineer coups in Slovakia , Croatia , Georgia , and Yugoslavia . When Soros targets a country for “regime change,” he begins by creating a shadow government, a fully formed government-in-exile, ready to assume power when the opportunity arises. The Shadow Party he has built in America greatly resembles those he has created in other countries prior to instigating a coup.”

November 2008 edition of the German magazine “Der Spiegel,” in which Soros gives his opinion on what the next POTUS (President of the U. S. ) should do after taking office. “I think we need a large stimulus package.” Soros thought that around 600 billion would be about right. Soros also said that “I think Obama presents us a great opportunity to finally deal with global warming and energy dependence. The U. S. needs a cap and trade system with auctioning of licenses for emissions rights.”

Although Soros doesn’t (yet) own the Republican Party, like he does the Democrats, make no mistake, his tentacles are spread throughout the Republican Party as well.

Soros is a partner in the Carlyle Group where he has invested more than 100 million dollars. According to an article by “The Baltimore Chronicle’s” Alice Cherbonnier, the Carlye Group is run by “a veritable who’s who of former Republican leaders,” from CIA man Frank Carlucci, to CIA head and ex-President George Bush, Sr.

In late 2006, Soros bought about 2 million shares of Halliburton, Dick Cheney’s old stomping grounds. When the Democrats and Republicans held their conventions in 2000, Soros held Shadow Party conventions in the same cities, at the same time. In 2008, Soros donated $5,000,000,000 ( that’s Five Billion ) to the Democratic National Committee, DNC, to insure Obama’s win and wins for many other Alinsky trained Radical Rules Anti-American Socialist. George has been contributing a $ billion plus to the DNC since Clinton came on the scene.

Soros has dirtied both sides of the aisle, trust me. And if that weren’t bad enough, he has long held connections with the CIA. And I mustn’t forget to mention Soros’ involvement with the MSM (Main Stream Media), the entertainment industry (e. g. he owns 2.6 million shares of Time Warner), and the various political advertising organizations he funnels millions to. In short, George Soros controls or influences most of the MSM. Little wonder they ignore the TEA PARTY, Soro’s NEMESIS.

As Matthew Vadum writes, “The liberal billionaire-turned-philanthropist has been buying up media properties for years in order to drive home his message to the American public that they are too materialistic, too wasteful, too selfish, and too stupid to decide for themselves how to run their own lives.”

Richard Poe writes, “Soros’ private philanthropy, totaling nearly $5 billion, continues undermining America’s traditional Western values. His giving has provided funding of abortion rights, atheism, drug legalization, sex education, euthanasia, feminism, gun control, globalization, mass immigration, gay marriage and other radical experiments in social engineering.”

Some of the many NGOs (Non-Government Organizations) that Soros funds with his billions are: MoveOn. org, the Apollo Alliance , Media Matters for America , the Tides Foundation, the ACLU, ACORN, PDIA (Project on Death In America ), La Raza, and many more. For a more complete list, with brief descriptions of the NGOs, go to DiscoverTheNetworks. org.

Poe continues, “Through his global web of Open Society Institutes and Open Society Foundations, Soros has spent 25 years recruiting, training, indoctrinating and installing a network of loyal operatives in 50 countries, placing them in positions of influence and power in media, government, finance and academia.”

Without Soros’ money, would the Saul Alinsky’s Chicago machine still be rolling? Would SEIU, ACORN, and La Raza still be pursuing their nefarious activities? Would Big Money and lobbyists still be corrupting government? Would our college campuses still be retirement homes for 1960s radicals?

America stands at the brink of an abyss, and that fact is directly attributable to Soros. Soros has vigorously, cleverly, and insidiously planned the ruination of America and his puppet, Barack Obama is leading the way.

The words of Patrick Henry are apropos: “Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, almighty God! I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death!”
————–

Above information researched by CBS Steve Kroft
Americans have their heads in the sand….wake up everyone!!!!

Sovereign Man, Notes from the Field Date: March 20, 2012 Reporting From: Santiago, Chile

In Business/Political Trends Worldwide, Chile, Constitution of The United States, Government, Homeland Security, International Diversification, personal and business, United States Debt on March 20, 2012 at 1:21 pm


Notes from the Field

Date: March 20, 2012
Reporting From: Santiago, Chile

Quietly, and with little fanfare, President Obama signed a “National Defense Resources Preparedness” Executive Order on Friday. As the name suggests, the order intends to shore up the country’s national defense resources in advance of a national emergency.

To be fair, this is not the first time that such an order has been written. Presidents Bush (II), Clinton, Reagan, and even Eisenhower provided directives in the same spirit as President Obama’s order– providing some level of government commandeering in times of national emergency.

In the past, these orders have related to things like production capacity for defense contractors, or giving FEMA authority to resolve disputes between other departments in federally designated emergency areas.

President Obama’s order, however, takes things much, much further.

(1) The order vastly expands the role of Homeland Security… as if these knuckleheads didn’t already have too much influence in people’s lives. Apparently highways, shopping malls, airports, bus stations, Wal-Marts, hotels, train stations, etc. aren’t enough for DHS. Now the Secretary of DHS will:

a) “advise the President on issues of national defense resource preparedness”.

This one is really clear. Under normal circumstances, matters related to defense would fall under the Secretary of Defense… or perhaps the National Security Advisor. Giving such responsibility to DHS suggests that the government is expecting an emergency from within.

b) “provide for the central coordination of the plans and programs… under this order, and provide guidance to agencies assigned functions under this order…”

DHS now has authority to direct the emergency preparedness of every other government department. The Secretary of Homeland Security has effectively become the Emergency Czar.

c) have oversight of “all other national defense programs, including civil defense and continuity of Government.”

In case it wasn’t clear before, the people who molest children and radiate travelers will have total and complete control in some event defined as a national emergency in the sole discretion of the President.

(2) The order further provides for an effective nationalization of the entire US economy in the event of an emergency.

The Secretary of Labor, for example, will “collect and maintain data necessary to make a continuing appraisal of the Nation’s workforce needs for purposes of national defense” and then “formulate plans, programs, and policies for meeting the labor requirements of actions to be taken for national defense purposes.”

In other words, the Labor Department becomes the Ministry of Plenty, and all the good little citizens will be forcibly reallocated to other jobs. This turned out really well for the Soviets.

(3) The purpose of this order, for example, is to “take actions necessary to ensure the availability of adequate resources and production capability, including services and critical technology, for national defense requirements;”

It goes on to list ‘adequate resources’ to include things like:

(i) “all forms of energy including petroleum, gas (both natural and manufactured), electricity, solid fuels… solar, wind, other types of renewable energy, atomic energy”, etc.

(ii) “all usable water , from all sources, within the jurisdiction of the United States, that can be managed, controlled, and allocated to meet emergency requirements…”

(iii) “all commodities and products… that are capable of being ingested by either human beings or animals…”

(iv) “drugs, biological products, medical devices, materials, facilities, health supplies, services and equipment required to diagnose, mitigate or prevent the impairment of, improve, treat, cure, or restore the physical or mental health conditions of the population.”

Hmmmm. Food. Water. Energy. Medicine. Security. All the stuff that human beings need at a basic level to survive. Except that Obama’s executive order puts all of these resources under control of the government and allocates them exclusively to meet the needs of government.

In this capacity, we are all merely subordinates to the interests of the state… and it should be absolutely clear at this point where normal people stand in the grand pecking order: Citizens are resources to be exploited and sacrificed in order to ensure the continuity of government.

In the event of some catastrophe, you will be stripped of basic resources so that the government can survive. A free society cannot exist under a system in which the state exercises such control… or has the authority to exercise such control.

Taken in conjunction with the NSA’s new Utah spy center (which will collect and archive the complete contents of every email, tweet, Facebook post, Google search, phone call, and text message) and the National Defense Authorization Act, it’s clear that the Obama administration is expecting trouble from within.

And with good reason. By every possible calculation (except flat-out fraud), the US government is completely insolvent, and its balance sheet is growing worse by the day. The dollar is beginning to be seriously challenged as the global reserve standard, and every effort politicians make to ‘fix’ the economy only makes things worse.

As a matter of convenience, people are willing to deal with a lot of pain. They’ll suffer through wars, recessions, and all sorts of national unpleasantness. But the moment that rapidly decaying economics and shortages prevent people from being able to put food on the table for their families, they rise up. Just look at the Arab Spring.

This is all playing out with nearly perfect historical precision. Time and time again throughout history as once great empires accelerated their declines, governments have taken steps to protect their interests against the people.

In the past, they have imposed curfews, disarmed the population, curtailed civil liberties, and declared national emergencies, usually against some great faceless enemy from abroad who threatens their way of life.

As it turns out, though, our great faceless enemy is not some mythical boogeyman living in a cave, nor some angry brown person who hates us for our freedoms… but the very people within the system who’ve taken an oath to ‘support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.’

Have you hit your breaking point yet?

Until tomorrow,
sig.jpg
Simon Black
Senior Editor, SovereignMan.com 

This article appears courtesy of SovereignMan.com: Notes From The
Field
, a free newsletter dedicated to individual freedom,
internationalization, asset protection and global finance. For a
complimentary subscription, visit http://www.SovereignMan.com

Sovereign Man, Notes from the Field Date: March 19, 2012 Reporting From: Talca, Chile

In Business, Business/Political Trends Worldwide, Chile, currency, Entrepreneurship on March 19, 2012 at 8:32 pm

Notes from the Field


Date: March 19, 2012
Reporting From: Talca, ChileHere’s the scene. It was an overcast day in southern England last March. That is to say, a normal day in southern England.Attempting to retrieve something that had blown into the water, 41-year old Simon Burgess slipped and fell into a 3 1/2 foot-deep pond. He then suffered a seizure. His body, lying motionless and face down in the water, was spotted at 12:15pm by a witness who immediately called 999 emergency services (like 911).

Within five minutes, emergency crews began arriving. Then more. Then more. 36-minutes after the initial phone call, no fewer than 25 emergency workers were at the scene. They brought out a state of the art emergency medical tent, resuscitation equipment, several fire engines, ambulances, and specialty dive gear.

daily.jpg

For more than thirty minutes, emergency crews set up a complex operations center. Fire fighters positioned their trucks. Police officers cordoned off the area for crowd control. Water Support Unit officers donned protective gear and checked the pond for underwater hazards.

Yet with all of this commotion, nobody bothered to fetch Mr. Burgess. For 36-minutes, he floated in the center of the pond, face down, while dozens of first responders scurried about with their ‘make work’ projects.

Why? Because they hadn’t been ‘trained and certified’ by their various government agencies to enter water that was more than ankle deep. According to the UK’s Daily Mail,

“When a policeman decided to go in anyway, he was ordered not to. A paramedic was also told not to enter the water because he didn’t have the right “protective” clothing and might be in breach of the Personal Protective Equipment at Work Regulations 1992.”

And so, the emergency crews stood by waiting until a specialty team arrived, donned protective gear, and waded into the waist-deep water (at maximum depth) to retrieve Mr. Burgess. Needless to say, doctors formally pronounced him dead by the time his body arrived to the hospital, roughly 90-minutes after he fell in the lake.

Following public outcry over how Britain’s impotent bureaucracy could manage to cost a man his life, the government held a formal investigation into the matter a few weeks ago. As expected, public service workers and politicians closed ranks, defending their decisions on the ground and claiming that they were only ‘doing their jobs’ and following the rules.

It’s certainly not the first time this has happened. Last year, a 14-year old girl in London collapsed while in the middle of a cross-country competition. It took emergency workers 30-minutes to arrive, at which point they refused to carry her body through the muddy park to the ambulance as it was against health and safety regulations.

Then there was the case of 44-year old Alison Hume in Scotland; she had fallen into a mine shaft and was trapped there for six hours suffering from hypothermia because emergency service supervisors claimed that using their winch to retrieve her would be a violation of regulations.

Or the case of 10-year old Jordon Lyon of northern England, who was drowning in a local pond when two police officers arrived to the scene… and did absolutely nothing because they weren’t properly trained. Apparently you have to be trained by the government in order to jump in the water and save a drowning child.

The public outcry in each of these (and similar) incidents more often than not results in a call for more regulation. This is such a typical government reaction– the solution to a problem created by too much regulation is more regulation. It’s the only thing these people know how to do.

These examples focus on the United Kingdom… but the issue exists around the world. Common sense and human decency are becoming increasingly sidelined to what the regulation says. Any good people in the rank and file are being crushed by an amoral bureaucracy.

In the United States, the government has gone so far as to state that it has no obligation to provide police protection or emergency services; courts have routinely upheld that “a government and its agents are under no general duty to provide public services, such as police protection, to any particular individual citizen…” (Warren v. District of Columbia)

It’s all a stark reminder that government is a disease masquerading as its own cure… and that, ultimately, we only have ourselves to rely on. Trust me, this is good news. The sooner people wake up to how horrifically incompetent and amoral their governments are, the better off we’ll all be.

Until tomorrow,
sig.jpg
Simon Black
Senior Editor, SovereignMan.com 

This article appears courtesy of SovereignMan.com: Notes From The
Field
, a free newsletter dedicated to individual freedom,
internationalization, asset protection and global finance. For a
complimentary subscription, visit http://www.SovereignMan.com

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