December 12, 2013
By: Bobby Casey
Today (December 11th) is a down day for me after a busy week in St. Kitts at the Liberty Forums held at the Marriott in Frigate Bay. I am sitting here today writing this with a wonderful ocean breeze drinking a mango colada (don’t judge me, it’s my off day).
I thought it would be a good opportunity to give you a recap of the week’s activities, what we did, and what I learned from the speakers, attendees and from my ‘boot-on-the-ground’ perspective here in St. Kitts.
First of all, I gave 5 – yes 5 – presentations this week at Liberty Forums. This was a new record for me. The presentation topics were:
- Create Your Own Financial Fortress
- Using Anguilla Trusts for Asset Protection and Estate Planning
- Higher Returns, Control, and Protection from Confiscation with Self Directed IRA’s
- 3 Reasons to Invest in Latvia
- And, finally, a panel with Doug Casey and I discussing our best ideas for living, working and investing overseas
There is an enormous amount of awareness out there about the state of the economy and politics and how it is affecting people’s lives. The average net worth at this conference was around $10m, so these are not ignorant, tin-foil hat wearing hippies looking for a new cause to rally behind.
These people have money. They run companies. They own assets. And they are scared. REALLY scared about what’s going on.
People are looking for answers. They want to get their money (or part of it) out of the US and other Western countries. They are opening trusts, offshore companies, bank accounts, getting second passports, thinking about data privacy, looking for real estate overseas, and places to buy and store hard assets like precious metals.
Hosting the event in St. Kitts was clearly a strategic move with their citizenship through investment program. In St. Kitts, if you buy a property for greater than $400,000, you are automatically eligible for citizenship and it can be done in just a few short months.
In a coming issue of GWP Insiders we will publish an interview of our partner who offers this program as well as others like Antigua, Grenada and Dominica.
St. Kitts is really a beautiful island. During my visit, Doug Casey and I took a car around the island and visited several sites as well as discussed everything from business, to religion, to economics, and investments.
See pictures from our island tour below:
Doug is a fascinating guy and I’m glad to be able to call him a friend (no, we are not related). He has a wealth of information from his years of living and breathing international business.
As mentioned before, I was fortunate enough to sit on a panel with him where we discussed the topics of where to live, work and invest overseas. To recap, Doug’s view is listed below:
- Live – Argentina
- Work – Panama City or Hong Kong
- Invest – Cyprus stock market, Junior mining companies
My view is:
- Live – Lithuania or Colombia
- Work – Panama City or Hong Kong
- Invest – Lithuania real estate, Latvia real estate, Portugal real estate, Mining companies, Russian stocks
My view of St. Kitts is that it is clean, beautiful, friendly people, great beaches, good food, decent roads and decent infrastructure. If you are looking for an island getaway or retirement home in the islands, this would not be a terrible option.
Also while there I took the ferry over to Nevis with a couple of the people from the conference. I didn’t spend as much time on Nevis as I did on St. Kitts, but it too was very beautiful. It was also a bit quieter and more laid back. If you want quiet and relaxing, Nevis may be just the right place for you.
Economically St Kitts and Nevis are in trouble with debt to GDP greater than 200%, making it one of the most indebted countries in the world. They do not produce any net exports so they must borrow money to survive.
There are some rays of hope though. Their offshore financial services sector, while small, has the ability to grow much larger. The legislation is good, now they just need a good marketing effort to push the country to the forefront.
Also right now there is only one bank on the 2 islands with an international banking license. But that will change very soon it seems.
Just yesterday, I had a long meeting with the President of the international bank on the island and he said they are finally actively pursuing the international business (we can open Nevis LLC or IBC’s, Trusts, and bank accounts at this bank) from overseas and he even supports the local government’s FSC (Financial Services Commission) in its efforts to attract more international banks. His view is that if there were more banks it would be good for the entire country.
Like many places, the country has its issues, but with people like this bank president aggressively pursuing international business and the real estate sector still going strong, St Kitts and Nevis should do just fine in the coming years.
Other points of interest were a very in depth presentation by founder of Cryptohippie – Paul Rosenberg, about how to take some very simple steps to protect your online privacy. He also gave an excellent presentation about the future of Bitcoin. For our GWP Insiders subscribers I did a one hour podcast where Paul and I go in depth about how and why to use Bitcoin and some resources on getting started.
We had at least 2 presenters discuss various options on storing precious and strategic metals offshore and how to use them to leverage your wealth. These were very eye-opening presentations for sure.
Overall, the theme was centered around these few concepts:
- Get some, or all, of your wealth offshore
- Get some, or all, of your wealth into metals and real estate
- Move your retirement funds offshore
- Do whatever it takes to get a 2nd passport, especially if you are American
- Take advantage of the booming energy market
- Do not leave all your eggs in one basket
For each of you reading this today, I highly encourage you to take the necessary steps to protect you and your family’s future. And while these steps are indeed defensive, they also put you in a position to profit greatly by investing in other global opportunities not otherwise available to Americans.
Until next time, live well.
