On the evening of December 31st, 2011 the Obamessiah signed the 2012 NDAA (National Defense Authorization Act). For those of you following the political news, you will remember that the president vowed to veto this bill because of sub-sections 1021 and 1022.
These 2 sub-sections deal with the detention of terrorism suspects. The NDAA grants the president the authority to detain anyone, “who was part of or substantially supported al-Qaeda, the Taliban, or associated forces that are engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners,” or anyone who commits a “belligerent act” against the U.S. or its allies, “without trial, until the end of the hostilities granted by the authorization for use of military force.”
The big controversy here is that the 2012 NDAA gives the president the authority to indefinitely detain American citizens without trial or even any proof of wrongdoing. Go back and reread the previous paragraph and piece the puzzle together.
The president now has the power to use military force to detain American citizens indefinitely without trial for committing a “belligerent act”. If I could embed a music file here it would be – “dom, dom, dom…”
Folks, wake up and smell the gun powder. The United States of America is rapidly becoming the United Socialist States of Amerika. Yes, I am well aware this is not a popular viewpoint and am 100% certain there will be lots of hate mail and notifications of un-subscribers in my inbox Thursday afternoon.
For many of you though, I am certain you are gradually (or possibly rapidly) awakening to the reality. While I don’t agree with the OWS crowd, they are right to be angry with the current state of affairs in the US.
Some people claim the right thing is to stay and fight the good fight. My question to you is how long will that take? Are you willing to wait 5 years? 10? 30? More power to ya…
We could also discuss the new FATCA (foreign account tax compliance act) that takes effect in 2013. This little gem was slipped in to the HIRE (hiring incentives to restore employment) act as a means to track down and punish offshore tax cheats.
In reality it was created to shackle you and your money to a broke nation run by politicians who have no intellectual ability or desire to maintain sound fiscal policies.
If you are unfamiliar with the details, you can read my article over on EscapeWealth to learn more.
Essentially though what you need to know is this piece of legislation is going to make it much more difficult and costly for you to bank, invest, or do business offshore.
These laws are created for the sole purpose of controlling the citizenry; controlling your movement, your capital, and ultimately your tax dollars. Ironically the unintended consequences will produce the exact opposite effect.
Obviously there will be many sheeple that remain holding fast to the belief that the ship can be righted, but the most productive citizens will move some or all of their business and investment assets to a friendlier environment. Some will even move their own ass to a friendlier environment.
This will only serve to increase the velocity of the downward spiral. Over the past couple of years the number of people moving out of the US has increased dramatically – even according the US Dept. of State’s own records. While this number still remains relatively low, it only takes a few of the next Steve Jobs’, Bill Gates’, or Sam Walton’s to have a huge impact on the economy.
How would the current business landscape look if only these 3 visionaries were born in Sweden or Australia? Would the US still have a dominant world position?
I’ve spent the last several days on a road trip through several Eastern European countries. I’ve been in Lithuania, Ukraine, Serbia and now Bulgaria. Tonight I had dinner at an amazing traditional Bulgarian restaurant and the tab for a 3 course meal for 5 came to be a whopping $34, including service charge. The same mean in Austin, TX would have been over $100, minimum.
The income tax rate is a flat 10% and you can earn 8% on a 12 month CD at a major bank. Sofia is a very nice city and there are beautiful mountains with great skiing nearby as well as exceptional beaches on the Black Sea just a few hours away.
Tomorrow I will be in Hungary for a few days then on to Poland. With the exception of Ukraine, I could easily live very well in any of these countries. Ironically many of these are former soviet countries with long histories of communism but they have somehow broken away from that mold while the western world is falling into the same trap they escaped from.
I am not proposing that you pack up and move to Bulgaria or Serbia per se, but you may want to consider finding your own perfect haven sooner rather than later.
With US politicians bankrupting the country, inflation driving up the cost of living and some of the highest tax rates in the world (at least for producers), now may be the ideal time to craft your own ‘Global Escape Hatch’.
