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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Feisbook Control" data-source="post: 488075" data-attributes="member: 5919">tarquin: Good to know you have a SHTF plan too then. As long as you're aware of the risks, fair enough. I think you're right that they will try to hit the estates of the baby boomers. Personally, I don't think that would yield very much simply because the baby boomers currently (collectively) have inadequate retirement savings. They have another decade or two to live. Not only will most leave no estate, most will actually get to the point where they rely upon government. If anything, they're going to be a net drain.Blunt: I don't look down on people for trying to be "responsible". I feel great pity for them. They've been sold that lie, much like men "manning up" and getting married, etc. It's an epic tragedy in the making. I don't want them to get fleeced, or more likely, skinned.As far as prepping, here's what I think about that. Basically, there are no guarantees. Yet to some extent, they can't take what they can't see, or what you can move away from them. Anything where the government has you locked into a period of time and a whole lot of conditions is like nailing one foot to the floor. It's not to say that they won't hit a moving target, but they need to be a better marksman to do so. A stationary target is much easier.As for having money off shore, a few thoughts on that. Ideally, I wouldn't even have money in only two places. Ideally, I'd have it in at least three countries on different continents with different underlying (political/philosophical) cultures, economies, etc. I know that the world is an interconnected place, etc. Yet to some extent, this would mitigate risk. Everyone talks about diversification of portfolio to mitigate risk, yet they don't consider (geo)political risk.Let's say you had assets in the U.S., Singapore and Chile. I think you'd be extremely unlucky for all of them to take a bite out of you at once or for all of them to go to hell in a hand basket at once. Obviously, there are no guarantees. Let's say you added a fourth in the U.A.E. Again, it's not different to diversification across individual companies, sectors or asset classes.I think you're also making three further mistakes. The first is the obvious point that there are currently, and have been, plenty of countries that have tried to impose capital controls on their citizens, pretty much with very limited results. How many Argentinians do you think currently have money off shore? Do you think the Argentinian government is or isn't trying to get their hands on such money? How successful do you think they have been and will be at doing so?Secondly, I don't think all governments (and their underlying cultures) are of equal (or even similar) levels of outlook, nor do I think they are of equal (or even similar) levels of competency. This is where my outlook on life may initially appear quite cynical and pessimistic, but it's anything but so. Even in the worst of times, there are still winners, still those who are ascendant. When lots of people took a bath in the last financial crisis, there were a whole lot of people who cleaned up and bought assets on the cheap, and thus set themselves up. Now extrapolate that to geopolitics. To assume otherwise is to think that history began, and will end, with the U.S. being the economic super power that it is today (or was in its heyday). Obviously, that's not the case. Back in the day, the smart people/money jumped ship from Britain to the U.S., and before that, they jumped ship from France to Britain and so on. When one empire/currency falls, another rises. Times of great turbulence are times of great opportunity.That leads into the third mistaken assumption I believe you are making. If/when the U.S. loses its power, why would others comply with their requests? It's axiomatic that power forces people to comply because they must, not because they want to. Therefore, if someone loses power, there is no imperative for them to comply, and as such, why would they want to comply? People may get the timing wrong, and thus get a backhander for doing so, but make no mistake, when the U.S. is really on the slide, its allies are going to be few and far between. Everyone is going to be jostling to sink the boot in. The last thing on their minds is going to be complying with U.S. requests to aid it in completely losing control.If, in my first objection above, you acknowledge that there is plenty of Argentinian money offshore, the Argentinian government wants to get its hands on that, but can't, then the subsequent question to ask is why wouldn't those other countries aid Argentina in doing so? The answer is, of course, because those other countries profit at Argentina's expense in some way. To assume that the same set of conditions or assumptions wouldn't also attain for the U.S. if/when it no longer had the power to force other nations to comply would be to believe in some sort of American exceptionalism, that economics, human nature and historical precedent would not apply to them, that this time it will be different.Historically, the changeover of power has never been particularly smooth or enjoyable for the declining power. We have been lulled into a false sense of security because the last changeover of power (Britain to the U.S.A.) was pretty smooth, but that was an anomaly. Even so, the changeover still presented plenty of shocks for those who thought they had power. For example, Roosevelt telling Churchill that Britain would have to relinquish India was one, and especially <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suez_Crisis" target="_blank">1956</a>. Who needs enemies when you have allies like that?Alternatively, you may have been suggesting that other countries would try to take a bite out of people/money fleeing the U.S. Some might, but that would be very short sighted. In a global marketplace where there are some 200 countries (and honestly, I think within the next couple of decades we're going to see probably an extra dozen or so new countries just in Europe), it's not good for business. The smart players will welcome new rich citizens with open arms because they know that it will be far more profitable in the long term. You can skin a cow now or you can get milk from it for many years.</blockquote>

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