SovereignLife Freedom Blog

Earlier this year the OECD published a black list and grey list of non-compliant financial centres around the world. Non-compliant in the sense they were unwilling to share client information with other member states regarding tax reporting issues.

With Austria, Belgium, Luxembourg and Switzerland now having caved in to the new requirement to share client information for taxation reporting purposes, the pressure is on the remaining smaller “non-compliant” states to fall into line.

As a result of these recent moves I’m often asked how these changes affect the much-vaunted banking privacy that offshore banking provided.

In the “good old says” – pre 9/11 – one could definitely gain financial privacy by having an offshore bank account, and such was often guaranteed and enshrined by specific legislation to ensure such privacy (as in Switzerland).

Now that is all under fire, what are the advantages of having an offshore bank account, if financial privacy cannot be guaranteed?

It’s a good question. Fortunately an offshore bank account still offers considerable benefits – quite apart from financial privacy.

First, if you’re not liable for income tax (say you live in a tax haven with no such tax, or you are not a “resident for tax purposes”), then this latest rounds of intrusive legislation will not much affect you. If you don’t owe any income tax, then there is nothing to report.

Second, an offshore bank account still offers considerably more security than a domestic one. If you don’t know already, most governments can dip into your domestic bank account and withdraw funds without your consent – for all sorts of reasons. Leaving your funds on home turf is not the soundest of financial strategies in the modern world.

Third, an offshore bank account gives you much greater access to other currencies, and often enables you to hold multiple currencies in one account. This ensures you can hold your savings in currencies other than your home country – a very desirable goal if your own country’s currency is headed “south”. By diversifying your cash holdings into different (and stronger) currencies, you can go some way towards protecting what you have from the ravages for government instigated inflation (read currency debasement).

Fourth, an offshore bank will often be safer as well. Given that most offshore banks are not in the business of mortgage lending, their balance sheets may be more to your liking – and your funds ultimately more secure.

So while the OECD would definitely like to scare the pants off you in regards to banking offshore – and hopefully prevent you from doing so – there are many sound reasons why you should go ahead and do it anyway.

Why anybody bothers to listen to, or even less believe, the utterances of politicians is beyond me. Has it not occurred to nearly everyone with half a brain that these humanoids are a breed apart?

Take Obama – the candidate of “change”. Man did he whip up some hysteria pre-election. And now that he’s in the driving seat, what do we get? More of the same old same old – dressed up in more potent rhetoric.

Take Brown, the one-eyed Scotsman (a term borrowed from Jeremy Clarkson!) who leads the UK. Can a leader such as he be any less inspiring – or worse, any more incompetent?

Then there’s the global pronouncements. The “moral” tone and indignation. Oh, the hypocrisy of this gang of thugs!

Take the big “issue” looming on the horizon – the talks between the Security Council members and Iran, regarding its supposed nuclear weapons programme. What we have here is a classic stacking of the decks prior to any negotiations.

Take the primary accusation – that Iran is bent on developing nuclear weapons. The fact is, they are members of the IAEA – and allow inspections (something Israel does not do). They assert their nuclear programme is for peaceful purposes only.

However, the western leaders keep on repeating the mantra that Iran is actually, covertly seeking to create a nuclear weapon (even though their own intelligence agencies admit to having found no proof of such). That doesn’t matter though, simply repeat a statement often enough and people will start to believe it.

The issue though is this: the upcoming negotiations are charged with an impossible task – to put pressure on the Iranians to prove their nuclear fuel cycle development is not to create weapons but for peaceful purposes only.

My question is this: How will Iran prove a negative – that it is not secretly building a nuclear bomb? How will it prove, to the demonising western powers, that it is not doing what they accuse it of?

Short answer is they will not be able to prove it. Sure they can allow inspectors in. They can agree to more intrusive inspections. They can comply with all legal requirements. They can have their scientists meet “our” scientists. But at the end of the day – and at the end of the negotiations – the PTB (powers that be) will still declare they are unconvinced.

At that stage they will announce the negotiations have failed, and that Iran is in violation, paving the way for the next round in the “charade” – a charade designed to create the impression that the PTP have done all in their power to reach a diplomatic solution. But now that has failed – more serious economic and even military options must be considered.

These negotiations are a farce, and simply a prelude for putting into place the obviously Israeli-inspired policy of an eventual attack on, or degradation of, Iran. Why? Because Israel will not countenance the rise of any fiercely independent (independent of US and Israeli pressure) nation in the “neighbourhood”.

It’s as simple as that.

If you were an alien arriving on planet earth, and you spent time studying the various relationships of the many countries and peoples that inhabit it, I’m sure you’d come to the conclusion that we are all mad. Mad because we are continuously at war with each other.

It was Clauswitz who said, “War is a continuation of state policy by other means.” In other words, war is used as a means of advancing state (or foreign) policy. Diplomacy is supposed to be the other means.

But consider how the word diplomacy has morphed into simply another word for “war”. Like the “diplomacy” being inflicted on the Iranians – “Stop the nuclear fuel cycle or we’ll increase the sanctions against you, we’ll blockade you – and if that doesn’t work, we’ll bomb you.”

In my book a blockade is an act of war – so such diplomacy ends up being a cover word for more war.

I’ll tell you the truth, I’m sick and tired of war. I see no point in it. All I see is dead people and rich warmongers. I don’t see any improvement. I see only a total waste of money. War is what our leaders want and it’s financed from the public purse – that is, financed from your pocket.

If you walk down the street and canvas support for war as a matter of policy – you will not find many takers. If you travel the world and study the various peoples, you will find they do not want war – only the opportunity to get on with their lives and make the best of things for themselves and their loved ones.

I’ve often thought that instead of war – which involves the deaths of thousands of innocent people – it would be better to simply put the leaders of the warring countries into a sealed room, armed with pistols. Then let them shoot it out, or scrap to their hearts content. But don’t let them out until they’ve sorted out the issue at hand. At least that way – those who actually want war would be the ones fighting it, and we could get on with our lives in peace.

Not only that, but war eats up valuable economic resources – resources that could be applied somewhere else. Just think how much better our economies would be (and therefore our individual lives) if the money spent on war and weapons was left in the market – in the hands of those who actually earned it in the first place. Now, that’s a radical thought!

And when it comes to war, it has finally dawned on me that most of it is waged by one country – the USA. This pains me greatly, as for years I held up the USA as a beacon of freedom and prosperity. But the fact is, the USA is the leading warmonger nation in the world today, spending vast amounts on armaments, sending thousands of young men to their deaths in fruitless and useless wars, and continually threatening non-compliant countries with war as a means of policy.

Glenn Greenwald, writing at Salon, states the obvious when he says:

“It’s hard to overstate how aberrational — one might say “rogue” – the U.S. is when it comes to war.  No other country sits around debating, as a routine and permanent feature of its political discussions, whether this country or that one should be bombed next, or for how many more years conquered targets should be occupied.  And none use war as a casual and continuous tool for advancing foreign policy interests, at least nowhere close to the way we do (the demand that Iran not possess nuclear weapons is clearly part of an overall, stated strategy of ensuring that other countries remain incapable of deterring us from attacking them whenever we want to).  Committing to a withdrawal from Iraq appears to be acceptable, but only as long as have our escalations and new wars lined up to replace it (and that’s to say nothing of the virtually invisible wars we’re fighting).  For the U.S., war is the opposite of a “last resort”:  it’s the more or less permanent state of affairs, and few people who matter want it to be any different.”

War is the enemy. What people need is peace and freedom. To talk of war as necessary for freedom is a nonsense and oxymoron. War can never bring freedom – and in fact, the vary act of war invigorates government and extends its powers – powers that are never removed. Each and every war has grown the totalitarian power of government and diminished freedom.

Thus the once-freest nation in the world – the USA – is now headed to the totalitarian waste dump of history. And it’s doing so by way of war – the surest way to ruin any country.

Until we get over our infatuation with war as a means of sorting out problems, then I don’t see much hope for the human race.

P.S. This article – The Afghan Disaster - by Lew Rockwell, hammers home the point nicely. Another article – Another War in The Works – by Paul Craig Roberts, is also worth a read. With reference to the Iranian situation, I urge you to read this article by Juan Cole – 10 Top Thing You Think You Know About Iran Which Are Not True.

The holding of the gold price above $1,000 USD per ounce (as I write) is interesting. I say so, because it wasn’t expected to hold (and it still may not). But coupled with other developments, it could also point to a new upswing in the shiny metal.

Most interesting, from a global perspective, is the news that gold ownership is being pushed in China. Various confirmed reports are indicating that the Chinese government via the state media is actively promoting gold and silver ownership by ordinary people. And people are responding.

In fact, any bank in China will now sell you gold/silver – in various denominations. Try that with your local bank!

And even more interesting is the fact that paper substitutes for gold are starting to appear (like warehouse receipts for actual metal, not fiat money).

One could come up with a lot of reasons as to why the Chinese government is encouraging its citizens to hold precious metals, but one reason that occurs to me is that they know something most the rest of us don’t – the role gold could play in the near/mid-term future.

It’s also no secret that China as been aggressively buying gold – perhaps as an alternative to USD.

Whatever the reasons, the fact the the world’s most populous country is now on a gold/silver binge could be a harbinger of things to come – if and when gold moves into “mania” buying stage (when the price will truly rocket).

If you’re not already buying gold (as an alternative to cash savings), then the time to move on this is now. You may also find my free report on this subject interesting.