Category: Z Legacy: Expat

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You didn’t get any of the benefits. Why get stuck paying the bill?

[Editor’s Note: Sovereign Man Chief Investment Strategist Tim Staermose is filling in for Simon today.] Hong Kong’s total population is around 7 million. The workforce is 3.75 million.  So generous are the tax breaks and allowances, only about 1.5 million people pay any tax at all. A single person can earn HK$108,000 a

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US Department of Labor now reduced to Soviet Propaganda Ministry

February 6th, 2012 Santiago, Chile In one of the most shamefully disingenuous reports we’ve seen in years, the US Labor Department released the latest employment figures on Friday showing that the headline US unemployment rate had fallen to 8.3%. Champagne and sound bites were pre-positioned in Washington as the self-congratulatory praise flowed like

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Is the Iraqi dinar for real? Find out for yourself…

February 3rd, 2012 Talca, Chile After a week away, I’m really happy to be back down on the farm in Chile. This is one of the most peaceful places I’ve ever been on the planet… and each day, it’s becoming more and more a place where all of the fiat bubble kleptocratic nonsense

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Google changes its privacy policy: Another reminder to use offshore email

February 2, 2012 Undisclosed location If you’re like almost every single Internet user on the planet, you probably use Google for something. Maybe Gmail, maybe Google search, maybe Google Docs, maybe Google Voice… or maybe all of the above. Google recently began circulating a new privacy policy that will take place effective March

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US housing still weak. In other news, the sky is blue

February 1st, 2012 Location Undisclosed The latest Case-Shiller numbers released yesterday showed that the US residential housing market is still very weak. After three straight months of declines, home prices are now at 2003 levels. Duh. To some, it was a shocking revelation. The pundits I saw discussing it yesterday practically had a

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US government more threatening than Hitler to this Swiss Bank

January 31, 2012 Nassau, Bahamas Wegelin & Co used to be Switzerland’s oldest private bank. Founded in 1741, they managed to survive every threat across three centuries: revolution, financial disaster, and war… from being invaded by Napoleon to the Sonderbundskrieg civil war to Adolf Hitler. Every threat except for one, that is: the

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Do as I say, not as I do…

January 27, 2012 Manila, Philippines [Editor’s note: Tim Staermose is filling in today while Simon is at the farm in Chile.] There is a delicious irony in the world of economic policy at the moment. Back in 1997 and 1998 I had a ringside seat to the Asian financial crisis from my trading

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Guest Post: How money can buy you happiness

[Editor’s Note: Simon’s friend Craig Ballantyne is filling in today to talk about the importance of the internet in generating independent income] In the late 1970’s one of my best friends and his family escaped from Armenia, then under communist rule. In fact, his father bought their way to America via Italy, eventually

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Action trumps hope

I woke up this morning to a flurry of emails– “Did you watch the State of the Union address last night?” I did not. Rather, I was busy sharing a delightful meal at one of my favorite restaurants with some close friends; I didn’t even know that the speech was going on yesterday.

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How to tell you’re living in the wrong country

January 24, 2012 Santiago, Chile Yesterday, Kentucky senator Rand Paul was detained by the TSA in Nashville after refusing to be fondled by the airport agents. Paul has been a vocal enemy of the TSA, blasting the agency last year after agents conducted an invasive search of a 6-year old girl despite her

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Yet another reminder that democracy is an illusion

January 23, 2012 Santiago, Chile With over 150 million registered users, the file sharing site MegaUpload.com is one of the most popular on the Internet. At least, it was. The site has now been seized by the US government and its homepage converted to an FBI anti-piracy warning. Its founder, a high tech

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How to conduct your own due diligence on a bank or broker

January 20, 2012 Santiago, Chile Greetings once again. It’s another beautiful, sunny day in Chile today, and I’m about off to our farm south of town to spend a wonderful weekend with good food and great friends. Before I sign off for the week, though, there are a few questions I wanted to

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Destroying America, bill by bill

As you’re probably aware, yesterday was the much ballyhooed blackout of several popular web sites in protest of new legislation that threatens the Internet as we know it. The United States Congress has teed up two separate bills which give government agencies sweeping new powers to punish millions of innocent users, criminalize harmless

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Guest Post: The final countdown…

[Editor’s note: Simon’s friend Tim Price is a delightfully witty fund manager in the UK, one of the few free-thinking individuals in all of institutional finance. His recent thoughts below on the euro debacle, gold, and hyperinflation are some of the best ever written on the topics.] “Under the circumstances, discussions with Greece and the official sector are

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Another reminder of how the US government destroys business

January 17, 2012 Santiago, Chile One of the most phenomenal human beings I’ve ever met hails from Harare, Zimbabwe of all places. His name is Time. That’s seriously his name. When you ask him about it, he shrugs, grins, and says, “My mom felt that she was in labor for way too long.” Time is a

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