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April 30, 2012 London, England [Editor’s note: Tim Price, a frequent Sovereign Man contributor and Director of Investment at PFP Wealth Management in London, is filling in for Simon today.] In a week that saw Britain slide into its first double-dip recession since 1975, we quite fittingly also saw evidence of the sort of insular bigotry and
“Should we crawl into bed with the IRS?” Thanks to the steady barrage of US government regulation ranging from the obtusely insipid Dodd-Frank financial reform to the impossible-to-implement Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA), banks everywhere have to make this decision. In short, Congress has arrogantly passed legislation to control foreign banks on foreign soil. FATCA, for
April 25, 2012 Santiago, Chile I was approached recently by a member of our Sovereign Man community who filed the paperwork to relinquish US citizenship some time ago. Long story short, after an incomprehensibly long wait, the US government finally sent him a reply: Application DENIED. Absolutely shocking. That you even have to ‘apply’ to relinquish
Citizenship By DescentLearn how you can get a valuable Second Passport & Citizenship By Descent… AUTHOR LAST UPDATED If you’ve got parents, grandparents (and in some cases even great-grandparents) from Italy, Ireland, or several other European countries, you may be part of what I call ‘the lucky bloodline club’. In this article, you’ll
April 23, 2012 London, England Roy Ward Baker’s 1958 classic film A Night To Remember, recounts the final night of the RMS Titanic based on survivor interviews from Walter Lord’s 1955 book of the same name. One scene from the movie depicts a lounge in one of the upper class quarters of the ship as it
April 20, 2012 [Undisclosed location] Here’s a fun way to cap off your week. The Congressional Budget Office has just released three very telling infographics which, unintentionally, spell out a pretty dreary picture of US government finances. The first graphic shows US federal revenue, both in raw numbers ($2.3 trillion in 2011) and expressed as a
April 19, 2012 Hong Kong One of the defining characteristics of EVERY boom is the presence of a small elite seeking to enrich itself through graft, corruption, and unethical behavior. When the music stops and the boom busts, these same people are frequently put to the sword of public opinion. Think Bernie Madoff, Ken Lay, and Silvio
April 18, 2012 Madrid, Spain The US Passport Act of 1926 is an obscure piece of legislation that was enacted decades ago when the idea of passports starting catching fire around the world. Subsequently absorbed into US Code Title 22, the law was originally intended to authorize and issue passports for US citizens
April 17, 2012 Vilnius, Lithuania In the terminal collapse of the Roman Empire, there was perhaps no greater burden to the average citizen than the extreme taxes they were forced to pay. The tax ‘reforms’ of Emperor Diocletian in the 3rd century were so rigid and unwavering that many people were driven to
April 16, 2012 Vilnius, Lithuania The consistent theme from my travels so far in Europe– the UK, Scandinavia, Lithuania– has been noticeably higher prices. Shockingly so, in some instances. London, where I spent a rather pleasant and rare sunny weekend with friends and colleagues, has gone from being ‘stupid’ pricey, to just plain
April 13, 2012 London, England Jim Rogers has famously commented that, if you were smart in the 18th century, you moved to France. If you were smart in the 19th century, you moved to England. If you were smart in the 20th century, you moved to the US. And if you’re smart in the 21st century,
April 11, 2012 Hoi An, Vietnam Here’s something you don’t see every day: Banks in Vietnam will actually pay YOU to store your gold in one of their safe deposit boxes. I was pretty surprised to find this out for myself; neither Simon nor I have seen it anywhere else in the world except here. This
April 10, 2012 Singapore The flight from Bangkok to Singapore is a quick 2-hours south down the Malay peninsula… though it might as well be 2-years given their differences; Singapore and Thailand are about as distinct as Switzerland and India– it’s yin & yang. Order vs. Chaos. Safety vs. Insanity. I spend a
April 9, 2012 Bangkok, Thailand One of the things that sets Thailand apart from nearly every other place on the planet is how absurdly cheap things are given the high quality of service. This becomes crystal clear to even the most casual observer who wanders in to one of the country’s thousands of
April 6, 2012 Pattaya, Thailand After an exhausting series of meetings in Bangkok, my partners and I are going to spend a long weekend relaxing on the beach in Pattaya before heading out to Laos, Malaysia, and Singapore next week. I’ve always liked this place; it’s easily the most internationally diverse city in the world on
