What sort of currency,
gold, or other financial instruments can you take with you when you travel?
What do you have to declare? It all seems to get more complicated and
difficult every day.
Doug Casey has been predicting ever more stringent currency controls for
some time, along with greater scrutiny of every financial move made by every
person on earth—and that was before the NSA's snooping on everyone became
public knowledge.
This is worth fighting as a matter of principle: the president and every
member of Congress who votes against shutting down the NSA's illegal and
unethical activities should be voted out of office. With prejudice.
But there are also very pragmatic and near-term financial consequences to
think about. Doug believes the global economy has started down a spiral that
will eventually become known as the Greater Depression. Whether you agree
with Doug's view or not, it is beyond question that the state's vise grip on
our lives is tightening, and that governments are particularly keen to use
these increasingly Orwellian powers to secure their lifeblood: money. Just
google the new G-20 agreement on sharing taxpayer information. I rest my
case.
We expect this trend to accelerate rapidly in the near term, as more
governments get desperate. And we'd expect it to continue getting worse, even
if somehow the global economy miraculously recovers without spendaholic
governments having to pay the piper.
Key takeaway: if you have not done so already, you need to harden your
assets while it's still possible—and legal.
That can mean many things, but for Doug Casey, it primarily means shifting
more of one's wealth into real assets. For liquidity, that means precious
metals stored in multiple jurisdictions—gold, silver, and maybe platinum (if
you don't mind that most people can't distinguish it from silver). This is
the only financial asset class that is not also some counterparty's
liability. Gold is money, and it's what we use for savings.
So much for theory. In practice, people have a lot of questions; where to
buy, how to get the best price, how to store precious metals, etc. It's
simple enough to drop in at your local coin shop and pick up a few gold
Eagles, Buffaloes, or Krugerrands, but there's only so much bullion you can
stuff in your mattress before it gets lumpy. Constructing one's own vault and
hiring security guards gets pretty pricey—and guard dogs can bark all night.
Where does one even begin?
It's a good question, and several companies have come up with services to
provide answers. The best of these, however, are mostly meant for
high-net-worth individuals, and the ones that are economic for smaller
accounts still tend to expose bullion owners to counterparty risk.
This is how the Hard Assets Alliance came into being. Founded by a group of independent financial
researchers, this bullion service gives investors and savers a convenient,
inexpensive, and secure way to buy, store, and liquidate precious
metals—whether they have modest funds or large amounts of wealth to protect.
At the risk of sounding overly promotional, I'll mention three key
advantages of the Hard Assets Alliance:
1. Its sophistication. You can open many types of accounts—individual, joint, corporate,
partnership, sole proprietorship, LLC, IRA, or trust account. Opening an
account is very simple.
2. Competitive pricing. Every time you place an order, no fewer than four bullion dealers bid
on fulfilling your order—so you are guaranteed to get the best price.
3. Top-quality storage. You can store your bullion in the same
fully audited and insured independent vaults central banks use in New York,
Salt Lake City, Zurich, London, Singapore, and Melbourne.
These are some of the many reason we
decided to add HAA to our very short list of recommended ways to buy and hold
precious metals (if you missed it, you can grab
their information kit here and read all about the program). But,
even with our endorsement, there's a lot to think about, and many of our
readers have had questions. So we surveyed them, and put their questions to
HAA General Manager Ed D'Agostino, as you can see in this video
Q&A session.
Whether or not you're interested in
HAA's services, you should consider taking steps to safeguard your wealth as
soon as possible—in at least one, if not several jurisdictions beyond the
reach of the government that claims you as its beast of burden.
Not so long ago, it was possible to
do this in relative privacy and security. Those days are gone—at least as far
as privacy goes. On the bright side, it is
still legal… for now.
