Ready or not, Lauryn Hill of Fugees fame has found herself sentenced to three months in a cage for extortion evasion. The extortionists call it “tax evasion”, but calling it by another name doesn’t change what it really is.

This sort of harassment and kidnapping is fairly par for the course in the USSA, of course. Just ask Wesley Snipes or Willy Nelson.  But there is a new twist this time around.  The tax-funded judge has ordered that Hill undergo psychiatric care in what amounts to brainwashing and re-education.  Why?  According to them, simply for publicly proclaiming the fact that the music industry is designed to strangle true talent while promoting mindless drivel.

Let’s just take a look at some of Lauryn’s lyrics and compare them to some of the top illuminati symbol-flashing pop stars in her genre today to see if perhaps she has a point.

Now, let’s look at some of her modern day peer group.  Here are some lyrics to “I’m the Best” by Niki Minaj.

Okay.  Maybe that is just one small example.  Let’s look at one of Beyonce’s latest “hits”:

I think Lauryn Hill might have a point!

THE RE-EDUCATION OF LAURYN HILL

Ironically, Lauryn Hill released her album, “The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill” in 1998.  Today, in the US, Lauryn Hill is about to be forcibly re-educated.

Her crime?  Believing in “conspiracy theories” that the music industry pushes out people like her who try to speak about the truth in favor of those like Minaj and Beyonce above.  Whether or not she is correct isn’t the point, however.

The point is that the US has begun “re-educating” countless people for any belief that doesn’t jibe with what is pushed out by the mainstream presstitute propaganda machine.  Brandon Raub was kidnapped for doing just that and sent to be re-educated.

The term re-education camp was the official title given to the prison camps operated by the government of Vietnam following the end of the Vietnam War. In such “re-education camps”, the government imprisoned several hundred thousand former military officers and government workers from the former regime of South Vietnam. Reeducation as it was implemented in Vietnam was seen as both a means of revenge and a sophisticated technique of repression and indoctrination.

We’ll have to see how outspoken Lauryn Hill is after her internment.  If she tones down her lyrics and contempt for the fascistic music industry, then it will be clear she has been repressed, broken and – to take play on a line from her most famous cover song – she has been killed softly because of her songs.

The Best of Jeff Berwick

Back in 2008, silver fell from over $20 per ounce down to below $10. This was a stomach-turning experience for those who had begun investing heavily in the metal.

I heard reports of bullion dealers in the US who simply were not selling Monster Boxes of Silver Eagles. Physical metal was hard to find in spite of the price collapse.

That nadir didn’t last for long as silver obviously rebounded magnificently, teasing its old psychological record of $50 an ounce. Realistically, it took some time for silver to crescendo amid increased demand arisen from The End Of The Monetary System As We Know It (TEOTMSAWKI).

So, realistically, one could expect that silver would thus consolidate over a similar amount of time. And it did. Still is…

Even today, just under $30, silver has represented a formidable store of value since 2008 – and before – if you can stomach the sheer weight of the devil’s metal. (You’re probably a HomeGrowner.)

Because it has been such a formidable store of value, demand has remained, and many mints in the world can’t keep up.

So, it makes sense that coin premiums are now rising.

Most recently, junk silver has dried up, and premiums have risen to over 10% on a silver retail product that oftentimes has traded at around spot.Compare Silver Prices nicely demonstrates the premium rise in just the past 24 hours (the website’s algorithm tracks silver premiums):

We’ll explain further the premium rise in the coming issue of The Dollar Vigilante Newsletter, but for the purpose of today’s blog, let’s look at where this mess all started (at least in recent, recent history).

The Beginning Of Bretton Woods’ End: 1971

French President Charles De Gaulle first forced the US’s hand on its pre-1971 obligation to convert French-held dollar reserves to gold. In some ways, this was the first post-World War II hint of the fragility of the Bretton Woods system. The US fairly quickly cut the tie between the dollar and gold, as we’ve covered extensively.

Können wir unser Gold zurück?

Although reported heavily in January, Germany’s been looking to get its gold back for awhile – since about 2010. This information has basically gone down the memory hole, though. The US has heretofore ignored Germany.

According to mainstream sources, Germany is looking to repatriate 674 tons of gold by 2020. Germany wishes to hold just 50 percent of gold reserves in Frankfurt by then. Post-World War II, once all the Nazi party oligarchs had gotten their loot, the official story goes as such: Germany began amassing gold reserves thanks to growing exports to the US. They kept the gold in the US to protect themselves from the “Evil Empire,” the Soviet Union.

Prior to reunification in 1990, 98 percent of Germany’s gold was stored abroad. Now, Germany wishes to store half of its gold domestically.

Podemos tener la espalda de oro?

The Mexican government Audit Office issued an official statement last month urging the Bank of Mexico to audit the gold it is “storing” at the Bank of England. The auditors directed the Bank of Mexico to “make a physical inspection with the counterparty that has the gold under its custody, in order to be able to verify and validate its physical wholeness and compliance with the terms and conditions of dealing with this asset.” According to GATA, the actions of the Mexican government Audit Office are thanks to a long campaign by Guillermo Barba, a Mexican civil activist and investigative journalist.

The Government Audit Office concluded that 95% of the gold reserves at the Bank of Mexico are stored with other government, with 99% of this gold abroad stored at the Bank of England. Never before has the Mexican central bank inspected the gold it purchased nor does it hold a list of all the gold bars stored with London.

Demand For Precious Metals, A Precursor For A Rise in Premium

It’s not just France, Germany, and Mexico that has moved towards repatriating its gold. Switzerland’s campaign to repatriate its gold has almost reached the necessary 100,000 signatures to begin the process; the Netherland has talked gold repatriation, as has Ecuador (repatriating 1/3^rd of gold reserves) and Azerbaijan.

Makes sense none of these governments would want their gold in the US. After all, in January the US Mint notified the public:

Authorized Purchasers,

The United States Mint has temporarily sold out of 2013 American Eagle Silver Bullion coins. As a result, sales are suspended until we can build up an inventory of these coins. Sales will resume on or about the week of January 28, 2013, via the allocation process.

Please feel free to call us if you have any questions.

Regards,

Jack A. Szczerban
Branch Chief, Precious Metals Group
Department of the Treasury
United States Mint

And then the Commonwealth nation of Kanada’s Royal Kanadian Mint began allocating and limiting the quantity of sales of the popular Silver Maple Leaf, .999.

The silver shortage spanned North America.

Oh wait…except for La Casa de Moneda de Mexico (the oldest mint in the Americas), with a full supply of 2013 silver coins.

One can only imagine it is a matter of time before Mexico starts getting the Polish treatment.

With fear and anxiety unrelieved by stock market highs, people will continue looking towards hard assets. This demand will in turn lead to higher and higher premiums. It might not matter one day what the price of silver is. Its premium on physical might double that easy. That is, if you can get physical silver at the retail level.

When I was on Fox’s Varney & Co last week for BitcoinATM, Varney told me I would appreciate that he was going to read the gold price for the day. Actually, I could care less what the gold price is day-to-day. Really, the gold price is just the dollar price in terms of gold. Dollar Vigilantes know, in the long term, where that is going.

Back in 2008, silver fell from over $20 per ounce down to below $10. This was a stomach-turning experience for those who had begun investing heavily in the metal.

I heard reports of bullion dealers in the US who simply were not selling Monster Boxes of Silver Eagles. Physical metal was hard to find in spite of the price collapse.

That nadir didn't last for long as silver obviously rebounded magnificently, teasing its old psychological record of $50 an ounce. Realistically, it took some time for silver to crescendo amid increased demand arisen from The End Of The Monetary System As We Know It (TEOTMSAWKI).

So, realistically, one could expect that silver would thus consolidate over a similar amount of time. And it did. Still is…

Even today, just under $30, silver has represented a formidable store of value since 2008 – and before – if you can stomach the sheer weight of the devil's metal. (You're probably a HomeGrowner.)

Because it has been such a formidable store of value, demand has remained, and many mints in the world can't keep up.

So, it makes sense that coin premiums are now rising.

Most recently, junk silver has dried up, and premiums have risen to over 10% on a silver retail product that oftentimes has traded at around spot. Compare Silver Prices nicely demonstrates the premium rise in just the past 24 hours (the website's algorithm tracks silver premiums):

We'll explain further the premium rise in the coming issue of The Dollar Vigilante Newsletter, but for the purpose of today's blog, let's look at where this mess all started (at least in recent, recent history).

The Beginning Of Bretton Woods' End: 1971

French President Charles De Gaulle first forced the US's hand on its pre-1971 obligation to convert French-held dollar reserves to gold. In some ways, this was the first post-World War II hint of the fragility of the Bretton Woods system. The US fairly quickly cut the tie between the dollar and gold, as we’ve covered extensively.

Können wir unser Gold zurück?

Although reported heavily in January, Germany’s been looking to get its gold back for awhile – since about 2010. This information has basically gone down the memory hole, though. The US has heretofore ignored Germany.

According to mainstream sources, Germany is looking to repatriate 674 tons of gold by 2020. Germany wishes to hold just 50 percent of gold reserves in Frankfurt by then. Post-World War II, once all the Nazi party oligarchs had gotten their loot, the official story goes as such: Germany began amassing gold reserves thanks to growing exports to the US. They kept the gold in the US to protect themselves from the “Evil Empire,” the Soviet Union.

Prior to reunification in 1990, 98 percent of Germany’s gold was stored abroad. Now, Germany wishes to store half of its gold domestically.

Podemos tener la espalda de oro?

The Mexican government Audit Office issued an official statement last month urging the Bank of Mexico to audit the gold it is "storing" at the Bank of England. The auditors directed the Bank of Mexico to "make a physical inspection with the counterparty that has the gold under its custody, in order to be able to verify and validate its physical wholeness and compliance with the terms and conditions of dealing with this asset." According to GATA, the actions of the Mexican government Audit Office are thanks to a long campaign by Guillermo Barba, a Mexican civil activist and investigative journalist.

The Government Audit Office concluded that 95% of the gold reserves at the Bank of Mexico are stored with other government, with 99% of this gold abroad stored at the Bank of England. Never before has the Mexican central bank inspected the gold it purchased nor does it hold a list of all the gold bars stored with London.

Demand For Precious Metals, A Precursor For A Rise in Premium

It’s not just France, Germany, and Mexico that has moved towards repatriating its gold. Switzerland’s campaign to repatriate its gold has almost reached the necessary 100,000 signatures to begin the process; the Netherland has talked gold repatriation, as has Ecuador (repatriating 1/3rd of gold reserves) and Azerbaijan.

Makes sense none of these governments would want their gold in the US. After all, in January the US Mint notified the public:

Authorized Purchasers,

The United States Mint has temporarily sold out of 2013 American Eagle Silver Bullion coins. As a result, sales are suspended until we can build up an inventory of these coins. Sales will resume on or about the week of January 28, 2013, via the allocation process.

Please feel free to call us if you have any questions.

Regards,

Jack A. Szczerban Branch Chief, Precious Metals Group Department of the Treasury United States Mint

And then the Commonwealth nation of Kanada’s Royal Kanadian Mint began allocating and limiting the quantity of sales of the popular Silver Maple Leaf, .999.

The silver shortage spanned North America.

Oh wait…except for La Casa de Moneda de Mexico (the oldest mint in the Americas), with a full supply of 2013 silver coins.

One can only imagine it is a matter of time before Mexico starts getting the Polish treatment.

With fear and anxiety unrelieved by stock market highs, people will continue looking towards hard assets. This demand will in turn lead to higher and higher premiums. It might not matter one day what the price of silver is. Its premium on physical might double that easy. That is, if you can get physical silver at the retail level.

When I was on Fox's Varney & Co last week for BitcoinATM, Varney told me I would appreciate that he was going to read the gold price for the day. Actually, I could not care less what the gold price is day-to-day. Really, the gold price is just the dollar price in terms of gold. Dollar Vigilantes know, in the long term, where that is going.

Jeff Berwick [send him mail] is an anarcho-capitalist freedom fighter and Chief Editor of the libertarian, Austrian economics grounded newsletter, The Dollar Vigilante. The Dollar Vigilante focuses on strategies, investments and expatriation opportunities to survive & prosper during and after the US dollar collapse.

The Best of Jeff Berwick

While European politicos negotiate in Brussels, deciding the fate of other people's money in Cyprus, the free market has already moved in to help Cypriots get access to their money via other means…

Banks have been closed for the last week in Cyprus and if they do re-open on Tuesday, it has now been announced that daily withdrawal limits at ATMs will be 100 euros per day.  

As the Cypriot Drama unfolds before our very eyes, I began pondering what tangible solutions there are to bank holidays and bank runs. What could I do to help in Cyprus and all other countries (like Spain, Greece and Italy) for which, as we have predicted at TDV, bank closures are coming?  The answer wasn’t hard to come up with. If these people had simply bought bitcoins with their savings, not only would they currently have 100% access to their funds, but also they would have enjoyed a parabolic move to the upside over past months.

ENTER THE WORLD'S FIRST OPERATIONAL BITCOIN ATM

Upon examination of the marketplace and many discussions with Justin O’Connell (TDV Newsletter & Gold Silver Bitcoin), as well as another key strategic partner of ours, I have decided to move forward with what I believe could be the next multi-billion dollar business venture: Bitcoin ATM.

But that isn’t all. It is wholly our intention at Bitcoin ATM to put the company in the right position to open its very first ATM in Cyprus. If we did this now, and we are moving quickly to make this so, we would be the only functioning ATM on the island.

How do I know this is such a good idea? Just look at what Bloomberg recently wrote about Bitcoin as currency:

One place where it’s not safe is in Bitcoin. Bitcoin is generally referred to as a “digital currency” or “virtual currency,” a form of cash that doesn’t need government backing. Unfortunately  it’s missing the most essential aspect of money: it’s not useful for buying anything. Bitcoin’s rise as a tool for financial speculation underlines the failure of the virtual currency idea.

As Dollar Vigilante readers will know, I take issue with a number of assumptions in this paragraph. For instance, no economic law exists (in the real world) which stipulates that cash needs government backing. Also, I have found that Bitcoin is useful for many things, not the least of which are the many things we accept Bitcoin for here at TDV Media, such as TDV Offshore, TDV Passports, TDV Newsletter, TDV Homegrown, and Get Your Gold Out Of Dodge.

I am not the first person to note Bitcoin’s Aristotelian attributes as money.

Durability: Bitcoin exists on the networks of users everywhere. Just like the internet, there is no singular switch to turn Bitcoin off. Bitcoin has already seen tremendous volatility, and the userbase has remained. Portability: What’s more portable than a flash drive? Or, how about a private key memorized in your brain. There is nothing more portable than a thought, and that’s what Bitcoin can be if you memorize your private key and keep the coins on a cold storage medium (also another technology the Bitcoin ATM team has planned).

Fungibility: Bitcoin is divisible up to 8 decimal places.  That means that at its current growth (inflation) rate of 3,600 bitcoin-a-day, the ultimate total amount of 21,000,000 bitcoin ever to be on the market can be divided among billions of people on the planet.

Intrinsic Value: A bet for Bitcoin is a bet for the Internet. We all have first hand experience with the intrinsic value of the Internet. What’s more, Bitcoin values the notion of privacy in a world where privacy has become scarcer than silver.

In Europe, institutions like the International Monetary Fund, European Central Bank & the German Federal Government have forced individuals to suffer through the confiscation and devaluation of their savings through techniques like taxes, levies and inflation.

The European Central Bank published a report in October, which stated that increased demand for Bitcoin “could have a negative impact on the reputation of central banks,” particularly if the public perceives Bitcoin’s value is due to “a central bank not doing its job properly.” Yet another reason why I know this idea is a good one.

These reasons and others are why I feel that Bitcoin ATM’s time is now. We picked our slogan, “Your Future Now,” to demonstrate the immediacy with which we feel we must roll out this technology.

I’ve founded many successful internet companies, and rarely have I been as excited about an idea as Bitcoin ATM. I’ve got a great, knowledgeable team who has already contacted important people within and without the ATM and bitcoin communities to make this feasible. You'll be intrigued by the unexpected relationships we're forging to bring Bitcoin to more people across the globe. In gauging shop owners in the digital currency unfriendly state of California last week, the Bitcoin ATM team discovered great interest from not only those who knew Bitcoin, but also from those who did not. Stateless currencies will be a way of the future, and that’s why Bitcoin ATM, and why now.

BITCOIN ATM FUNCTIONALITY

At this moment in time, you can deposit fiat currency into Bitcoin ATM and receive bitcoins to your account. You can also send bitcoins and receive fiat currencies.

OWN YOUR OWN BITCOIN ATM'S – POSSIBLE BUSINESS VENTURE OF THE DECADE

Ever wish you had gotten involved in the early stages of the internet in 1994?  Or bought gold in 2000?  Or invested in Microsoft in the 80s?  I see bitcoin and things like Bitcoin ATM as being the next big thing.  And, this is not the first time I've recognized a massive paradigm shift as I did starting Canada's largest financial website in 1994… and became a gold advocate early in the last decade and starting up The Dollar Vigilante in 2009 with a focus on protecting from The End Of The Monetary System As We Know It (TEOTMSAWKI)… something that is in full flight as people in Cyprus can attest.

As stated, we want to roll out these ATMs as quickly as possible.  Very obvious first locations would be in nations which are currently undergoing capital controls such as Argentina and Iran.  But, even more than that, there are communities of freedom minded individuals sprouting up all over the world.  A few bitcoin ATMs in the free state, New Hampshire, where thousands of freedom loving agorists have already moved is a no brainer.  Other areas that make complete sense include places like Chile where many are now gravitating as well as Cafayate in Argentina where Doug Casey has already formed his freedom loving expat community.

I am convinced bitcoin will be the currency of the future… and all the attacks on it by governments and central banks shows they know it.  

If you are interested in getting more info on becoming a franchisee in a particular area and installing a Bitcoin ATM in that region, please contact us at bitcoinatm@bitcoinatm.com.  As well, as things grow – and I expect it to be rapid – we may accept investors who are interested.  You can contact us about that at the same email bitcoinatm@bitcoinatm.com.

Jeff Berwick [send him mail] is an anarcho-capitalist freedom fighter and Chief Editor of the libertarian, Austrian economics grounded newsletter, The Dollar Vigilante. The Dollar Vigilante focuses on strategies, investments and expatriation opportunities to survive & prosper during and after the US dollar collapse.

The Best of Jeff Berwick

“I would like to see American students develop as much fanaticism about the US political system as young Nazis did about their political system during the War.”  ~ Lyndon B. Johnson, 1965

You probably haven't heard, as these things aren't announced over the government propaganda channels (AKA mainstream media), but Obama wants every single young American 18 to 25 years old to be forced into national service and ready to go into military service whenever the president wants more bodies to enforce his will abroad.

Obama's opening salvo for this vile requirement came in 2008 when he spoke of a "civilian national security force".

"We cannot continue to rely on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives we've set. We've got to have a civilian national security force that's just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded," said Obama the 2008 presidential candidate.

You'd think after realizing that the guy who called for the 21st century American version of the brownshirts and Hitler Youth became president, every American who could do so would have started the process of obtaining a new citizenship and passport for them and their families, getting out of the US tax farm and cutting all ties.

Fast forward to 2013 and now Rep. Charles Rangel (D-NY) has just introduced H.R. 748.

H.R. 748 would require all persons in the United States between the ages of 18 and 25 to perform national service either as a member of uniformed or civilian service. Civilian services include federal, state, and local government programs. But most frighteningly, this house resolution would "authorize the induction of persons in the uniformed services during wartime to meet end-strength requirements of the uniformed services…"

It was bound to come to this. Like any totalitarian state, the USSA wants to make some sort of government service a requirement for everyone, particularly in their prime physical years when their bodies can best meet the requirements of military slaves. Even if these young people don't become cannon fodder, they will literally be forced to perform unpaid labor for their government. Last we checked unpaid labor at gunpoint satisfied the definition of slavery.

Most of these young people are going to prefer "community-based" unpaid labor to getting shot at by the people whom the US government invades and occupies. There will be no real safety in serving the civilian side of this forced labor for the state, however. H.R. 748 makes all persons between 18 and 25 able to be inducted into the uniformed services should the state determine there is such a need. When you consider the continued and growing military aggression of the US, it's almost a certainty that just about every young person in America will be exposed to live combat…maybe even domestically. Especially since it was just revealed that the Department of Homeland Insecurity has just made an order for 2,700 light armored tanks. Apparently, US subjects have a lot of security coming their way!

Courtesy of Antiwar.com

Who knew that Hunger Games would be so prophetic? Every single child in America can look forward to at least performing slave labor with a good chance that they may be forced to kill others in order to survive. They will be forced to take their chances literally with life and limb to satisfy the bloody ambitions of sociopathic criminal politicians.

How eager are those criminals to get this underway? H.R. 748 was introduced on February 14th, 2013 and was referred to the House Armed Services Committee the very same day!

Time is running out to get away from the US before it literally starts stealing your young people and sacrificing their lives. If you had started taking action when Obama first announced his plans before his election four years ago, you and your family already would have had your other passports and would be safely out of his reach.

Even though time is running out, it's still not too late to act. TDV Passports is here to help. You can take the first step on your permanent escape from the USSA by clicking here.

Jeff Berwick [send him mail] is an anarcho-capitalist freedom fighter and Chief Editor of the libertarian, Austrian economics grounded newsletter, The Dollar Vigilante. The Dollar Vigilante focuses on strategies, investments and expatriation opportunities to survive & prosper during and after the US dollar collapse.

The Best of Jeff Berwick

With this year’s Super Bowl it looks like the Powers That Be realized they could stop pretending that the Super Bowl had become anything but a chance to unite their financially, ethically, and spiritually bankrupted subjects in worship of the militaristic imperial state and into acceptance of the state's push toward complete power over their lives. The whole show has become an embarrassing parallel of the circuses of the late Roman Empire. 

Where to begin? There was the fawning praise and worship of the military as the nation's "heroes", as if these people weren't the otherwise unemployable tools of foreign aggression and dominance.  Even going so far as to have an ad that stated, "Without the military, there'd be no Super Bowl"!  I nearly snorted my beer out my nose on that one.  

Then there was the shameless display of kids from Sandy Hook. I guess being put on such display before the nation at the Great Games was considered a suitable way to help heal the emotional wounds of the youngins who survived the tragedy. It looked suspiciously like callous propagandizing and tear-jerking to my jaded eyes, however. You'd think that a country that gobbled up The Hunger Games books and movies in the last year would find it at least a little revolting to see children offered up for viewing like that amidst all the state propaganda and just before a form of gladiatorial combat. 

The Sandy Hook choir was joined by Jennifer Hudson, of course.  Her mother, brother and nephew were killed in a shooting in 2008.  I was all but expecting them to lower the corpses of her family members from the rafters as the encore.

I'm not the only commentator in the liberty world who will make the observation that the Super Bowl is just one of the many circuses to go with the bread doled out by the collapsing USSA empire. But something else really struck me about the Super Bowl recently. It's not just about the entertaining distraction or even about propaganda. In its hype and glitz, it's like a Potemkin Village—an attempt to convince the hundred or so million people falling into possibly permanent poverty that everything is “Just Fine”. That the US is still a "rich" country on the verge of economic recovery after a temporary bad spell (caused by a few "greedy capitalists" and not central banking) and that the violent criminals running their lives have everything well in hand with the best interest of the people at heart. So sit back, relax and watch these millionaires tackle each other and the entire over-the-top spectacle!

I should point out here, however, that I enjoy sports.  And, there's nothing wrong with making millions for playing a sport. I want to make it clear that I have no problem with sports on the free market, or with athletes getting stupendously rich for using their talents in a free market. I'm not offended like those people who spurt nonsense about what a shame it is that men get millions of dollars from willing customers for carrying a ball around a field while teachers and soldiers, both of whom are subsidized by dollars taken from people under threat of violence, make so much less. I have no problem with athletes or actors and directors making millions if customers want to give them all that money to watch them practice their craft. As a peaceful person who hates the thievery and violence of the politicians and central banks, I hate when any talent is twisted to serve the state, as it is in the case of the Super Bowl (and Major League Baseball and Hollywood in general; it's also why I can't stand the inherently statist Olympics). I wish they would just play football. Instead there is all the flag-waving and state-speak of the state's killers as heroes returning home to their families, as if they were reluctantly blowing up civilians to defend their homes instead of acting as mass murderers and state enforcers in exchange for a government paycheck. 

So I do have a problem when what should be a free market pageant of the freakiest human athletes is instead used to help create a Potemkin Village. The term “Potemkin Village” comes from an apocryphal tale of Grigory Potemkin erecting fake settlements along the Dnieper River in order to make Russian Empress Catherine II (known as "Catherine the Great") believe that things were going much better with the Crimean campaign against the Turks than they really were. The story of these false settlements are said to be as accurate as the stories of Catherine's sexual appetite for horses. That is to say they were a deliberate twisting of real events, spread by enemies. (Catherine did have a. healthy sexual appetite, as Grigory Potemkin, one of her many lovers, would know.) The veracity of the story of the Potemkin Village is debated, with some experts claiming that the story is entirely a myth. Either way, Grigory Potemkin and his villages have slipped into our language as denoting something fake built up to impress and to hide the complete lack of anything underneath.

Which brings us back to the Super Bowl. Such a mighty effort to show wealth, unity, strength! And then the lights went out. Amidst this big, money-eating pageant, something as basic – and symbolic – as the lights staying on the whole time couldn't be managed.

That's what they get for holding the Super Bowl in a third world communist country, though.  

I was almost wishing the lights would stay out for a few more hours and we could watch in HD a remake of hurricane Katrina in the Superdome… but this time with rich people.

My more philosophical and poetic friends tell me that the gods are drawn to hubris because they like cutting prideful people down to size. So maybe they were watching this year's Super Bowl and decided it was time for a slight hiccup in the proceedings, maybe giving a small, easily dismissed warning that the whole facade is going to come down and reveal the moral and economic emptiness just beneath…

It may not be the wisest thing to shrug off a subtle message from the gods. If they are indeed suggesting that the jig is just about up, shouldn't you be making your plans accordingly? If getting out of Dodge – and getting ready to annul your marriage to the USSA – isn't on your immediate lists of things to do, at least make sure you can get the best economic and actionable advice possible to thrive as the economic reality in the US can no longer be covered up by bread and circuses. 

Jeff Berwick [send him mail] is an anarcho-capitalist freedom fighter and Chief Editor of the libertarian, Austrian economics grounded newsletter, The Dollar Vigilante. The Dollar Vigilante focuses on strategies, investments and expatriation opportunities to survive & prosper during and after the US dollar collapse.

The Best of Jeff Berwick

What’s patriotism got to, got to do with it? What’s patriotism but some outdated notion What’s patriotism got to, got to do with it? Theft is how nations will reward your devotion OOoooooohhh!

The increasingly thieving nation-states of the Western world ought to heed the words of TDV contributor Peter Kofod: "As with clay. The more you squeeze, the more escapes." Governments have started to squeeze more money from their richest tax serfs. But those serfs aren't sticking around to be squeezed… Apparently, people are waking up. But they're still very brainwashed. So while they know that getting raped a lot is very bad, they are settling for getting raped a bit less—and still aren't quite ready to aim for getting raped as little as possible or not at all. 

The floodgates are opening. Fleeing one's home country and giving up citizenship in one's native tax farm is getting to be all the rage among those with assets to protect. Just a few years ago, giving up citizenship in an "advanced" first world Western nation was something only eccentrics or pioneers did. But now those Western nations are requiring more and more money from their wealthiest subjects in order to keep their unsustainable welfare (Europe) or warfare (US) states going. The state robbery is getting so outrageous that big names from the mainstream are breaking away from the worst offenders: currently the US and France. 

But here is where it gets a little strange. Those big names fleeing the worst of the western world are heading to only a slightly better condition somewhere else. They're jumping out of the flame into the frying pan instead of trying to get clear of the stove entirely. So they leave France for Russia or the UK, or the US for Switzerland, while places like Paraguay, the Domincan Republic and St Kitts go underutilized, except by savvy TDV readers. 

WHAT'S LOVE GOT TO DO WITH IT?

If anyone knows a thing or two about getting away from abusive partners, it's Tina Turner. The relationship between her and her abusive husband and manager, Ike Turner, was immortalized in the film What's Love Got To Do With It. What's funny is how the Ike and Tina story closely parallels America's relationship with its citizens. At one time Ike (the US) helped Tina (the citizens) on the path to success. But over time Ike became more of a bully and grew jealous of the attention Tina was getting. In the end, Tina had to find the strength to realize she was better off without Ike and went to realize even greater success without him. The US has indeed slowly transformed from Prince Charming into a boozy, bitter bully of a husband who comes home reeking of cheap rotgut and cheaper prostitutes. He's looking to take his frustration out on his poor wife's face. And since the bum has no job, he will once again be rifling through her purse to take whatever money she's managed to scrape together so he can keep his bookie off his back for another few days.

Now Tina is seeking citizenship in Switzerland where she's lived for the past several years. And Tina isn't just seeking dual citizenship here. She is going to be renouncing her US citizenship and turning in her US passport. This isn't polyandry. It's a divorce. She's been seeing this other fellow for a while and according to Tina it's true love. "I'm very happy in Switzerland and I feel at home here," the rock icon said, "I cannot imagine a better place to live." 

While Tina's new nation-state-spouse won't be quite so violent and thieving with her as her old one, it will still be a little bit rough at times and pilfer the occasional few coins from her purse. The federal income tax in Switzerland has a maximum rate of 11.5%. Rates vary widely depending on which canton we're dealing with. Tina will be residing in a suburb of Zurich in which the top rate is 13%. Individual cantons may impose an inherentance tax, but the trend has been to abolish those. There are various allowances depending on the relationship with the deceased, but here is a schedule of Zurich's inherentance taxes:

She hasn't yet mentioned taxes as a reason for this, but we can't help but notice that her federal and local income taxes would be considerably lower as a Swiss citizen—and the state won't take all her stuff from her estate after she dies. I don't mean to question Tina's motives. According to her she just feels more at home in Switzerland at this point. But her move comes amidst a growing number of other such nation-state hopping, others of which are so clearly based on rising taxes (government theft) that those involved don't even bother trying to hide their motivation. I am speaking, of course, of France from which wealthy French are fleeing as quickly as they possibly can to outrun the socialist Hollande government's naked grab for three quarters of their money (and why TDV will soon be launching a French language website in France). 

RATS LEAVING THE SINKING SHIP

Even a former top political rat is getting out while he can. Nicolas Sarkozy is taking his money and his trophy singer/model wife and heading for the UK of all places. It's a little ironic because the tiny former French president gave himself a raise as one of his first acts in office…and he still can draw from a mayoral pension from his stint as mayor of Neuilly-sur-Seine. This is a man who funds a comfortable life with stolen loot. When rats like Sarkozy start swimming away, you know something awful is about to happen to the ship. 

France's wealthiest man, Bernard Arnault, filed for a Belgian citizenship and passport almost as soon as the election results came in. The Belgian Office of Foreigners reminds us that they may yet block Mr. Arnault's request for a passport. But that hasn't stopped Mr. Arnault from officially transferring his assets to Belgium. It's a shame that all these people didn't subscribe to TDV years ago. We not only could have told them that this was coming, but we could also have given them much better places to go. Not that we need their business!

The floodgates have truly opened up and we are so overwhelmed with interest in foreign passports and expatriation information that we have to keep hiring and training new employees to keep up with the demand. So our apologies if we haven't gotten back to your inquiry yet. It's like the entire world is waking up all at once. People everywhere are realizing that they need to get out. And this trend will only accelerate. Don't think, however, that governments aren't noticing! Sadly, in a year or two they will have put barriers to egress in place. People and their assets will be trapped in their collapsing nation-states with capital controls and travel restrictions. It's clear that people realize the danger here…which explains why TDV is currently one of the fastest growing companies on Earth.

And while France leads the way in chasing its wealthy from its national borders, in the US citizens have long moved from state to state within the continent-spanning nation-state in order to minimize abuse at the hands of the taxman.

ESCAPE FROM KALIFORNIA

When it comes to high profile rich people leaving state borders for tax reasons, California may be the US answer to France. Two very rich golfers have admitted that Californian taxes made them want to run screaming for the hills. While golfer Phil Mickelson apologized like a punk for publicly airing his tax grievances, Tiger Wood readily admits exactly why he left high tax California for zero income tax Florida. You have to wonder about Mickelson's apologizing for being upset about what he says is a 63% tax bite. Maybe California's elected mafia (the state government) gave him a call and told him to apologize like a good little flunky. 

In the end, however, Phil and Tiger and any person of worth moving around within the US for tax purposes is just rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. That whole ship is going down. And in this case the crew will start setting fire to the lifeboats to make sure no one can leave. Tina Turner had the right idea. But the wrong destination. To take sensible steps in the right direction when it comes to internationalization and expatriation, start here.

Jeff Berwick [send him mail] is an anarcho-capitalist freedom fighter and Chief Editor of the libertarian, Austrian economics grounded newsletter, The Dollar Vigilante. The Dollar Vigilante focuses on strategies, investments and expatriation opportunities to survive & prosper during and after the US dollar collapse.

The Best of Jeff Berwick

In the December issue of TDV we took a brief look back at 2012. What a year. From the NDAA, to SOPA (which was defeated by one man in particular, anarchist, Aaron Swartz, who killed himself last week after being hounded by the US government and being extorted with threats of a million dollars and 30 years in a cage) to claims by media propaganda mouthpiece, Paul Krugman, of the US needing to fake an alien attack to get the economy on track. And then, in an encore, recently, coming up with a plan, Robert Mugabe style, to coin a platinum coin with a $1 trillion value to help pay off the US government debt… it was, and continues to be, a year of absolute insanity.

This is how systems fail. Especially, violent, thieving systems that are based on confidence.

As we look forward, in this January issue of TDV, to the year ahead we will start with some charts from the past that still hold true today and update a few charts to show the continuing death spiral that the US and most Western governments are in.

First, a chart we have used in the past but it needs to be re-asserted. This chart, all by itself, all but explains how out of control are the US government’s financial affairs.

Things appear to have gotten a little bit out of control since August 15, 1971 when the last vestige of gold backing was removed from the dollar and the US government defaulted on its obligations.

This chart of US government deficits shows the extremity of the situation relative to the past as well.

Worse than that though is that most of the actual money owed by the US government is not properly accounted for. As just one example, Socialist Insecurity extortion payments are taken off of US subject’s cheques and included as income of the US government. Then, part of that money is paid out to current pensioners and the surplus is immediately absconded and spent on other things with an IOU left in the Socialist Insecurity dropbox. Besides being a Ponzi scheme, this, obviously, if done by any private company would be obviously fraudulent. Taking money from employees, telling them it is for their retirement, including that income as revenue and profit on your financial statements and spending it all on other things would be the height of fraud.

When done by the government, however, it is fine. It does many things like this. If the US government were to actually properly account for its criminal activities and adhere to Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP), something that every company in the US must adhere to, then the fiscal situation looks much worse.

We updated this chart this year, which we’ve been doing since 2009 and total GAAP debt and obligations in 2011 added up to approximately $5 trillion (data provided by Shadowstats.com).

Assuming that the trajectory continued in 2012, which it almost certainly did as there was a recorded $1.1 trillion deficit in 2012 while Socialist Insecurity and other government Ponzi scheme payouts likely continued at the same rate or higher, then for 2012 the total debt and liabilities of the US government is approximately $85 trillion.

Divided by the population of 305 million, that is $278,688 for every US subject or well over $1 million per family of four in money that has already been borrowed and spent by the US government.

And, even that is in doubt and likely higher as once again, the Government Accounting Office (GAO) stated in 2011 that they could not render an opinion on the consolidated financial statements of the federal government, because of widespread material internal control weaknesses, significant uncertainties, and other limitations.

To quote the GAO:

“As was the case in 2010, the main obstacles to a GAO opinion on the accrual- based consolidated financial statements were: (1) serious financial management problems at the Department of Defense (DOD) that made its financial statements unauditable, (2) the federal government’s inability to adequately account for and reconcile intragovernmental activity and balances between federal agencies, and (3) the federal government’s ineffective process for preparing the consolidated financial statements.”

The Department of Offense has been totally unaccounted for since at least September 10, 2001, when Donald Rumsfeld announced that $2.3 trillion had gone missing. The next day a cruise missile hit the accounting office of the Pentagon and no one has asked any questions since.

Forgetting for the moment whether or not the US government’s financial statements are even real or not, and assuming they are, the recent “fiscal cliff” debacle shows that the US government is working itself into a corner more by the day.

Jeff Berwick [send him mail] is an anarcho-capitalist freedom fighter and Chief Editor of the libertarian, Austrian economics grounded newsletter, The Dollar Vigilante. The Dollar Vigilante focuses on strategies, investments and expatriation opportunities to survive & prosper during and after the US dollar collapse.

The Best of Jeff Berwick

If I had told you twenty years ago that the rich of the West would have to flee to Russia for economic freedom, you might have slapped me for lying.

But that is exactly what is going on today as Western governments get increasingly brazen about their true kleptocratic natures, seeking to “expropriate the expropriators” in order to save their unsustainable welfare (European) and warfare (American) states.

Europe has never been the land of economic freedom, but it wasn't as bad as the Communist states of the USSR which kept roughly 100 percent of their citizens' income, a condition commonly known as slavery. Before the fall of Communism, people were actually risking their lives trying to escape places like Russia and East Germany. Now as Russia moves away from economic slavery toward economic freedom and Western Europe takes giant steps toward communism, the rich of the West are both the first targets – and the first escapees.

Famed French actor Gerard Depardieu is the probably the most well-known name among the first defectors fleeing French Socialist President Francois “I Hate The Rich” Hollande. Hollande has literally said, “I don't like rich” which plays well in France for reasons I'll explore below. Yet he also has no shame in using the rich's money – at gunpoint, of course – to fund his socialist redistribution schemes. Hollande wasted absolutely no time in trying to make good on his pledge to raise the top tax rate to 75 percent on French citizens who earn a million euros per year.

Depardieu, who apparently would make a fine Dollar Vigilante, almost as immediately put his Paris mansion up for sale, crossed the French border into the Belgian village of Nechin where a tiny community of French just beyond the reach of French taxation already existed, gave up his French passport, and is in the process of renouncing his French citizenship. Depardieu has already paid roughly $200 million in taxes to the French government over his decades-long and very successful acting career. This year he's already paid 85 percent of his income.

Hollande calls the departing Depardieu “pathetic” and “unpatriotic”, which is exactly like a high-ranking mob lieutenant calling a local business owner pathetic and unpatriotic for moving out of the neighborhood where the mob boss regularly extorts protection money from all the business owners Culture Minister Aurelie Filippeti describes Depardieu as “deserting the battlefield in a war against the economic crisis”, but is it any surprise that Depardieu cannot stand any more theft-based support of his tax farmers…that like any weary soldier tired of losing limbs in some war contrived by politicians Mr. Depardieu just wants to take what's left of his broken (financial) body and go live in peace?

So when Russian Premier Vladmir Putin offered Depardieu a Russian passport (Russia has a flat rate income tax of only 13%), can anyone blame Depardieu for graciously accepting the offer with a warm hug?

Of course the story has a few complications. For example, Depardieu's father was an avowed communist who described Soviet Russia as a “glorious democracy”. And Depardieu himself is a colorful and larger than life character in France who is as known for his antics as he is for his acting. So for Depardieu to renounce French citizenship, for tax purposes, and talk up his admiration for Russian history, hug Putin, and then wave his passport for the cameras would be like Clint Eastwood renouncing his US citizenship, mailing a picture of his naked buttocks to the IRS, and then joining the Taliban.

You have to remember that Depardieu is a Frenchman escaping France, a country known for its sense of national pride (perhaps even worse than the US) and for its widespread and deep distrust of anyone who accumulates wealth. This is a country that can't imagine anyone actually giving up French citizenship to which everyone in the world aspires (sound familiar?). This isn't a country that holds up its wealth accumulators as examples to be followed, or indeed a country willing to embrace the increasing standards of living that free enterprise brings. The French are more in love with their history and a sense egalitarianism at government gunpoint than they are in progress brought by economic freedom. They almost give the impression that they'd rather see horse drawn carriages in their picturesque ancient cities and farms than not have their old people die in frequent summer heat waves because they lack modern extravagances like air conditioners.

During the French Revolution, the rich – who, to be fair, did enjoy a state-supported stranglehold on wealth – were introduced to the guillotine, also known as the “National Razor”. Today France's super-rich, unlike America's super-rich, give money not to charities but to politicians as protection money to be redistributed among the lower classes so they don't get too agitated, and otherwise stay out of view. Depardieu is far from the only super-rich French citizen to head for the exit when Hollande came to power (one French radio station reported that as many as 5,000 rich French are seeking to no longer be French this year). But none of the others have been as flagrant as Depardieu has been about it (hugging Putin and waving that new Russian passport).

France's constitutional court has overturned the “Supertax”, but Hollande's Socialist government isn't calling it quits yet and intends to get its pound of flesh from the super-rich. In fact, with that 75% tax they seem to be aiming to leave nothing but the bones. Depardieu may be talking up Russian history now and claiming that if this was just about taxes, he would have left long ago, but as a Frenchman he is intimately knowledgeable about French history and he can clearly see where this is headed. The government is running out of other people's money. The rabble are getting agitated and the politicians are sharpening their knives with clear intent. It's time to get out.

France is merely the canary in the expropriation coalmine, however. The governments of the entire Western World are reaching the inevitable end result of spending more than they steal from productive citizens. And so we have the great irony of the world's largest and most recent slave state, Russia, becoming a haven for those seeking economic refugee status. The lesson to be learned here is that it is best to remain nimble among a landmine of the violent thieves known as governments. That's the point of having an extra passport (or two); you spread the geopolitical risk that goes with having to a live in a world completely divided up into tax farms. And while Russia's 13 percent tax rate must seem much better to fleeing Frenchmen than 75 percent, TDV offers citizenships and passports to countries with even better rates and much better climates. Click here now to learn more. 

Jeff Berwick [send him mail] is an anarcho-capitalist freedom fighter and Chief Editor of the libertarian, Austrian economics grounded newsletter, The Dollar Vigilante. The Dollar Vigilante focuses on strategies, investments and expatriation opportunities to survive & prosper during and after the US dollar collapse.

The Best of Jeff Berwick

If you live in the USSA, you've been inundated by media on the shooting in an elementary school. While this obviously was a horrible event, I would like to interject some rationality into the discussion.

First, it has been so nice to be in Europe for most of this media frenzy as I have not been inundated with emotional reactions to a complex event. Let's get a few things out of the way right now. This event was not because guns exist. If there is any more proof for this, it was that on the same day, in China, 22 kids were stabbed via knife in a very similar event. 

Second, isn't it funny how armored cars ALWAYS and banks OFTEN have a non-public/police armed guard to protect fiat currencies…but schools NEVER have a private armed guard to protect something much more important to people (their own kids). Maybe I'm just a bit too logical with my anarchism and non-collectivtist thinking, but I am amazed that all the sheep who are so afraid of guns and who would be appalled at the idea of free market armed guards protecting their children, are completely okay when they see an armed guard standing at the door of a bank or carrying bags of money into the bank. I shouldn't be so surprised at how warped their thinking is, especially at this point in my life, but it's hard not to be when these brainwashed people start yelling their nonsense after tragedies like this last one.

By the way, the lack of real protection is yet another reason to avoid putting your kids into child prison day camps (schools) where they can so easily become target practice for some deranged shooter hopped up on prescription pschoactive medication. These camps are very, very dangerous places…and that's besides all the propaganda, indoctrination and hazing they will receive there.

Third, allow me to point out that, thanks to the fact that the main dream media and the government in the US are in charge of almost all information that we really have no idea of what really happened there. We do know that many children were killed. That is about the extent that we can really know. There are definitely many questions, however. Just like with the Colorado Batman movie shooting there were plenty of reports of a second shooter.

Beyond that, much more dangerous than guns, are the pharmacheutical poisons being prescribed to tens of millions of US citizens. This list was put together by Takimag.com (see here):

An autopsy concluded that Columbine killer Eric Harris had the SSRI antidepressant Fluvoxamine in his bloodstream at the time of his death.

• Jeff Weise, who killed nine people and himself at a Minnesota high school in 2005, was taking increasingly high doses of Prozac at the time of his spree.
• Robert Hawkins, who killed eight people and himself at an Omaha mall in 2007, reportedly had been on antidepressants at the time of his shooting. He allegedly had taken antidepressants since he was six years old.
• Seung-Hui Cho, who killed 32 and wounded 23 at Virginia Tech in 2007, had been prescribed Prozac and had previously taken Paxil for a year, but he apparently had ceased taking his medication at the time of the shooting.
• Andrew Engeldinger killed five people and himself after being fired from his job in 2012 (just half a quarter mile away from where TDV editor Gary Gibson was writing at his house in Minneapolis). A police search of Engeldinger's house revealed he’d been prescribed the antidepressants Mirtazapine and Trazodone, as well as the insomnia medication Temazepam.
• Eduardo Sencion, who killed four people and himself with an assault rifle at a Utah IHOP in 2011, was a paranoid schizophrenic whose medications were changed during the summer prior to his attack.
• Robert Kenneth Stewart, who murdered eight people at a North Carolina nursing home in 2009, submitted to a blood test that revealed he had Lexapro, Ambien, Benadryl, and Xanax in his system at the time of his spree.
• Steven Kazmierczak, who killed five people and himself on Valentine’s Day in 2008, had allegedly been prescribed Xanax, Ambien, and Prozac, although according to his girlfriend he had stopped taking Prozac prior to the massacre.
• James Eagan Holmes, who shot up a Colorado movie theater in July, reportedly took 100MG of Vicodin before the shooting. He had also allegedly seen three school psychiatrists prior to his attack. Although his psychiatric records are privileged information, in his mug shot he appears to be medicated up to the eyeballs.

And Adam Lanza, slayer of over two dozen people on Friday, appears to have had a classic pair of Medication Eyes himself. He was also reportedly "troubled" and possibly "autistic." A neighbor of Lanza’s claims he was taking medication.

Where is the outcry to ban pharmaceuticals? Imagine if all these killers had been smoking plants like marijuana or coca? The outcry in the media would be deafening.

Beyond that, though, is the question of relevance. Approximately 1,500 people are murdered every day. Many of them at the hands of Nobel Peace Prize winner, Barrack O'Bomber. Do you cry every day for all of them? Or is it because you aren't told by your media programming not to that you don't?

We are now at a world guesstimated at 7 billion humans. Even 100 years ago, that amount was closer to 1 billion. As numbers increase and as the amount of global media increases, we will hear of horrendous stories almost every day… just as a matter of simple math.

As these numbers continue to increase horrific events will appear to be happening by the hour… and will further enable the media and the powers that be to sell the populace on how dangerous the world is becoming and how you need to be disarmed from self protection to survive. The truth is that we, as people, have probably never been more safe and secure. Statistics indicate that the total population of chimpanzees (humans – monkeys with pants) was 370 million in 1350. So numbers alone have increased 2,000 percent in the last few hundred years. Not to mention that you would never hear of a mass killing even 500 miles a way during that time.

Do not let the extrapolation in numbers fool you into thinking the world has become far worse. In contrast to 1350, the world has become infinitely better. Keep some semblance of reality and realize that and also look deeper into the real causes of any problems in the world we live in today.

Jeff Berwick [send him mail] is an anarcho-capitalist freedom fighter and Chief Editor of the libertarian, Austrian economics grounded newsletter, The Dollar Vigilante. The Dollar Vigilante focuses on strategies, investments and expatriation opportunities to survive & prosper during and after the US dollar collapse.

The Best of Jeff Berwick

Hello from…. Acapulco, sigh,

Oh, the irony.  One of the top providers of passports in the world, myself (TDV Passports), has been having trouble getting a passport for his own daughter!

As you may recall, two weeks ago, I spoke of all my troubles at the slave processing center (passport office) trying to get permission from criminals to allow my 6-year-old daughter to travel.  Then, last week I told you that by this time this week I'll be writing to you from Europe.

We were originally set to leave on Wednesday, but by Wednesday morning we still had not received a passport for my daughter.  I'll tell you more about what happened after that, but first let me tell you what happened that day.

BACKING DOWN FROM THE STATE

You never really know who you are until faced with adversity. Forrest Griffin, a phenomenal UFC fighter – and, strangely enough, a good author who wrote a book that sounds like it makes sense to us vigilantes, "Be Ready When the Sh*t Goes Down: A Survival Guide to the Apocalypse" – once said, "Never trust a man who has never been punched in the face."

That always stuck with me since I can guarantee you tjat people like Dick Cheney and Barack Obama have never been punched in the face. Shot other people in the face, that’s a different story.

I have been punched in the face. It happened when I was about 13… that changed everything about me. I don’t recall if my father put me into boxing, karate and kung fu after that or if I asked for it… but the end result was the same, I feel I can protect myself in most situations now… and that makes a world of difference.

So imagine how hard it was for me to look in the mirror this week after I had cowtowed to an agent of the state. 

A statist person who likes to control people had repeatedly denied us of her slave card and I reached my breaking point two hours before our flight was designated to leave. My wife, teary eyed, told me that no matter how many lawyers and agents we hired that we just were not going to get her slave card in time. For months I had told my daughter countless stories of what snow looks like… being born and raised in Acapulco it is a very foreign concept and her beautiful brown eyes always open wide as I told her about it.  Figuring perhaps speaking to them on a human level would work, I thought, as a last attempt.  

I swallowed my pride and raced down on my scooter to beg forgiveness and ask that they put all problems aside and… I actually teared up… as I tried to tell the woman there that all I wanted to do was take my family to another place for Navidad and how I would bite all my words and apologize if they would allow us to go. Seeing the tears in my daughters eyes – and, she was actually the least emotional of either me or my wife (who is incredibly strong) a few moments earlier had driven me to submit.

I sat in the office of head boss there at the passport office and nodded my head to whatever she said. "I love my job," she said. "I take it very seriously." I bit my tongue again to not tell her that she is not much different than any Nazi or Stalin gulag train driver. I sat, head down, and nodded. I told her she is right. I submitted.

I still feel sick to my stomach telling you this. But I tell you this, I am quite certain in my heart that if all that was on the line was only MY freedom I would have sat stone-faced and proud. But this was all about my daughter.

This is the worst I’ve felt in some time. It makes me wonder if/when I am kidnapped and taken to Guantanamo Bay how quickly I will buckle. My first water boarding will likely have me doing and saying whatever they want. Or not. Again, this was solely about my daughter, not me… and I didn’t want to do or say anything that would deprive her of the ability to travel semi-freely. I guess my next test comes when they come for me and me only.

As I look in the mirror today I am not sure who I see. I am passionate about freedom… but how passionate? I have doubts now about my ability to fight the collectivist/statist whole.

I am almost literally speechless right now. Who am I? What am I? My anarchist wife is sick as well. Have I broken everything I say I am about?

THE HOBBIT

If there was one small brightside to my week was that I was still in Acapulco for the grand opening of The Hobbit.  My two favorite movie theaters on Earth are, #1, the VIP cinema at the Siam Paragon cineplex (There at one of the most upscale malls on Earth they have chandeliers, bars, discotheques and more all inside the theater complex) and the 2nd best theater I've been to is here in Acapulco at La Galerias Diana VIP.

For an entry cost of $8 you have leather lazyboy reclining chairs, a bar, and a 10-page menu with waiters and waitresses attending to you at your seat.

Adding to the enjoyment was that, quite unknown to me, almost every TDV staff member and many TDV readers and subscribers all chose the same time and place to see The Hobbit.  We took up most of the theater of about 30 seats.  It was like an exclusive TDV screening… and you couldn't pick a better movie than The Hobbit, by anarchist-leaning J.R.R. Tolkien.

I'm sure you don't come to TDV for movie reviews, so I'll keep this short.  The movie was beautifully done.  It was not on par with The Lord of the Rings (LOTR) but only because the underlying story on which the movie was based is also not on par with LOTR in terms of depth and scope.  But, considering what he had to work with, Peter Jackson did another great job in bringing the book to life (plus adding a lot to it that never existed).  And somehow turning it into what will be a total of 8+ hours of cinematics… from a book about 1/10th the size of LOTR.

UNTIL NEXT WEEK… IF THERE IS A NEXT WEEK

Hopefully, by next week I'll be reporting in from somewhere in Southeast Europe… and hopefully my daughter will be with me.  That is, if there is a next week.  After all, it is just a few days until all the Mayans die.

Some people say the world is "going to end" on December 21st.  But, if read more closely, the Mayans stated that the world would change dramatically on December 21st.  If that is the case, they are generally right.  The world has been and will change dramatically over the coming years.  The End Of The Monetary System As We Know It (TEOTMSAWKI), a system based on debt, theft and extortion will be going to the wayside.  The transition could get chaotic… but if we can get through to the other side we could have a much, much freer and more peaceful world without large states, state-backed central banks, taxation and all the other violence done by the state… which has created a total of more than 250 million deaths in the 20th century at the hand of government.

So if you believe the world is going to end in a few days, you should be partying like it's 1999 and enjoy your final days.  If the world doesn't end but changes dramatically in the coming years, as we believe here, then you should be preparing now.  Once more people catch on to the situation, either governments themselves will crack down further on capital and personal flight… or there will be so many people running for the exits at the same time that you may find it nearly impossible to do.

Better a year early than a day too late they say.

Jeff Berwick [send him mail] is an anarcho-capitalist freedom fighter and Chief Editor of the libertarian, Austrian economics grounded newsletter, The Dollar Vigilante. The Dollar Vigilante focuses on strategies, investments and expatriation opportunities to survive & prosper during and after the US dollar collapse.

The Best of Jeff Berwick

I am looking forward to the release of The Hobbit on December 14th. Its author, J.R.R. Tolkien, was essentially an anarchist. He once stated:

“My political opinions lean more and more to Anarchy (philosophically understood, meaning the abolition of control not whiskered men with bombs) – or to ‘unconstitutional’ Monarchy. I would arrest anybody who uses the word State (in any sense other than the inaminate real of England and its inhabitants, a thing that has neither power, rights nor mind); and after a chance of recantation, execute them if they remained obstinate! If we could go back to personal names, it would do a lot of good.

Government is an abstract noun meaning the art and process of governing and it should be an offence to write it with a capital G or so to refer to people … The most improper job of any many, even saints (who at any rate were at least unwilling to take it on), is bossing other men. Not one in a million is fit for it, and least of all those who seek the opportunity …"

The entire story of the Lord of the Rings centers around the ring of power… otherwise known as the state. The journey begins in a anarchic place where the people are happy, no policemen, no king (or one that was thought long forgotten). There is apparently a mayor but he does nothing as the locals frolick, sing, dance, play with fireworks, drink and smoke pipe weed. Soon, however, the ring wraiths, driven by the lust of power come to ruin it all.

The Hobbit was the first real book I ever read and it drew me into the fantastic world that John Ronald Reuel Tolkien created. That halloween I dressed up as Bilbo Baggins and even used it as my alias on Bulletin Boards (pre-internet communications throughout the 1980s). Soon after, at around 13 years of age I read the Lord of the Rings and was even more amazed. I read the trilogy countless times.

It makes me wonder if it didn’t shape some of my views – as I’m sure it did – but it wasn’t until decades later that it dawned on me the true message of the ring! I’m sure millions don’t catch the allegory either, unfortunately. It’s too bad that Tolkien didn’t forgo fantasy somewhat and call Mordor, Washington DC. Obama would have made a great Sauron, had he been president when Tolkein was writing. The ring wraiths, Rockefeller, Rothchild and other likes who lust for power over others from behind the scenes.

When I first heard that a new adaption was going to be released in 2001 I was hesitant. I even went so far as to say that it would be impossible to truly adapt that massive anthology on screen. As I sat there in the cinema I realized I was wrong. Peter Jackson had created a genius masterpiece. I can’t believe it’s been nearly 10 years since the third film has been released… but that might be because I make sure to watch it at least twice a year.

And with baited breath I now await The Hobbit. Although, I do have some reservations. The Hobbit was more of a children’s story, contrasted to the dark Lord of the Rings (LOTR)… and The Hobbit, also, was almost like a pamphlet in size compared to the massive LOTR texts. Yet, Peter Jackson is trying to turn it into a film trilogy as well. I don’t know how we will do it… but then again, I didn’t know how he could do LOTR either and he did. So I give him the benefit of the doubt.

In any case, if you haven’t read LOTR or seen the films, they are an absolute must see. I just wish we could bring back JRR Tolkien to see it in all its glory. He’s on my top five list of people to bring back from the dead to see what became of their legacy (both bad and good), including Jesus and Thomas Jefferson. I think all three of them would be shocked to see what became of their work! Jesus would be flabergasted to see what the Roman Catholic church has twisted his words around for profit. And Thomas Jefferson would be reaching for his musket in a moment to tear down this terrible tyranic organization that has grown into the world’s most dangerous, freedom-destroying, killing machines!

If only Thomas Jefferson had read LOTR he may have understood that no government, no matter how small, can resist the corruptive ability of the ring of power! Not even Frodo.

As Mithrandir said, "I would use this ring from a desire to do good, but through me it would wield a power too great and terrible to imagine."

Jeff Berwick [send him mail] is an anarcho-capitalist freedom fighter and Chief Editor of the libertarian, Austrian economics grounded newsletter, The Dollar Vigilante. The Dollar Vigilante focuses on strategies, investments and expatriation opportunities to survive & prosper during and after the US dollar collapse.

The Best of Jeff Berwick

Hello from Acapulco,

I had a rough start to my week as I was forced to go to the slave processing center (passport office) to ask permission from a group of people operating on behalf of a criminal enterprise if they would allow me to travel with my six year old daughter who had yet to be the unproud owner of a slave card (passport).

We are planning a family and work vacation over Christmas and beyond through Central and Eastern Europe as well as parts of Africa and, of course, travel in the so-called free world is not allowed without permission.

As we approached the passport office my wife did the same thing she does everytime we go through customs in any country we visit.  She asked me to promise her I wouldn't fight with them.  She said, "It's for our daughter, don't ruin this for her."

I took a deep breath, as I always do after this request, then nodded my head and said, "I promise I won't fight with them."

After having to get up very early (something I despise doing) for an appointment whose time they choose we waited a few hours in your typical government office with all the plastic chairs and overflowing with people standing to the sides, all waiting to get called forward by the overseers.  Eventually (finally) we were called.  The amount of paperwork we had to provide had taken all week for my wife to gather and she had checked and double checked that she had everything they requested.

The middle-aged woman began sifting through all the paperwork.  She was a very average looking woman just like many you'd see on the streets of town… you would never guess that she worked for the mafia.  About a minute later she shoved the papers back to us with cold eyes, "You are missing two photocopies of this document," she said.

In typical Mexican fashion my wife replied very politely that she wasn't aware that two photocopies of that particular document were necessary.  It finally got to the point where the woman firmly asserted that we need those two photocopies and we'll just have to make another appointment (which takes a week to receive usually) and come back and do this all again then.

My blood was already starting to boil, but with a calm voice I asked, "Surely you must have a photocopier here in this office?"

Her eyes got even colder as she shook her head.  She then said in an even sterner voice, "You NEED two photocopies!"

My wife grabbed my arm as she knew what was coming.

"How can you not have a photocopier?  The Mexican Government and even many Mexican stores love photocopies of things more than any entity I've ever known!" I stated with a slightly raised voice.

It was then that her eyes seem to get even colder and she stared beyond me, not responding.  Nothing was going to stop what happened next.

"So you think you have some sort of right to tell me and my daughter where we can go and what we can do?  Do you enjoy this job, being the gatekeeper to allowing people to do things and finding the smallest reason to say no?  What kind of person accepts this type of job?  What kind of a sick person works for the state?" I shouted.

My wife had already grabbed my daughter and moved away as the woman motioned for security.

"Keep up the great work, you bitch," I said as I motioned to the now closing in security guards that I'll leave peacefully.  As I walked out I admonished to the people sitting in their seats, averting their eyes so as not to become involved in the situation and I asked, "Why do you people put up with this?  You're all a bunch of slaves, you know that right?".

No one replied.

On the drive home, without permission to travel, my anarchist wife admitted her whole frustration with the thing, but said she just doesn't do what I did because she doesn't want to risk them disallowing our daughter a right to travel because of our actions.

"Oh well," I said, finally calming down.  "We'll just have to wait another week and try again."

My wife responded, "Yes, it's okay anyway because we still have to get our two chihuahuas microchipped for them to be allowed to go to Germany."

Wonder why a lot of anarchists drink so much?

THANK GOD FOR THE FREE MARKET

The silly part is that in almost any situation of government restriction the free market always finds a way around it.

This assertion is evident in currency black markets as we are seeing in Argentina among other places. People trading their rapidly devaluing local currency for the US dollar, which by comparison is stable. Are they getting the optimal deal? No, but they are getting the best deal they believe they can get at that point in time. Otherwise they wouldn't trade. Black markets, or free markets as I call them, exist to address the inherent inefficiencies of a managed economy.

As another example, after ranting on Facebook about my passport experience, Randy H. from Panama told me that they have a similar problem there with government offices that require photocopies of everything but have no photocopier!  He said that outside many government offices there are entrepreneurs on the street with small generators hooked up to photocopiers and printers to help people.  If only a smart Mexican entrepreneur would do the same thing I would have had a happier experience!

Thank god for the free market… it is the only bright spot of hope amongst all this statism.  It serves to give you whatever you want, whenever you want it, no matter how many rules and regulations there are to the contrary.  Take the prohibition of plants (Drug War).  There are millions of people in costumes with guns infecting this planet to try to stop people from getting the plants and I've still never found a place where you can't get the plants.  Entrepreneurs (deemed "narcos" by the state) build submarines, dig tunnels, fly drones and risk kidnapping or murder trying to get their products to voluntary customers.

Earlier today, I responded to another Facebook post where a person was debating me and saying that the free markets cause poverity and is unfair.  The person, an accounting major who said he has figured out the best system for humans to live under lobbied for something he called, "Responsible Capitalism".

Jack Blaylock, a TDV subscriber came to my defense and responded from an outdoor table while having breakfast in Probolingo, East Jawa (TDV subscribers are rarely boring!) and I found his post so well written I want to include it here:

"Real Capitalism and the free market is the purest, fairest, most democratic system possible. We've also never seen it at work yet, so all your conclusions about it are premature. That's why Rand wrote 'Capitalism, the Unknown Ideal'. She understood this very well, and she has been so much misquoted and misunderstood, by liberals and conservatives both.    "Why don't you try reading TDV (subscribe here) for a while first, and find out why people like myself have long abandoned liberal fallacies and misconceptions like 'responsible capitalism'? The phrase is not an oxymoron, like some of my friends presume. In fact, that statement is redundant, not contradictory. Anybody under the age of 100 years old has never seen a free market, or capitalism, and so doesn't even know what it looks like. As just one reason why: Fiat currency.  

"The economic system is really an ecosystem:    "I am one of the founders of a free health clinic for the poor in Indonesia. My entire life has been a demonstration in many ways that I care about the little guy. And I now know that it is government regulated ideas like yours that makes things worse for the disenfranchised, not better. In the end, one group of humans, no matter how well intentioned or spiritually and emotionally mature, cannot possibly 'regulate' what mother nature does best: free market capitalism in a pure form. The economic system is no different than an ecosystem in this sense. No matter how wise, educated and 'socially conscious' a ruling class may be, the minute they try and tell the rainforest which bugs are allowed to breed, and which birds may or may not sit in any one particular tree, they introduce a subtle but corrosive change that will ultimately result in the death of the forest. And here's the rub: As the forest slowly dies, they will mistakenly think they have not regulated the forest enough, and continue their interventionist folly.    "I appreciate you've studied accounting, but how well educated are you regarding the ideas expressed here at TDV? Have you read Rand? 'Tragedy and Hope' by Quigley? 'Creature From Jekyll Island' by Griffin? 'Economics in One Lesson?' 'The Road to Serfdom'?   "As a life long entrepreneur, I spent many years reading the liberal bullshit about 'conscious, responsible, regulated capitalism' and believed it, thinking that by doing so I was a caring, socially conscious, responsible kinda guy. Hogwash. Those beliefs require that I (and you) abandon the non-agression principle and be willing to use violence to force others into what is ultimately a socialist agenda. As I am non-violent, and do not believe in initiating violence against a non-agressor, I cannot support them anymore.

Not much more I can add to that!

Except this photo, another beautiful example of how the free market always finds ways around the government initiated violence.

The free market wins again!

Jeff Berwick [send him mail] is an anarcho-capitalist freedom fighter and Chief Editor of the libertarian, Austrian economics grounded newsletter, The Dollar Vigilante. The Dollar Vigilante focuses on strategies, investments and expatriation opportunities to survive & prosper during and after the US dollar collapse.

The Best of Jeff Berwick

Reports have been swirling around about the death of another business at the hands of a US government agency.  While those reports weren't totally true, as usual, the US Government has squashed any attempt by unfree US citizens to do what they want.  Intrade is still alive and kicking (although it probably wouldn't be if it was based in the US), minus its US customers…for now anyway.  As of December 23, 2012, all US accounts with Intrade will be suspended thanks to the meddling of the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC).

While Intrade itself isn't dead, its founder is.  Irish businessman John Delaney founded Intrade in 2001.  He died at age 42 last year in an attempt to realize his lifelong goal of climbing Mount Everest.  He was just 50 meters from the peak and since his body was unable to be recovered, he's still there.  (I wonder if there was a bet on whether or not he'd make it.)  Delaney was born in 1969 near Dublin where Intrade would later be based. He got his MBA in finance from the University College Dublin and after a career in investment banking he got into online gambling in 1999. 

For those of you who are unfamiliar with Intrade: this company simply allows anyone to bet on yes-or-no events in the real world.  You can literally bet on anything with a yes-or-no outcome.  Examples listed right now on the site's "How It Works" section are:

• The Dow Jones to close on or above 13,000 on 30 Dec 2012
• Barack Obama to be reelected president in 2012
• The United States or Israel to bomb Iran before the end of 2012

(Note the second example.  That's a little dated.  They should have replaced it with "CFTC to forbid US customers from using our website."… I would've put hard earned money on that one… easy call!)

It's actually very simple and serves a very basic desire among humanity to try to predict events…and make a little money by being right.  What's more, since there's money on the line, the players tend to have the best information available to make the best possible guesses. 

Is it accurate?  That is to say, do the majority of bettors on Intrade tend to be right about the outcomes on which they're betting?  Amazingly so, as you'd expect the case to be in a semi-free market when money is on the line.  Having something to lose tends to sharpen performance (the reason entrepreneurs and businesspeople will always make better decisions than politicians).  In 2011, professional pundit Rachel Weiner admitted, "The site's collective wisdom tends to be more reliable than the cadre of professional pundits when it comes to forecasting election results." She continues, "In 2008, bettors got only two states wrong – Indiana and Missouri…In 2004 [however] the site got every state right."

You can listen to immoral talking head James Karville yammer on about all his picking of the elections, but he never even came close to the free market's performance.  

Delaney sold Intrade to Tradesports in 2003.  Based out of Ireland, Intrade does not comment on the legality of customers in other countries using its services.  And who can blame them? Especially when there are rogue states armed to the teeth and with a powerful inclination to meddle with their subjects' personal lives and financial dealings, particularly with foreign banks and businesses.  You know, like the USSA.

The CFTC has been stiff-arming Tradesports since 2005 when Tradesport first applied for permission to open a regulated futures exchange in the US.  You see, while Intrade has nearly 100,000 members in over 162 countries, the bulk of its membership are US residents.  Yet on November 26, 2012, the US CFTC filed a civil lawsuit seeking an injunction against allowing US citizens to trade on Intrade's website.

Why does the CFTC have such a bug up its collective butt about Intrade?  According to Brad Plumer on the Washington Post blog:

"Intrade…wasn't merely allowing participants to bet on the outcomes of events like elections or wars or the Oscars. The site was also allowing its US customers to bet on the future price of things like gold or oil between 2007 and 2012, the lawsuit said. If that's true, it would mean Americans were essentially able to buy and sell commodity option on Intrade away from regulated exchanges. According to the CFTC, that's against the law."

It was already difficult for US customers to use Intrade since due to new banking regulations in 2012, US customers were no longer allowed to fund their Intrade accounts with their credit or debit cards like non-US customers could.  This resulted in each trade costing US customers $20.

Now the CFTC claims that Intrade's allowing US residents to bet on commodity outcomes "violated market integrity."  How it violates market integrity is something they'll never say… because its total BS.  From government thug David Meister, the Director of the the CFTC's Division of Enforcement:

"It is against the law to solicit US persons to buy and sell commodity options, even if they are called 'prediction' contracts, unless they are listed for trading and traded on a CFTC-registered exchange or unless legally exempt. The requirement for on-exchange trading is important for a number of reasons, including that it enables the CFTC to police market activity and protect market integrity."

Anyone paying attention knows that the CFTC and any government agency does nothing to protect the integrity of anything.  What they do is protect their fascist manipulated markets over which they exercise extreme control to tip the scales towards Goldman Sach$ and the other Wall Street fascist companies that can do whatever they want.  To translate, what criminal Meister really means is that Intrade's operations placed these bets outside of US regulatory control via the CFTC, and even though the customers were happy and the market was self-regulating, the government needs to throw its weight around and interfere with every exchange in as many parts of the world as possible.  Intrade dealt fairly with its customers – something you cannot say the same for with the big banks and brokerages in the US – and its predictions as determined by the direction of the majority of bets were consistently accurate.  Liberty-defending investigative journalist John Stossel put it well:

"These regulations don't help police market activity. When people make money on Intrade, Intrade sends them the money. There are no allegations of fraud. Customers are happy with Intrade, judging by increased activity on the site (over $50 million was bet about whether Obama or Romney would win.)

"The market polices itself."

Of course it does.  But government agencies can't let it.  It's just not in the government's nature to allow markets to work.  The very essence of government is "interference backed by the most and biggest guns"…while making sure to get a healthy cut of the action.  Intrade is just the latest victim in this racket.  Last year it was online poker.  People peaceably betting with each other on outcomes?  "Not on our watch," says the CFTC. 

Economist and Intrade fan Bryan Caplan has the CFTC's number, however.

"The CFTC's real complaint is that consumers eagerly bet on Intrade because the company exemplifies market integrity: "I trust Intrade with my money because of their reputation, not government regulation. Reputation: That's the same mechanism, of course, that underlies eBay, Amazon Marketplace, and the whole cornucopia of internet commerce that the mainstream information economist of 1990 would have dismissed as free-market Fantasy Island.

"…Americans send money to Intrade because Intrade delivers the goods (and produces the positive externality of accurate forecasts in the process!).

"In the information age, firms' reputations are just a click away. That's all the protection any consumer needs. The only people the CFTC is 'protecting' are their own obsolete employees."

Reputation is the only "regulation" the free market needs.  But government can't have their subjects understanding that.  That would undermine the thread-bare legitimacy of the state.  Imagine, the world doesn't need a political mafia loaded to the gills with guns to take our money and tell us what to do!  Well, that'd be anarchy!

Intrade Shows Up At Its Own Funeral To Laugh At US Gov't

In typical free market fashion, Intrade is already adapting to the state's attempts to kill its business.

From Intrade's website:

"The report of Intrade's death was premature"

We understand yesterday's announcement was met with surprise and disappointment by our US customers, but this in no way signals the end of Intrade in the US. In the near future we'll announce plans for a new exchange model that will allow legal participation from all jurisdictions – including the US. We believe this new model will further enhance Intrade's position as the leading prediction market platform for real time probabilities about future events.

For our non-US customers, we will continue to offer real-money prediction markets. In the coming weeks and months we plan to implement a number of improvements to the Intrade website. These include expanding our market categories, adding more convenient funding options and a new and improved trading interface. We’ll keep you posted on these initiatives as they develop.

You  just can't keep a good business down.  Take note, US government and governments everywhere.  The free market is more fit for survival than the state could ever hope to be.  This is more than just the struggle of some betting site to keep making money.  The reaction of Intrade is an encouraging sign of things to come.

It should also be noted of the importance of alternative currencies to the fiat gumbo in order to sidestep all these violent incursions into our lives.  If we all could switch to a un-legislatable currency like Bitcoin or even to precious metals in one form or another it would keep these violent criminals more at bay.

In the meantime, staying a step ahead – or out of the way – of the state is an ongoing task.  Right now only American Intrade accounts are being closed.  This is just the latest example of why it's handy to have a foreign passport and presence, in order to protect from the aggressions of the planet's most aggressive and presumptuous of states.  And though the US is in many ways the worst, most violent, most criminal, most overreaching government on the globe, it's hardly alone in its odiousness.  Recall that recently the Dutch government made GoldMoney stop accepting Dutch customers.  Or, as I wrote about last year, when Internaxx, based in Luxembourg called me to close my account because I was "Canadian".  I responded, I'm not "Canadian", I'm a human being.  They retorted, "that's still not good enough".  So I pulled out one of my other passports from a Caribbean nation and they backpeddled, "Oh, well now we can accept your business."  Having another citizenship and passport gives you an out and a way to keep on operating when one of your tax farmer governments pulls stunts like this.

I have to point out, however, that having citizenship in two Western governments is like having the fire too jump into after the pan becomes too hot.  That's why at TDV Passports, we offer citizenship programs in much freer parts of the world where governments aren't quite as…robust…as they are in Europe and north of the Mexican border.

I highly doubt the Paraguyan… or Dominican Republic… or Cambodian governments (just to name a few in which we have been deslaving people) will soon be calling a press conference to announce that their citizens can't use Intrade.

It's just a curiosity when the majority of US citizens… or citizens of other western countries will finally realize they are not only not the freest on Earth… but some of the least free human beings on this planet.

Jeff Berwick [send him mail] is an anarcho-capitalist freedom fighter and Chief Editor of the libertarian, Austrian economics grounded newsletter, The Dollar Vigilante. The Dollar Vigilante focuses on strategies, investments and expatriation opportunities to survive & prosper during and after the US dollar collapse.

The Best of Jeff Berwick

Once again we come to you as the humble messenger and past predictor of today’s major issues!

On January 20th of this year we penned an article entitled, "Forced Expatriation Coming to the USSA".  In it we stated, "We can clearly see that the United Soviet States of America is putting in place the necessary tools to be able to strip whoever it likes of the so-called 'privilege' of being a US citizen."  And, yet again, it looks as though it is coming to pass.

With the massive influx of personal petitions to secede from the USSA, many right wing thought leaders have lashed out and are now petitioning for a process wherein anyone who signs a petition to secede is stripped of their US citizenship and deported.

The founder of RedState, the leading conservative blog for "right of center" immoral online activists, Erick Erickson filed the petition and stated "We here at RedState are American citizens (slaves). We have no plans to secede from the union," he wrote. "If you do, good luck with that, but this is not the place for you."

He states that to call for secession is an act of treason and should any elected official propose such a measure, he or she should be tried for treason and summarily removed from office.

He goes on to state, "Mr. President, please sign an executive order such that each American citizen who signed a petition from any state to secede from the USA shall have their citizenship stripped and be peacefully deported."

Thomas Jefferson would spew his coffee across his dining room table if he heard that from a so-called "patriot."  Jefferson stated in his first inaugural address in 1801, "If there be any among us who wish to dissolve this union, let them stand undisturbed of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it."

Even fascist, genocidal murderer, Abraham Lincoln stated in 1848, "Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up, and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable, – most sacred right – a right, which we hope and believe, is to liberate the world. Nor is this right confined to cases in which the whole people of an existing government may choose to exercise it. Any portion of such people that can, may revolutionize and make their own of so much of the teritory as they inhabit."

Of course, a little less than ¼ score and 7 years later he rained down terror on the South for trying to secede… not to "free the slaves" as Steven Spielberg would like you to believe.  Anyone questioning that just needs to listen to Abraham Lincoln himself who stated:

"I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in anyway the social and political equality of the white and black races – that I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race."

That aside, Redstate founder, Erick Erickston, likely worships at the feet of Jefferson and likely goes to bow at the Lincoln Memorial, with Lincoln’s two hands firmly planted on two fasces… yet he is saying exactly the opposite of what they said.

YOU CAN’T QUIT, YOU’RE FIRED!

"You can't quit…because you're fired!" That seems to be the message behind the petition to strip citizenship of anyone who has signed the various recent petitions for secession.

It's almost funny. The petition to strip citizenship is obviously an angry reaction…but the petition would in a sense give the objects of that anger exactly what they want: separation from a country/government they no longer want to be a part of.

Of course it gets a wee bit more complicated. Those who want to secede wish for their entire state of residence to separate from the US. These people don't want to become stateless exiles; they want to take several thousand square miles of familiar space and all the infrastructure and people therein with them.

That would be ideal. Getting to live exactly where you want in the US without the burden of US citizenship… If that means not having a third or half of one's income stolen to pay the interest on the debt that funds foreign wars and the police…then any moral, sane person should jump at the chance!

That's not what it would mean, however. That's certainly not what the petitioners calling for stripping citizenship are after. What they want for the secession supporters is exile…or worse…like military imprisonment or execution.

Sadly people simply aren't allowed to become stateless on purpose. The US will only allow you to give up citizenship if you’ve got something else lined up. If you don't, then then you can't give up your US citizenship. So unless the US will be sponsoring new citizenships for those it wants to kick out, they will become stateless in a state-filled world and be all but excluded from travel, business and employment.

Of course, if it suits the US government's purposes, they will be looking to be able to strip anyone of US citizenship when it strikes their fancy. Just look at the hissy fit thrown by Democratic Senators Charles Schumer and Bob Casey when billionaire Facebook co-founder Eduardo Savarin wanted to sever his ties with the US and its tax collectors. That's why the senators came up with their "Ex-PATRIOT Act" (Expatriation Prevention by Abolishing Tax-Related Incentives for Offshore Tenancy Act). This act would bar those who were deemed to have renounced US citizenship for tax-avoidance purpose from ever setting foot back on US soil.

As Yale Law School professor Bruce Ackerman put it: "[T]hey either remain Americans or they repudiate their homeland forever."

While Senator Schumer is ready to forever exile anyone who forsakes US citizenship to avoid lifelong tax robbery, the diabolical Senator Joe Lieberman, along with Representatives Charlie Dent and Jason Altmire, has put forward the Enemy Expatriation Act. If the bill passes, it will add "terrorism" or "providing material support" to terrorist organizations based on the decision of the secretary of state to the list of reasons the US government can remove citizenship.

The Enemy Expatriation Act was just the latest insult added to the injury of the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act that President O’Bomber signed a few months prior on the first day of the year. One of the provisions of that act was the indefinite military detention of American citizens without stated cause and without trial.

Now, like all good politicians, Obama has said that he does not like that provision and will not enforce it:

"I want to clarify that my Administration will not authorize the indefinite military detention without trial of American citizens…

"Section 1022 seeks to require military custody for a narrow category of non-citizen detainees…This section is ill-conceived and will do nothing to improve the security of the United States…I reject any approach that would mandate military custody where law enforcement provides the best method of incapacitating a terrorist threat."

But he still signed the bill…

"While section 1022 is unnecessary and has the potential to create uncertainty, I have signed the bill because I believe this section can be interpreted and applied in a manner that avoids undo harm to our current operations."

By this point it should be obvious that there's no length to which the USSA won't go. It's too bad that when they strip you of citizenship they won't exile you to someplace nice, like Paraguay or Chile. If that were the case then we’d advise you to sign the first petition you see!  However, chances are more likely that you'll be going to Guantanamo instead.

If you want to end up in Paraguay or one of the other countries freer and less extortionist than the USSA, you'll have to take matters into your own hands and be proactive (see TDV Passports for more).  Or check out our expatriate refuge in Chile, Galt’s Gulch (with new logo) if you want to plant your first flag abroad now to protect yourself.

Given the way the wind is blowing it surely won’t be too long before even applying for foreign citizenship will be deemed illegal.  Time is running out.  We hope you have begun to square your affairs away before our next "we toldya so" article. 

Jeff Berwick [send him mail] is an anarcho-capitalist freedom fighter and Chief Editor of the libertarian, Austrian economics grounded newsletter, The Dollar Vigilante. The Dollar Vigilante focuses on strategies, investments and expatriation opportunities to survive & prosper during and after the US dollar collapse.

The Best of Jeff Berwick

Here at TDV we have the unfortunate role of being the messenger—and you know what happens to the messenger. The monkeys in pants always jump on him, stones in hand, and try to bash his brains out for bringing them a little bit of reality.

In December, 2010, we penned a dispatch called “Americans Retirement Funds at Serious Risk” wherein we concluded by stating: “Keeping retirement funds inside of tax-sheltered accounts, which the US government will soon look to as the next source of funds to try to pay off its mountain of debt and keeping retirement funds in US dollar-based 'assets' is putting your retirement and future at great risk.”

We were summarily laughed at by the masses.

What’s that old saying from the early 19th century German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer about the truth? “All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.”

Well, if that’s true, this article will be violently opposed. And soon the truth will become self-evident. Unfortunately, by that time, most people will still have not caught on and their retirement funds will have been stolen.

You see, the National Seniors Council has announced that “Obama (has) Begun to Push for a New National(ized) Retirement System”. According to them, a recent hearing sponsored by the Treasury and Labor Departments marked the beginning of the Obama Administration’s effort to nationalize the nation’s pension system and to eliminate private retirement accounts including IRAs and 401k plans.

An immoral, thieving representative of the liberal Pension Rights Center, Rebecca Davis, testified that the government needs to get involved because 401k plans and IRAs are unfair to poor people. She demanded the Obama administration set up a "government-sponsored program administered by the PBGC (the governments’ Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation)." She proclaimed that even "private annuities are problematic."

In essence, the US Government is pushing to have all retirement funds nationalized to protect the poor people. But, before we get into some more details of how your IRA or 401k will be spirited away, let’s look at the basis upon which they are saying this is necessary.

THE BASIS FOR THEFT OF YOUR RETIREMENT FUNDS

According to the US Committee on Sickness, Indoctrination, Enslavement and Ponzi Schemes, or as they call themselves, the Department of Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, “…stagnant wages and rising costs are making it harder and harder to build up a nest egg through a retirement savings plan (e.g., a 401(k) or IRA) or otherwise.”

You see, productivity has increased, but wages have stagnated, and yet prices are rising. This is the “middle class squeeze” that is at the core of the so-called retirement crisis. People are simply not able to save enough to one day live without a wage. But it's not because of the decline in pensions. After all, the idea of a pension is in itself very 20th century, based on the assumption that an individual will spend most or all of his working years at one company and therefore have a chance to build up significant pension benefits. This idea does not fit the new, much better economy in which an individual is likely to have a plethora of employers over his working lifetime.

Both the pension and Socialist Insecurity legs of the “three-legged stool” are bound to falter. It's simple savings that people will need to rely on. Yet saving is impossible because of rising prices in the face of stagnant wages, while what can be saved constantly loses purchasing power over the years. But what could possibly cause rising prices when the people doing the buying don't have any money with which to bid up the general prices? The central bank, of course. This is how inflation works over time. Wages may rise, but prices tend to rise more quickly.

Just look at wages in real terms (vis-à-vis gold, not vis-à-vis the floating abstraction called the Federal Reserve Note):

The government is calling for a remedy to a problem that the central bank creates in the first place. Declining pensions aren't the problem. Currency debasement is as can be shown by the massive drop in worker wages ever since Richard Nixon removed the lest vestige of gold from the dollar in 1971.

Because of this problem, which was caused by the government and central bank, the politicians and their pet economists are proposing the creation of a new kind of private retirement fund: Universal, Secure, and Adaptable Retirement Funds (USA Retirement Funds).

According to a publication recently put out by the Committee, “USA Retirement Funds would be privately-run, licensed, and regulated retirement plans. Each USA Retirement Fund would be overseen by a board of trustees consisting of qualified employee, retiree, and employer representatives. The trustees would act as fiduciaries and be required to act prudently and in the best interests of plan participants and beneficiaries.”

TERESA GHILARDUCCI TO THE RESCUE

Immoral, world-improver, Teresa Ghilarducci has been peddling her plan before Congress. In a recent New York Times op-ed she warns: “Almost half of middle-class worker, 49 percent, will be poor or near poor in retirement, living on a food budget of about $5 a day.”

We believe she is overestimating what they’ll have, but let’s not argue about the details.

At the heart of Ghilarducci's proposal lies the belief that it is simply impossible for nearly all individuals to prepare for retirement without centrally-planned, politically-backed “help.” As she writes, “Basing a system on people's voluntarily saving for 40 years and evaluating the relevant information for sound investment choices is like asking the family pet to dance on two legs.”

She seems to be directing her invective to those who hate the idea of government getting involved with the personal business of saving for retirement.

“The coming retirement income security crisis is a shared problem…My plan calls for a way out that would create guaranteed retirement accounts on top of Social Security…This is a sensible way to get people to prepare for the future. You don't like mandates? Get real. Just as a voluntary Social Security system would have been a disaster, a voluntary retirement account plan is a disaster.”

Ah, we'd like to point out that the involuntary Social Security system hasn't exactly not been a disaster. Sure it worked out great for the early investors, just like any Ponzi scheme. But its future is as dim as it is inescapable. It’s already far beyond bankrupt. That’s why the government wolves are eyeing the private retirement accounts of the sheep.

Here’s the bottom line:

a) Government creates a crisis. In this case the Federal Reserve, through the slow pickpocketing of inflation, destroys the ability of the average person to take the simple option of saving money for retirement, and instead forces them to take risks in the financial markets to get returns greater than the rate of purchasing power destruction caused by central bank inflating the money supply in the first place.

b) Government offers a solution that is really an excuse to either increase their power or steal more money. In this case the target is the roughly $4.5 trillion in retirement funds held in private defined contribution plans (as of the end of 2011).

The writing is on the wall. It’s been written for a while and only a few, such as we at TDV have been ringing the alarm bells. In 2011, with the federal debt ceiling about to be hit , Timothy Geithner (who is now calling to do away with the debt ceiling and have debt to infinity) was planning to borrow the pension funds of federal employees. Those funds are already within easy reach. And Obama's new pension plan will put all American's private retirement funds within easy reach, too.

It's not like there isn't precedence in the Western world for this kind of behavior from governments.

In late 2010 Hungary's government gave its citizens a choice: hand over all their savings to the government or lose all their state pension money. The government sought control over Hungarians' $14 billion in individual retirement accounts. The Bulgarian government did something very similar when it tried to transfer $300 million in private early retirement savings into a state pension scheme. They only managed to get roughly 20% of the funds they sought. Last year Ireland raided the private stash in the National Pension Reserve Fund with a 0.6% levy under the label of a “jobs plan” in order to bail out insolvent Irish banks.

LEAVE YOUR MONEY WITH THE GOVERNMENT IF YOU TRUST THE GOVERNMENT

We’ve said for a few years that this is where things are headed. It’s baked in the cake. The US government, and almost all Western governments are bankrupt. But before they die they will do what almost every nation state in history has done and try to confiscate as much wealth as possible from their tax cows before the collapse. Mark our words: US 401ks and IRAs will be nationalized in the next four years—maybe as soon as the next one or two years. They will be forced to invest in “Patriot Bonds” which will be the new euphemism Treasury bonds, which are more and more becoming a hot potato in financial circles.

Those bonds will continue to offer 0-3% interest rates while the monetary inflation rate will continue to be well above 10% (and rising), meaning that the true value of your retirement savings will be all but destroyed (stolen) in the next 5-10 years.

THERE ARE ONLY TWO OPTIONS TO SAVE YOURSELF

There are only two options to avoid this. The first is to de-register or take the funds out of your 401k/IRA. Unfortunately, this often means some sort of penalty, sometimes a very large one. But, based with what your other option is, it still seems pretty good.

The other option is to put your IRA into a self-directed IRA (see a self-directed IRA option here). By doing this you can move all your funds outside of the US, which we highly recommend. Secondly, you can then invest the funds in almost any asset, from precious metals in other countries to race horses to foreign real estate.

As we have always recommend, first get your assets outside of the control of your own country if you live in the West. And secondly, invest those assets into hard assets like gold or foreign real estate… or whatever else Ben Bernanke can’t print from his box seats while slurping on an ice cream cone at Washington National’s games.

Your enemy is the state and the central banks. The sooner you realize that and get your assets outside of their control or influence the safer you will be.

Jeff Berwick [send him mail] is an anarcho-capitalist freedom fighter and Chief Editor of the libertarian, Austrian economics grounded newsletter, The Dollar Vigilante. The Dollar Vigilante focuses on strategies, investments and expatriation opportunities to survive & prosper during and after the US dollar collapse.

The Best of Jeff Berwick

As I write I am flying through the air at 600mph in a reclining chair on my way to Santiago, Chile.  At the same time I am watching a documentary on one of, if not the most, prolific advancers of human knowledge and quality of life in history, Nikola Tesla.

You may be sitting there, thinking, it’s November 7th, why am I not speaking about how 30% of 305 million people in the geographic region known as the US gave their consent to a murderous, thieving organization.  Or, at best, voted for the lesser evil in a popularity contest of sociopathic criminals.  Here’s the deal.  It doesn’t matter.  It’s a show.  To paraphrase rapper Notorious B.I.G., If you didn’t know that, well now you know.

What’s more important?  Much more important than any person in government?  Men like Nikola Tesla.  Or Louis Pasteur.  Or Steve Jobs.  Hell, any thousands of producers and contributors to your and my life.  Have an iPad?  Have electricity?  Don’t die when you scrape your foot on a sharp stone?  You owe your life and the quality of it to true heroes.  Not to Mittens or Bronco.

Bronco O’Bomber and Mittens Romney?  I can’t believe I even have to mention these cretins.  It sickens and saddens me.

Let’s take a short history lesson.  Something you’ll never hear discussed in the public indoctrination camps.  150 years ago humans didn’t even have light bulbs.  They didn’t have electricity.  This brings me back to Tesla.  He, not Edison, produced most of what we know about electricity, radio, x-rays, electric motors, lasers, wireless communications and countless other things today.

People like Bronco O’Bomber and Nancy Pelosi have never producted anything except an advance of theft and kidnapping.  They are sad, twisted individuals with no care for truth in history.  They just know they get shoveled millions of Federal Reserve Notes for shilling for the system and riding in their limousines, or the aptly named "Beast" for Bronco.

Unbelievably, if you ask the average American female young slave, who they would like to emulate most, it is Killary Clinton.  If you ask the average US male young slave, it’ll likely be Bronco O’Bomber.  This is your hint to get out now (call TDV Passports for more).  If you live in the US, you live among zombies.  You can’t defeat them.  You'd have better luck trying to infiltrate the mafia and trying to turn it into a children's charity.  Not going to happen.

So, if you voted yesterday… shame on you!  Plus, you did nothing to change anything.  Your vote didn’t count.  And even if it did, you just consented to being ruled.  How do you feel about that?

I’m going to actually pour my heart out a little here.  I’ve been writing about this stuff for a few years.  I’ve had a lot of people shake my hand and thank me for telling the truth.  I’ve also been attacked, on a very regular basis.  It’s an interesting dichotomy.  People call me all kinds of things but all I really am is a human being.  I love peace and prosperity and the human connection.  I don’t know why we’re here… if anyone does and has conclusive proof, please notify me.  But, since we are here we should listen to the words of Rodney King, may he rest in peace.  To paraphrase, we have to stop hurting and stealing from and killing each other.

While I don't know the existential answer to the "why?" of human existence, I do know that peace and freedom are by far the preferable modes to the "how?" of our existence. Violence and oppression are not just awful in their own rite. They also tend to impoverish humanity overall by killing initiative and material progress. A system of property rights married to absolute freedom (as scary as absolute freedom is to most of humanity still) is what produces the most wealth…and wealth is just another word for increasing material comfort.

But liberty is equally vital to happiness. It is hard to be happy if you live in constant fear of an abusive master…something that African slaves in the Americas knew…as did Soviet Russians. It's something US citizens will come to realize a lot more clearly in the coming months and years. (In fact, those who plan to ignore our heartfelt advice and remain really should at least use our other advice to prepare financially.)

THE NEVER ENDING LEFT-RIGHT DEBACLE

I was quite sad to waste an hour recently watching a "debate" between a sound, morally correct individual, Doug Casey, and a snickering, snorting caricature of what are now called "liberals" and a seething mainstream presstitute named Krauthammer.

While Doug Casey tried to get a word in edgewise to ask, "What are you principles?  What do you believe in?", the two government lovers to the right snickered and snaked their way to talking about the exact opposite.  They spent about thirty minutes debating the most unimportant details of the electoral process.  I advise you to not even waste your time watching.

But this is the state of affairs in the US today.  Brainwashed people, for the most part, debating nonsensical, unimportant details while not one sheeple in the crowd boos.  To me, it’s long past time to get out.  What Nikola Tesla came to – America – no longer exists.  A man like Tesla today would likely go to Singapore, or Hong Kong, or Santiago, Chile.  Things change, baby.

The entire modern human history is just a saga of people fleeing collectivism and it still hasn’t changed.  The funny part is, however, much of the world is catching on to this trap… people in the US haven’t.  Watch what happens when they figure it out.

… oh, I just landed and hear Bronco O’Bomber won the job of Chief Murderer.  Enjoy!

“Getting Your Gold Out of Dodge” is available here.  It is free to TDV and TDV Golden Trader subscribers or for a one-time price of $44.95 USD.  It may be the best use of your fiat Federal Reserve Notes you’ve ever spent. Reprinted with permission from The Dollar Vigilante.

Jeff Berwick [send him mail] is an anarcho-capitalist freedom fighter and Chief Editor of the libertarian, Austrian economics grounded newsletter, The Dollar Vigilante. The Dollar Vigilante focuses on strategies, investments and expatriation opportunities to survive & prosper during and after the US dollar collapse.

The Best of Jeff Berwick

They've mastered it.  Slow hand clap.  Huzzah!

The US democratic fasco-communist system has finally mastered the US elections.  Before it used to at least hold out some sort of imagined hope of a change.  McCrazy versus the Obamanator?  The creator of the internet, Al Gore, versus the wretched filth offspring of the Bush Crime Family?  At least they had a perception of having a difference!

But, Obambney versus Robama?  Well done, political/eite class. Well done.

I've had a few people ask me to prognosticate who will win the US presidential election and what the investment implications will be.

Well, here goes.

It doesn't matter.  The only conceivable difference between the two is which country gets bombed next.  The people in Syria, Iran and a multitude of other African and Middle Eastern countries have a way bigger stake in this horse race than any of us do.

That aside, it really doesn't matter.  I am only even commenting on it now, fully, in the finaly week before the elections because of the general interest level.  The US, however, is done.  In a time when the main sources of hope for freedom are Russia (particularly Russia Today) and China, well… Let's just say no one was predicting that 30 years ago.  But just like we keep saying: the near future lies in Asia and Latin America.  You should already be moving your assets and your ass to those land masses.

In terms of assets, as we've been saying for years, you should be moving towards hard assets that Ben Bernanke cannot create out of thin air, nor destroy.  Democracy and fascism/socialism/communism has focused its eye like Sauron upon the US and people like the Obama phone lady are now the majority.  Or the woman who declared someone else's home in Detroit her own. She seems to believe she is somehow entitlted to take over people's homes.  Maybe she has some foreknowledge of Obama's next "home transfer" plan that he hopes will get him re-elected. 

I offer this as proof that it really doesn't matter.  People in the US have been voting for the lesser evil for decades now.

How's voting for evil working out?  What makes anyone think this time will be any different?  Einstein said that doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results is a form of insanity.

The great, great majority of people in the US today believe that the US was prosperous was because they were "special".  They believe that if things start to go bad you just have to print more Federal Reserve Notes.  And many of them believe that by bombing and killing people around the world they can salvage the American Dream.

Here's the good news.  This system is dead.  It was dead the moment the US went towards communist style centralized planning on December 23rd, 1913.  It had its final nail put in its coffin on August 15, 1971 when any last link to a hard asset was taken away from the dollar and by default from every currency.  And now after this, the most disasterous experiment in human history, the sytem is reaching its terminal stage.  In fact, judging by the stench coming off of it, you'd think the Western World was already a corpse…and might have been for a while. 

Who will fall first?  Europe?  Japan?  The US?  It really doesn't matter too much.  They are all going down.  And it will be beautiful, once it is over.  The biggest problem will be the transition.  It will be chaotic and devastating to many who are not prepared.  Those who read and subscribe to the TDV Weekly Dispatch will be in an enviable position.  Those who put some of their assets into things like gold and gold stocks, which we cover regularly at TDV Premium and TDV Golden Trader may be in a position for life-changing gains in wealth.

For those who cannot nor will not leave places like the US or the western world as a whole, we are working at TDV Homegrown to provide resources and info to survive what will be looked back upon as The Great Upheaval.

We'll be watching the US elections on the sixth of November like a sadist watches a car crash.  But does what happen that day really matter to us?  Absolutely not.

This game is over.  We've already placed our bets.  They are on getting your ass and assets outside of the Western World for the next few years.  Like in a zombie movie they will eat each other.  It's sad, but the die is cast.

Things change fast in the human experience.  Just ask anyone born in 1905 if they can even believe the changes they saw in their lifetimes.  The whole species went through all manner of wars and amazing technological innovations.  I would have had to send this dispatch by Morse Code in 1905, not through my 4G Korean made phone on my Japanese-made Sony Vaio while travelling from place to place in a matter of hours what used to take weeks, months or even years.  To paraphrase Neils Bohr, more technological advancement has happened in the last handful of decades than had literally happened in the last few millenia before the. 

The next step in our evolution is to move beyond collectivism and statism.  It's already happened.  Only those who still cling to those old systems haven't figured it out yet.  It's okay.  They'll be dead soon enough.  Since I'm quoting scientists today, consider what Max Planck said:

"A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it."

By being ahead of the crowd you can take advantage of the massive wealth gains that come regularly at paradigm changes.  

As I sit here on a balcony of a bar in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, I guarantee you that not one person here has any interest in the outcome of the US election.  Life here is good… and life in many places that had not bought into the debt-based fasco-communist democratic nation state system is going on fabulously.  For those in the USSA, however, things are going in only one direction no matter who wins.  If you haven't yet started to prepare, what are you waiting for?

“Getting Your Gold Out of Dodge” is available here.  It is free to TDV and TDV Golden Trader subscribers or for a one-time price of $44.95 USD.  It may be the best use of your fiat Federal Reserve Notes you’ve ever spent. Reprinted with permission from The Dollar Vigilante.

Jeff Berwick [send him mail] is an anarcho-capitalist freedom fighter and Chief Editor of the libertarian, Austrian economics grounded newsletter, The Dollar Vigilante. The Dollar Vigilante focuses on strategies, investments and expatriation opportunities to survive & prosper during and after the US dollar collapse.

The Best of Jeff Berwick

Hello from Spokane, Washington,

I flew in a few nights ago through Mexico City and then San Francisco. In SF I was forced at gunpoint to explain my reasons for being there. The 20-something kid with a buzz cut looked me up and down and asked, "Who are you here to see?" I replied, "No one." He leered up. "What are you here to do?" I replied blankly again, "Conference".

He then began to type in the computer for about 20 minutes. I can’t even imagine what he was writing as I had only said two words… I’m not sure how that can be turned into a book. But he typed away for what seemed like an eternity and then gave me my passport, "You can go."

I then made my way to the customs person, handed him the form they make you fill out and he immediately motioned me over to an area where grown men dig through your underwear and personal items in search of plants. I spent another 15 minutes staring in amazement at how intently he was inspecting every single item in my luggage. "What’s this!" he’d say from time to time as though he had just cracked the case. I’d respond, "It’s a computer mouse"… or toothpaste… or socks.

Finally they allowed me to go and after another flight I arrived in Spokane. The Silver Summit is a really enjoyable conference with lots of great people. Soon though I began to remember why I really don’t like to come to the US anymore.

"Can I smoke inside?" I asked the waitress.

"No," she said, you have to go outside.

I began to make my way outside and before I even made it to the door a few hotel security people were on top of me.

"You can’t drink outside," they stated firmly.

It wasn’t too much later that the manager came by and told me I was "cut off."

"Cut off of what?" I asked naively.

"No more drinks for you."

I sat confused for a moment.

"Why not?" I asked, seriously perplexed.

"One of the waitresses complained about you," he said. "I’m going to have to ask you to leave."

I slunk back in my chair and tried to recall anything I said or did that could have caused a problem.

"Are you sure you’ve got the right guy?" I asked, "I can’t think of anything I did or said that could be a problem. I just remember I told her she had nice eyes… that’s about it."

"That’s the problem," he said. "I don’t want to have to ask you again, sir. Please leave."

I bid farewell to my friends and business associates, apologized to everyone involved for my transgression and made my way to the other side of the hotel to another bar where I found the Silver Summit event founders and organizers, Shauna Hillman and David Bond. They greeted me warmly and thanked me for coming to the show. I responded in kind and thanked them for having me. I mentioned that I got kicked out of the other bar for complimenting the waitress and Shauna nodded.

"You can’t do that here," she said, "Bill Murphy did something similar last year and he had to write a letter of apology to the hotel."

I sat wide eyed, wondering if I was in an episode of the Twilight Zone.

She then winked and said, "It should be okay… I’ll even get you a drink but make sure you drink it really discretely. I’ll pour it into a water glass."

I was still somewhat surprised at the course of events of the evening and I began to sip my drink down below the table as discretely as possible when a hand grabbed my shoulder.

"That’s just about enough, sir!" said the muscular young man.

"Enough of what?" I again asked, exasperated.

"You’ve been cut off!"

"But that was a different bar," I replied.

"You’re cut off on the entire premises," he said and walked me off into the cold evening.

I looked up at the stars and said to myself, "We’re not in Mexico anymore, Dorothy!"

I then found myself at a nightclub… had just about had enough to drink and smoke to relax when, like veja du, all the lights came on and a man came on the PA system shouting, "Move! Move! Move! Everybody out!"

Veja du, by the way, is that feeling that you can’t believe this shit is happening again.

As I stood outside in the cold, dark evening, turning down numerous invitations from some of the local kids to fight, I came to a stark realization. This isn’t San Diego… I can’t just take a short cab ride to Tijuana this time. I found a cab and told him how sad I was that everything was closed. He replied, "There’s still a place open!"

I looked up, "Really?!"

"Yes," he said, "But it’s in Idaho."

I sat motionless. I wondered if he was joking or was being serious.

"It’s in another state?" I finally asked.

"Ya, but it’s only about 30 minutes away. It’s called the State Line. Everyone goes there because it’s open later than Washington clubs."

I gave him the nod and we soon arrived there. There were two people inside… I asked one of the girls, "Can I get a Vodka Red Bull?"

She looked at me like I was from outer space. "You can’t drink! It’s after 2am!" she said, as though I had just asked the craziest question in human history.

Seeing no other reason to be there I got back in the cab and went back to the hotel. I wasn’t tired enough to sleep so I thought I’d play a little online poker. I loaded up Party Poker and a big warning message flashed on stating something to the effect that US citizens are not allowed to play poker on the Internet.

As I closed my laptop and slumped into bed I thought to myself, "Wow, how can people handle all this freedom here in the land of the free?"

HOMEOWNER FORCED TO LIVE WITH BUM

The more I live outside of the US and the Western world the more bizarre it seems to me each time I return. It’s actually rather funny to see how all the laws in the US are really turning on more and more everyday people. Like this woman, for example.

Because of a Detroit city law she is not allowed to kick a squatter out of her house who had moved in recently when she was away. In Detroit, apparently, if someone breaks into your house and starts living there, you are not legally allowed to remove them on the spot. You are supposed to get some paperwork together, go to court, and get an "eviction notice"!

The reporter asks the poor homeowner, "People might find it strange that you are living with a squatter," to which the obviously exasperated homeowner replies, "That’s, I guess, something that happens in Detroit"!

GOVERNMENTS GONE WILD

Government’s don’t make much sense at the best of times but when this article crossed my path I had to laugh. The article states that six Italian scientists have been convicted of manslaughter for not properly predicting an earthquake that killed 309 people in 2009!

As with all government interventions this will have all manner of unintended consequences. For one, if any seismologists would even take the risk of working in Italy anymore, and knew that if they don’t predict an erthquake they may be thrown in a cage, what do you think they might do? Here’s a guess… predict an earthquake every single day of the year!

Not to mention, not many young Italians are going to be lining up to be a seismologist after this!

Showing the complete absurdity of what governments do worldwide, Jim Berkland succesfully predicted the Loma Prieta 6.9 earthquake that struck during the 1989 World Series. He was so good at predicting earthquakes that the US Government demanded he stop! Berkland claims that government officials told him not to make any more predictions, fearing mass panic, and he was suspended for two months from his Santa Clara County geology position in late October, 1989.

So, in Italy, it is illegal to not predict earthquakes and in the US it is illegal if you do.

Governments… can’t live with them, can’t overthrow them.

INFORMEDTRADES.COM

I was interview this week by Simit from InformedTrades.com. You can check out our discussions on one world government, hyperinflation and a top in gold here.

“Getting Your Gold Out of Dodge” is available here.  It is free to TDV and TDV Golden Trader subscribers or for a one-time price of $44.95 USD.  It may be the best use of your fiat Federal Reserve Notes you’ve ever spent. Reprinted with permission from The Dollar Vigilante.

Jeff Berwick [send him mail] is an anarcho-capitalist freedom fighter and Chief Editor of the libertarian, Austrian economics grounded newsletter, The Dollar Vigilante. The Dollar Vigilante focuses on strategies, investments and expatriation opportunities to survive & prosper during and after the US dollar collapse.

The Best of Jeff Berwick

Quick, can you name all the people who were in the room when you were born? Could you give the name and number of every supervisor you've ever had? Or tell me the address or addresses of both your parents one year before your birth?

If you have trouble answering any of the above questions, then the US government may deny you a new US passport. And simply in order to apply, you may be asked to divulge some extremely personal information, though I can't imagine any good reason the government needs to know whether or not you were circumcised.

PapersPlease.com reports: 

"Ignoring massive public opposition, and despite having recently admitted that it is already using the 'proposed' forms illegally without approval, the State Department is trying again to get approval for a pair of impossible-to-complete new passport application forms that would, in effect, allow the State Department to deny you a passport simply by choosing to send you either or both of the new "long forms".

"Early last year, the State Department proposed a new 'Biographical Questionnaire' for passport applicants, which would have required anyone selected to receive the new long-form DS-5513 to answer bizarre and intrusive personal trivia questions about everything from whether you were circumcised (and if so, with what accompanying religious rituals) to the dates of all of your mother’s pre- and post-natal medical appointments, your parents’ addresses one year before you were born, every address at which you have ever resided, and your lifetime employment history including the names and phone numbers of each of your supervisors at every job you have ever held.

"Most people would be unable to complete the proposed new form no matter how much time and money they invested in research. Requiring someone to complete Form DS-5513 would amount to de facto denial of their application for a passport – which, as we told the State Department, appeared to be the point of the form."

These are the same tactics that US states in the South used to use to keep blacks from voting during the Civil Rights Movement. The whites at the polling booths would ask blacks impossible-to-answer questions like "How many seeds in a watermelon?" or "How many bubbles in a bar of soap?" in order to deny them voting privileges. Interesting how the federal government treats its subjects like blacks in the Old South.

And note that Soviet Russia used bureaucracy to similar effect to delay or deny passports to its subjects. Applications would get "lost" or linger in the system for years. What's happening now is the same "soft totalitarianism" that doesn't outright deny freedom of movement, but just makes getting outside the border much more difficult to the point of impossibility.

Jim Sinclair of MineSense.com recommends that you get a passport with the maximum validity period. According to Jim:

"All this may turn out to be is the birth of a new business whereby legal counsel or accountants are required to make passport applications…Regardless, getting a passport to a maximum period now is wise."

I'd even go so far as to recommend that even if you currently have a valid passport but it only has a couple of years left on it, claim you've lost it and apply for a new one now. Because you may not be able to apply for a new US passport by the time your current one expires. Further I'd recommend getting a second passport (along with citizenship, of course) from a country that will treat you more like an honored guest instead of like a farm animal to be used or a prisoner to be pushed around. Someplace like Paraguay.

Maybe this will just amount to an extra layer of expense for those seeking US passports, like Jim says. Jim is a very smart guy and is worth listening to. We here at TDV take a very jaundiced view of governments, however, and always suspect them of being up to the very worst – especially the US government.

We believe that the US is slowly closing off the means for its subjects to escape. The US needs to keep the productive ability of its citizen-cows as collateral on the debt it keeps racking up. It must discourage the flight of these citizen-cows as economic conditions in the US inevitably deteriorate and encourage both capital and physical flight.

I don't know if the US will just outright make leaving the country illegal, but the government may well make leaving impossible even if still technically legal. US citizens will find themselves physically trapped inside the USSA. Maybe then those repeated comparisons of the US to Stalinist Russia or Nazi Germany won't see so far-fetched. 

“Getting Your Gold Out of Dodge” is available here.  It is free to TDV and TDV Golden Trader subscribers or for a one-time price of $44.95 USD.  It may be the best use of your fiat Federal Reserve Notes you’ve ever spent. Reprinted with permission from The Dollar Vigilante.

Jeff Berwick [send him mail] is an anarcho-capitalist freedom fighter and Chief Editor of the libertarian, Austrian economics grounded newsletter, The Dollar Vigilante. The Dollar Vigilante focuses on strategies, investments and expatriation opportunities to survive & prosper during and after the US dollar collapse.

The Best of Jeff Berwick

Would you dial up a known criminal, like a murderer or rapist, to come help you after you've been the victim of a crime? No? Then why in the world would you call the police after you've been assaulted, robbed or otherwise violated?

The police do not consider their job to protect you. They used to at least pay lip service to “keeping the peace”, but nowadays in the USSA it is clear their job is to enforce the law. In fasco-communist America, the law stopped being about your protection decades ago. The law is about the expansion of state power and control. That's why there are so many of them, with more coming all the time.

There are literally thousands upon thousands of reasons in the Federal Code for the police to arrest you. That's the very essence of a police state. Everything is literally a crime. As Lao Tsu said in the 6th century, BC: "The more artificial taboos and restrictions there are in the world, the more the people are impoverished…The more that laws and regulations are given prominence, the more thieves and robbers there will be…"

In an environment like this, police cannot merely be keepers of the peace. They must be enforcers of the law. And enforcers use force, of course – intimidation and sudden and shocking violence in order to make you obey. And compliance is exactly what the police expect. They long ago stopped being “public servants” and became more akin to plantation overseers. Rapper and philosopher KRS One pointed out the similarities in his track, “Sound of da Police”:

“The overseer rode around the plantation The officer is off patrolling all the nation The overseer could stop you what you're doing The officer will pull you over just when he's pursuing The overseer had the right to get ill And if you fought back, the overseer had the right to kill The officer has the right to arrest And if you fight back they put a hole in your chest!”

The most egregious example of this switch from protection to abuse is the so-called War on Drugs. The heightened prosecution of drug use (which was entirely legal a century ago in the US and in fact widely used in many products) has been right at the heart of the state's increased monitoring and intrusion into personal life.

Do you want protection from theft and physical aggression? Or do you want “law enforcement”? Law enforcement is what allows the police to bust down your door and arrest you on suspicion that you may be using a plant that the state doesn't like. Protection from theft and physical aggression is something that could be much better provided by free market transactions. You could simply buy yourself an alarm system or weapon. Or you could pay for bodyguards and remote 'round-the-clock monitoring and dispatch from a firm who will send people to actually help you and not gun you down. These people would also never bust down your door, kill your pets and hold automatic weapons to the heads of your children on suspicion that you might own plants that some politicians and voters don't like. In every way, the private market protection option seems much better than the public option.

CALL THE COPS AT YOUR OWN RISK

An 83-year-old grandmother recently learned the hard way of the dangers of calling the police. Debra Towler of Altavista, Virginia, called 9-1-1 and hung up without making a report. This triggered an automatic officer dispatch to her home. The police claim to have heard gunshots from inside Mrs. Towler's home. But even if that's true – and police regularly lie to cover up their mistakes – odds are that Mrs. Towler fired those shots for the same reason she called the police: she thought her home was being invaded. That would explain why she ran out the back door to her sister's house when officers tried to get in the front door. It would also explain why this church-going octogenarian wouldn't drop her gun when the police started barking orders at her from afar. They responded by gunning her down.

This woman would have been alive if she'd simply defended herself instead of calling the publicly funded police. If there really had been intruders, she probably frightened them off by being armed. In any case the police would not have arrived in time to save her from being robbed or assaulted. All the police can do is show up to ask a few questions and interrogate the victim or some witnesses in case the victim is dead. Sometimes, apparently, the police themselves cause the victims death.

If just one private protection company did this one time, the typical statist would be calling for that company to be shut down with the murderers jailed. Yet when the publicly funded police botch things up this badly, the typical person finds a reason to blame the victim. A free market protection company – perhaps provided by the same company that insured Mrs. Towler's home – would have treated Mrs. Towler like a customer whose harm they are paid to prevent. The publicly funded police force is under no such pressure to provide customer service. Their priorities are to enforce whatever nonsense laws are on the books and to use whatever lethal violence they deem necessary to keep themselves out of harm's way.

Why do people put up with a monopolistic police force? Think about it. You are forced to pay (with taxes) for police who aggress against you for personal behavior that's not anybody else's business.

Again, the police cannot stop a criminal from harming you or from stealing your property. They can only show up to “investigate” the crime after it's been committed. The only way police can be truly proactive is when it comes to enforcing intrusive laws about personal behavior that doesn't harm anyone else, like driving faster than the ridiculously low posted speed limits, or not wearing a seat belt or bicycle helmet, or using plants that politicians and your neighbors don't like.

I HAVE NOT NOR WILL EVER CALL THE PUBLIC POLICE

In my 41 years I have never once called the government (9-1-1) for any type of emergency. I’ve always instinctively known it was immoral and, in most cases, useless. Here in Mexico no one would ever consider calling the cops for anything – they know what the Americans are now learning. Here, the police are far more like tipsy Barney Fifes than they are like robocops.

A month ago my wife called. She was with our $10-a-day bodyguard, but he didn’t have his pistol on him that day and she said three very large men were following her in Walmart. I told her to go to the very back of the store and tell some staff what was happening and wait for me.

I arrived in less than 5 minutes on my scooter with my gun and sprinted to the back of the store. I saw my wife and bodyguard safely standing there and was relieved. We then went to the kitchen area of the store and got both my wife and my bodyguard some sharp butcher knives. We then went through the checkout and cautiously exited the store, with everyone well-armed (not to mention my bodyguard is a professional boxer and my wife takes kickboxing and Kung Fu lessons each week and is a powerlifter – and I’m a former amateur boxer).

By that point the three men had left. Whether it was a real threat or not is anyone’s guess. But this form of self-protection beats government protection any day. Not only was my response time certainly faster, and my “skin in the game” meant I’d fight anyone to the death to protect my wife, whereas government police will almost always choose their own safety over yours. But a really interesting thing happens when you stand up for yourself and don’t depend on others for your protection. It feels great.

Plus, there is the fact that the government police who we could have called likely would have tried to beat, rob or kill us. This happens all the time, worldwide – not just in the USSA. In Tunisia, for example, women are charged with indecency for being raped by cops. In the US, beatings and shootings by cops are the issue, not rapes (usually). Look at this recent thug scrum in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, New York. After watching police pile on and abuse this young man, even the guy who called the police wishes he hadn't called to report the young man sleeping in the community center.

“I regret making the call,” says the caller, “I should have let him sleep.” I believe a lot more Americans are going to be expressing similar sentiments in coming years. They will learn the hard way that calling the cops is most likely to make a bad situation worse. Your average person in the USSA still probably labors under the illusion that the police are actually there to help them, and that the public police option actually is superior to the customer-service based private options. That's a very dangerous illusion. In fact, it could easily cost you your life. Just ask Mrs. Towler. If you're stuck in the dangerous USSA police state, then TDV Homegrown can help you understand how to survive unscathed.

Rule #1: Never call the cops. Just like with health, prevention is a far best treatment for criminal acts. Check out TDV Homegrown for more details. (If you have the option of getting free of the USSA police state entirely, then try out a TDV Weekly Basic subscription for some great insights on expatriating.)

DON’T EVEN TALK TO THE POLICE

The police cannot help one bit once the crime is committed. They are unlikely to figure out who committed the crime. And they care more about somebody getting convicted for the crime than they are about the right person getting convicted for the crime. Police will lie in court. They don't care about finding the culprit. They just want a conviction. And any patsy will do. So don't talk to them. Ever. They will happily see innocents carted off to jail as long as they get to look like they're doing their jobs.

Their own safety is far more important to them than your safety. After all, they are the sacred praetorian class, defenders of the law and the lawmakers, while you're just a subject who is forced at gunpoint to pay for their salaries. You'd be far better off being a voluntarily paying customer.

“Getting Your Gold Out of Dodge” is available here.  It is free to TDV and TDV Golden Trader subscribers or for a one-time price of $44.95 USD.  It may be the best use of your fiat Federal Reserve Notes you’ve ever spent. Reprinted with permission from The Dollar Vigilante.

Jeff Berwick [send him mail] is an anarcho-capitalist freedom fighter and Chief Editor of the libertarian, Austrian economics grounded newsletter, The Dollar Vigilante. The Dollar Vigilante focuses on strategies, investments and expatriation opportunities to survive & prosper during and after the US dollar collapse.

The Best of Jeff Berwick

Hello from Libertopia in San Diego,

So far the conference has been excellent. So many great anarcho-capitalist minds here, it is almost overwhelming. However, hosting a liberty conference in the USSA almost seems insane at this juncture. It’d be like hosting a KKK member drive in Compton – a strange choice of locales that seems to go against the very nature of the surroundings.

That became clear right on the first day as I tried to grab a drink in the Hospitality suite. I was told by numerous people to be very thankful that we had the ability to buy alcohol on the private hotel grounds because, due to government regulation, it isn’t legal. A woman stood by the door and was very cautious to let more than two people at a time into the 600 square foot room. "Please wait outside," she said, to the line that was queuing up. "The room is full."

I looked inside at the two people and the large amount of empty space. She then said something about fire codes before admonishing me not to smoke – outside! There is a law that you have to be a certain amount of feet away from a doorway.

I finally got a little tired of all the rules and people telling me where I could go and what I could do when I got there and decided to head into town with TDVer Justin O’Connell, and his young group of friends.

"How are we going to get there?" he asked.

I was a bit confused. "Don’t you have a car?" I replied.

He responded that he did, but he had just had one beer and it would be too risky to drive. He went on to tell me that if he were to get a DUI it would cost, at a minimum, $15,000. and likely somewhere in the neighborhood of $30,000.

Again, I was confused. "How?" I asked.

"First," he stated, "the fine (or bail) for a DUI is around $15,000. Plus they steal your car and you have to pay them $300 per day to keep it stolen, but you’ll be in a cage and unable to retrieve it so the fines go up very quickly."

Not wanting him to have to declare bankruptcy after drinking a beer I then suggested we get a taxi.

Again, he shot that idea down. "There are no taxis around here and it’ll take 30 minutes to call one."

Coming from a place where I can’t walk outside for more than one second without being offered countless taxis, it was a strange notion. But, I guess if it costs anywhere near the $600,000 to buy permission to drive a taxi in New York, it makes sense. Massive employment in the US and a large demand for taxis and taxi drivers, but no one can afford to do it.

I gritted my teeth and asked him what other options we had. He told me that his friends would come pick us up and we sat around in the cold fall evening listening to crickets for another 30 minutes before 4 young 20-something boys drove up.

They huddled up, as though used to this process, and asked, "OK, who’s DD?"

Unfamiliar with the term I was again somewhat confused. "I got DD!" chimed one of the guys.

DD, it turns out, means designated driver. If you live in the US you probably knew that but I have been living in a place where we recently got drunk and paid a taxi driver to let us drive his volkswagon beetle cab – and he did obligingly, so DD means something different to me: "drive drunk".

We then drove at the excruciatingly slow speed limit downtown, stopping at what seemed like 30 traffic lights, although no traffic was ever impeding us. At one light, the car in front of us turned left well after the yellow light had come on and all the guys in the car went into a frenzy.

"Did you see that?!" exclaimed one.

"Dude, that’s crazy!" shouted another. The guy beside me nudged me, "Crazy, right?"

I put on a fake smile, not wanting to cause any problems and nodded, "Yes, he turned left a little late. Insane."

Finally we made it downtown and after another 15 minutes of looking for parking we began walking around looking for a place to go. As we did, a girl threw up on my shoe and a few seconds later another incredibly intoxicated youngster asked me for a drag of my smoke. I politely turned down his request only to have him lunge at me to tell me he was going to kill me. His friends held the tough guy back as I looked on with curiousity at the kind of animals that live in this area.

Finally, around midnight, and after showing my papers to the doorman I made it inside a bar and proceeded to try to relax after what seemed like a very unneccesarily stressful and hectic evening. After a few drinks I did start to relax and as I leaned up against the wall I took a deep breath and was thankful to feel that way.

But, just as I did it, all the lights in the club turned on and a bouncer put his elbow to the back of my neck as he pushed me and the entire croud out, shouting, "Move, move move!"

It was 1:30am and we weren’t allowed to be there anymore. I knew what was coming next. I’ve seen this scene countless times in the place where I was raised, the true north strong and completely unfree, Canada. After you violently push out what is mostly young males (the girls have the good sense to be gone by that point) out on the street at an unseemly early hour (and certainly not an hour that the business would want to close at – prime selling time) and cut off their access to alcohol, then comes the fights.

I somehow managed to evade most aggressions and spent another 15 minutes looking for a taxi on the mostly dark, deserted streets and, for a second, I peered south and seriously considered going to Tijuana. But, my speech at Libertopia was at 8:45am and if I went to Tijuana, the clubs would just be getting good at that time, so I decided against it.

As I walked into my hotel room, cold, lonely and very unsatisfied by the entire evening, I thought to myself, I hope the next time they consider hosting Libertopia in a place with at least a modicum of liberty. At the rate the US is going this will seem like holding an annual Judaism conference in Auschwitz in the late 1930s.

But, if there is one good thing about the location, it is that at any given time I am no more than a 30 minute drive from Tijuana. You can almost see liberty from here!

Read the rest of the article

“Getting Your Gold Out of Dodge” is available here.  It is free to TDV and TDV Golden Trader subscribers or for a one-time price of $44.95 USD.  It may be the best use of your fiat Federal Reserve Notes you’ve ever spent. Reprinted with permission from The Dollar Vigilante.

Jeff Berwick [send him mail] is an anarcho-capitalist freedom fighter and Chief Editor of the libertarian, Austrian economics grounded newsletter, The Dollar Vigilante. The Dollar Vigilante focuses on strategies, investments and expatriation opportunities to survive & prosper during and after the US dollar collapse.

The Best of Jeff Berwick

Hello from beautiful Acapulco,

Everyone has there place and this is truly mine. I was just walking down the street with a glass of wine, smoking a cigarette and… well, actually I should mention something about that.

I finally started smoking! I’m so happy about that. I tried when I was younger but when I was in my teens and twenties I was not in very good health. As I just mentioned, everyone has their place, and when I am here… with the sun, every day of the year, it builds up your immune system immeasurably. When I lived in northern Canada, the sun was always this little white light in the distant horizon for most of the year. It’d peer down to me as though to say, "What are you doing living here?" And that’s if you could even see it at all, through the clouds, rain, snow and hail. I was almost constantly sick. Even when I visit, I look around and everyone is a grey color. Here, with the sun and all the locally grown, mostly organic produce and meat, it is almost impossible to get sick. I think the last time I heard someone even cough here was never.

So, I just couldn’t start smoking while I lived there. Even one cigarette felt like it was going to kill me. I’ve since experimented with electronic cigarettes and snus. Both had their moments but I felt like I was missing out. Smoking, of almost all activities, is hardwired into us from thousands and thousands of years of practice. I wanted to participate in that tradition. But, something has happened of late, a switch just clicked and now I am nearly a full smoker. I only tend to smoke when I drink… but that is nearly all the time anyway, so I’m good.

One of the funnest parts has been collecting all the government mandated scare propaganda on each pack. Here’s just one hilarious one, just for your entertainment.

That wouldn’t be allowed in the USSA. Boobies are illegal to see… But in Panama, it’s allowed. Even if they turn one of the breasts into an ashtray. I have a friend who collects these and puts them on his fridge.

I remember once I was with my Thai girlfriend in Myanmar… and there they haven’t started putting these on cigarette packs yet. When she saw a cigarrete pack without disgusting, horrific images on it she got so excited. At first, I didn’t understand. She said, "You know how much I can sell these for in Thailand?" I just looked at her with a blank stare. She then said, "The people there are so superstitious that they’ll pay double or triple for a cigarette pack without propaganda on it." She bought a few cartons and sold them to her friends at a nice profit. God bless entepreneurialism.

Even still, when some people I know hear that I have finally started smoking, they say, "You are going to die if you smoke those!"

I just look at them, again in confusion. Are they under some misconception that no one ever dies?

Even still, I figure, if it is true, and I will die of cancer, it usually takes 20-30 years before the cancer sets in. And, ignoring for the moment that there are numerous natural remedies that destroy cancer on contact (hemp oil, for one), at 41 years of age I’ll maybe get cancer and die in my 60s or 70s. Good, I think. I have no intention to be here forever.

Read the rest of the article

“Getting Your Gold Out of Dodge” is available here.  It is free to TDV and TDV Golden Trader subscribers or for a one-time price of $44.95 USD.  It may be the best use of your fiat Federal Reserve Notes you’ve ever spent. Reprinted with permission from The Dollar Vigilante.

Jeff Berwick [send him mail] is an anarcho-capitalist freedom fighter and Chief Editor of the libertarian, Austrian economics grounded newsletter, The Dollar Vigilante. The Dollar Vigilante focuses on strategies, investments and expatriation opportunities to survive & prosper during and after the US dollar collapse.

The Best of Jeff Berwick

You know how they say history does not repeat itself, but it does rhyme? Well, it’s absolutely true, especially in the case of governments. States pull the same nonsense repeatedly throughout history, but they don’t do it in exactly the same way, so most of the history-challenged populace never catches on.

Take the case of border closures and travel restrictions. The most famous examples are with the socialist Eastern bloc countries of the 20th century. East Germany’s Berlin Wall was the least subtle means of keeping the slaves on the plantation. Socialist countries had many other sneaky means of restricting egress, as well. The administrative ones were the most formidable, partly because their existence did not have to be admitted officially. Costs for visas to the West were high and applications could be hindered, rejected, or simply ignored.

The USSA has its own stew of travel prevention. Back when the USSA was still the less sinister USA, the state focused on restricting economic opportunities by hindering the masses of people trying to get in. The state still considers illegal immigration a “problem”, but as the government becomes simultaneously more fascist and more socialist, a growing number of people are trying to get out. And the state is already weaving a web to prevent its livestock from escaping so easily.

Consider Senate Bill 1812, foisted on the world in November 2011 by Senator Barbara Boxer (D-Los Angeles). The bill’s stated purpose was to authorize Federal aid to highways, but it also contained a provision to deny passports to US citizens who owed $50,000 or more to the IRS. It passed the Senate in March, 2012, and is waiting for approval in the House. So if you become too delinquent with paying your extortion money to the state, then you will be trapped. Do not be surprised if over time the threshold for passport denial is lowered from the owing of $50,000 to a much, much lower figure.

Tax debt isn’t the only kind that can get you stranded in the USSA. Another way of increasing the number of people who can’t leave the USSA plantation is by expanding the definition of a criminal offense to include almost anything and everything that one might want to do. In fact, the system is set-up so there is no way to live without breaking one of their arbitrary and capricious rules.

One example of this is by destroying the economy and then making you a criminal for suffering economically from crises created by the government and central bank. With the announcement of QE3 expect the Fed to buy up about $1 trillion in toxic Mortgage-Backed Securities to bail out the likes of Morgan Stanley and Bank of America. Then expect the Fed to criminalize delinquency, default and foreclosure. Roughly 20% of home “owners” would find themselves classed as criminals. The FHAH could go after so-called strategic defaulters. “Jingle mail” – mailing the keys back to the bank and walking away from the house – could land you in jail. The upshot is that those caught up in the central bank-created housing crisis could find themselves permanently barred from leaving the country.

And then there are those caught up in the other impossible-to-escape debt trap: student loans. The Fed controls the entire student loan market and it is impossible to get rid of these obligations through bankruptcy. You’d have more luck convincing the IRS to write off the taxes you owe. Expect student loan debt to be used just like tax debt to deny passports to USSA citizens. Nearly 30% of these loans are delinquent while about half of all graduates can’t find work. These people will be prohibited from ever leaving the United States to seek opportunity elsewhere. They may actually start to think life in the FEMA camps the government has prepared for them is their best option. Their parents may disagree about that, but may also have no choice but to join them. Parents who cosign for student loans are also on the hook for repayment and could be subject to the same passport restrictions.

Eventually no one will be able to obtain a passport and many of them will even feel like it is a justified punishment for their transgressions. In some ways, it’s a mental Berlin Wall, but because it isn’t physical the US government can point and say, “Hey, look, it’s not like we’ve got you caged in."

By the time all is said and done the USSA will truly resemble the former USSR in yet another way. None of the slaves will be allowed to leave and not many of the slaves will even realize why or how they were trapped or that they are even trapped at all.

“Getting Your Gold Out of Dodge” is available here.  It is free to TDV and TDV Golden Trader subscribers or for a one-time price of $44.95 USD.  It may be the best use of your fiat Federal Reserve Notes you’ve ever spent. Reprinted with permission from The Dollar Vigilante.

Jeff Berwick [send him mail] is an anarcho-capitalist freedom fighter and Chief Editor of the libertarian, Austrian economics grounded newsletter, The Dollar Vigilante. The Dollar Vigilante focuses on strategies, investments and expatriation opportunities to survive & prosper during and after the US dollar collapse.

The Best of Jeff Berwick

Hello from Santiago, Chile,

By the time you read this I should be back in Acapulco, but I write this from the airport in Santiago.

I spent most of the week in Santiago, Chile. I’m going to have a lot of updates for subscribers on what I found there… but in the meantime, at the Santiago airport I did as I always do and was waiting to be the last on the airplane. Just like Wayne Gretzky used to do… be the last on the ice. I’m always the last on the plane. While everyone else runs to line-up when they call for boarding I sit, calmly, usually drinking a scotch. Once everyone is on board I then stroll up and show my papers. Why do I do this? Because, then, as the last to board, any seat I want is mine. I can either choose to sit beside a cute girl or sit in an empty row. But the funny part of my boarding tonight at 2:40am in Santiago was that I was out most of the night enjoying the best that Santiago has to offer (which is a lot – more to subscribers soon) and arrived at the airport with a buzz. I compounded it by ordering what would technically be called in Canada a “quadruple scotch” in a plastic cup to go at an airport bar… but here it’s just called “a scotch”.

So as I waited for the people to run to line up (do they think the plane could possibly leave without them if they didn’t hustle down the walkway??) I then boarded last after a Chinese monk who had some sort of caretaker… not sure what the deal was, but as we walked down the jetway the monk started freaking out… he was going through his fanny pack like a madman… I’m not sure what he was looking for but it may have been his passport or boarding pass. Instead of bypassing him and because of my airplane boarding strategy, and out of politeness, I just leant up against a wall for a few minutes and drank my scotch. The monk was losing his mind… he didn’t talk (maybe he is on one of those non-talking monks) but he was seriously freaking out. Finally he appeared to find whatever he was looking for and he took a deep breath and held his hand to his heart. His handler then motioned to the monk and then pointed back to me, as though to say, thank you for waiting. The monk nodded and his handler said, “Thank you for your patience”. I thought that was pretty ironic, coming from a monk. I just nodded and thought…. That monk needs a drink, or a smoke of something… nothing should be that stressful. But, I suppose, he just found out that it isn’t so easy out here in the world we all live in. It’s probably easy being nice and calm inside a temple as the locals drop off food for you to eat.

Finally though, we made it on board and as the monk ended up in a middle seat between two other large people I walked past and sat in the exit row which was completely empty on the nearly full flight. Which one of us is more enlightened?

TSA HORROR STORIES

As I went through the laid back security in Santiago I said a little prayer of thanks that this trip did not include a visit to the US. It was a straight shot from Santiago to Mexico City and from there just a 30 minute flight to Acapulco after a 2 hour stopover at one of my favorite airport restaurant/bars in Terminal 2, Taba Bar. Terminal 1, in Mexico City, by the way, is atrocious… it’s almost as bad as LAX or Miami, though much more relaxed. Terminal 2, on the other hand, is quite new and very nice.

But I digress. Back to the TSA… while in Asuncion, Paraguay we crossed paths with two TDV subscribers going through the citizenship process and had a wonderful meal at the boutique hotel where many of our clients stay. Their story, which they swear is true, was so unbelievable that I almost literally didn’t believe them. They told me on their trip out of the US that they opted-out of Michael Chertoff’s nude x-ray bath and the TSA woman asked them why. When they replied that they simply don’t believe it is safe to be doing a full body x-ray just to see if they have any boxcutters in their pocket the TSA woman yelled at them, "It’s safe! It’s completely safe, the TSA has tested it!"

But, that’s not the weird part. Then, another TSA employee walked up… a gaunt, pale man. Apparently his job is to stand beside the machine all day. Trying to calm them down he said, "Don’t worry, it’s no big deal! I just had 38 tumors taken out of my body a few weeks ago, it was a very basic procedure."

I really don’t know what to say after that!

HOPE… LESS?

Meanwhile, in another conversation I had last week, I may have talked myself out of being so optimistic about the coming statist collapse and the world returning to a much freer state. As some of you may know, I have been one of the more optimistic anarcho-capitalists (I’ve begun to call myself that more than an anarchist now that "anarchists" are the #1 enemy of the US Government nowadays and so-called "anarchists" are regularly rounded up) in terms of thinking we could have a much freer, more peaceful and prosperous world in as short of a time as a decade… or less.

That was, until I had this conversation.

Showing my optimism, and my very poor mathematical skills, I excitedly said to a friend, "Thanks to the internet there is so much hope! I’ll bet 10,000 people every day are waking up to the truth and figuring out that statism/socialism/fascism is an unnecessary evil… as opposed to a necessary one."

My friend furrowed his brow, so I took out the calculator on my Samsung Note and said, "Look, if 10,000 people per day are waking up… then it will only be so many days before the whole world is awake." I then typed in 7 billion divided by 10,000. For those of you with any math skills you wouldn’t need a calculator… but I typed it in completely oblivious to what the result would be. I then proudly stated, "Look, at that rate, it will only be………. 700,000 days…. before everyone is awake."

I slunk back in my chair, deflated. Perhaps I didn’t realize the full scope of the problem!

My friend tried to console me… and as he did I bounced back up. Perhaps naively. Probably naively. "But wait," I said, "I read somewhere that really only 5% of the population has to have an understanding of things in order for those ideas to permeate the entire society!"

Again, I pulled out my calculator… not knowing what number would come up… if I typed in 700,000 x 0.05. "You see, it will only be….. 35,000 days… or 95 years…. before we are again free."

I slunk back in my chair. My friend ordered me a Glenfiddich 18 anos to ease the pain. I did what most people do when confronted with the fact that what they originally thought was not true. My eyes darted as I searched for anything I could have possibly missed.

"Wait!" I exclaimed. It’s not that bad! I’ve travelled much of the world… over 100 countries and counting… and outside of Europe and the USSA, most people are quite naturally anarchist. I’d say the majority of people in Mexico are naturally anarchist… and Thailand… and countless other countries. In fact, the total amount of true statists on Earth is probably less than a billion… mostly, but not all, those from the US, Europe, Canada, Australia… even some Chinese are definitely statist… but, let’s be conservative… if 1.5 billion people were true statists… and we are waking up 10,000 people per day… and if we only need to convert 5% of them… I punched it into my calculator and like a laboratory rat that has touched the electricified water bottle one too many times, my finger hovered over the "=" sign… in my mind I repeated over and over, "Please… Please give me a number I can live with."

The number? 7,500 days. Twenty years.

I paused, not sure to be happy or sad… but then I thought… if my kids… and your kids can live in a free world, potentially in my lifetime (liver willing), I can live with that.

And so, it was with some pain, but some hope, that I continue forward, spreading the word of liberty… Hey, if we can wake up 50,000 people per day, it’ll only be four years before humanity moves beyond this blood stained nation-state/socialism/fascism/collectivist disaster and on to a grand new world.

“Getting Your Gold Out of Dodge” is available here.  It is free to TDV and TDV Golden Trader subscribers or for a one-time price of $44.95 USD.  It may be the best use of your fiat Federal Reserve Notes you’ve ever spent. Reprinted with permission from The Dollar Vigilante.

Jeff Berwick [send him mail] is an anarcho-capitalist freedom fighter and Chief Editor of the libertarian, Austrian economics grounded newsletter, The Dollar Vigilante. The Dollar Vigilante focuses on strategies, investments and expatriation opportunities to survive & prosper during and after the US dollar collapse.

The Best of Jeff Berwick

Boy, I have a lot to say today.  Ten or twenty years ago there’d be just one or two stupid things to comment upon every month or two… like the war on drugs or whatnot.  Today?  I see 10 or 15 things per day that almost make my blood boil.  It’s a good thing I live in a relatively free place on the beach surrounded by beautiful, smiling, dancing women and good food and good times or I’d get stressed out.

If you don’t have a snifter of scotch at the ready or a nice glass of wine… or whatever drink you prefer, I advise you to grab one now.  You’re going to need it by the time I am done.

PRIVATE VERSUS PUBLIC

Why are people so scared of the thought that something we want/need is privately owned and not collectively organized?

Speaking to your average American, they would nod approvingly as you state that the Soviet Union and anything centrally planned doesn’t work.  We’ve got enough evidence now.  If I lived a hundred years ago I could have seen myself backing socialism and communism.  From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.  How beautiful!  Those of us who can produce more can give more to those who cannot.  Not a person will starve.  Not a person will suffer.  It is a truly beautiful idea.  And, as it turns out, that is why it is so dangerous.

Stéphane Courtois has estimated that 100 million people have been killed at the hand of the communist sickle.  And Vladimir Lenin stated “The goal of socialism is communism”.  So on what grounds does someone like Barry Obombya have to stand on when he states that we need to spread the wealth?

How can he even utter that in public?

Especially at a time when, unbelievably, other people, who don’t even say anything, but have boyfriends who have certain beliefs, get kicked out of the Olympics?  Like Nadja Drygalla who was kicked out of the Olympics just for having a boyfriend with certain political beliefs!  She didn’t, we emphasize… her lover did!  And yet Barack Obombya is worshipped for having beliefs that killed more than a hundred million people!

Why are people so devoted to the idea that the Soviet Union, or Communist China, and their centrally planned and enforced systems are wrong but that we need “certain” things, like the money system, or policing, or courts, or roads, or schools to be centralized?

This thought crossed my mind today as we drove down the sidewalk in southern Mexico on my scooter. I was pretty drunk and a public policeman give us the stink eye.  I gave him it back double.  My expression said “you are worse than a petty thief because at least a petty thief is honest about their intentions!”

Within seconds, we passed by the AcaCondos building, and the private security guards who work there all high-fived me and patted me on the back.

Ever heard of private security guard brutality?  No, you probably haven’t. If a private security guard ever beat or killed someone who didn’t deserve it they would be immediately fired and be working at the neighborhood Gap or as a janitor.  When the police are centralized and have no profit motive?  They will tase, pepper spray, beat and murder you.  If you haven’t figured that out, wake the f**k up.  Seriously.

DON’T DO WHAT IS IN YOUR OWN BEST INTEREST!

I abhor the Olympics.  It embodies everything that is wrong in the world today.  The Olympics is the embodiment of the concept of one world government… and that is going in the wrong direction.  We need more governments not less.

The athletic achievements?  That’s great!  But how is one man or woman who was born 20 miles away from another on the other side of an arbitrary line devised by murderers and thieves on a different team than the other? 

But when I saw the headline that eight Olympic badminton players were kicked out of the Olympics for “trying to lose” it piqued my interest.  Had some people gone against human nature and intentionally tried to lose?

Upon further review… something which seems beyond the capabilities of most people today had happened… I looked into it a little bit further.

According to the story, “The crowd booed as the badminton players dumped shots into the net, trying to improve their positioning for the next round. The umpire and tournament referee Torsten Berg issued warnings, imploring them to exert maximum effort.”

I thought… wow… I’ve never heard of people ever…. ever… trying to lose at anything.  Maybe they are a new mutation of humans who don’t have their own self interest in mind.

“We applaud the federation for having taken swift and decisive action,” IOC spokesman Mark Adams told The Associated Press. “Such behavior is incompatible with the Olympic values.”

Wow, I said again.  People going to the Olympics and trying to lose!  Good job, Mark Adams, for kicking them out before this catches on and everyone tries to lose!

And then I decided to do what most don’t bother doing. I looked beyond the headlines and the quotes.

As it turns out, the system was set up so that those who lost in the earlier rounds would have the advantage in the later rounds.  Only a fool would try to win their first games in that situation.  The system was set-up, like socialism, where the weak win…. in the early stages.  And the response from the horrific, despicable, Satanic Olympics?  How dare they try to win by losing under our stupid set-up!

This is exactly how all of statist society is set-up.  Force people to adhere to unnatural, non free-market incentives, and then when they do it, kidnap or kill them. That’s statism. That’s the drug war.  Make it illegal to provide people with what they want and then drag them away in the middle of the night.  

You know what is the best system for humans who are all completely self-interested to adhere to?  Anarchy.  The free market, unfettered.  Or do you think central planning is the better option?  Then, let’s start jailing millions of badminton players.

RUN!  HIDE! AND, AS THE LAST RESORT, FIGHT!

You absolutely must see the video above.  I thought it must have been from SNL when it was sent to me.  But, no, it was paid for by your tax dollars if you live in the United State!  The message?  Occasionally… yes, from time to time… a disgrunteld American, probably who lost his job due to the regulations of the US Government and the destructive Federal Reserve may come by and shoot up your area of work.

So, as a service to you, to protect you from this state-caused event, we have stolen money from you and used it to produce propaganda wherein we advise you to, first, call the government if a state-caused shooting spree occurs… which will become commonplace now that things are in high gear.  And, then to advise you to run away like scared slaves first and foremost.  If that doesn’t work, hide like little girls.

And, if after all that, you have no other option as you wait for the government to come save you, fashion a fire extinguisher or a chair into a weapon!  Never, ever, use a pistol to easily eradicate this government-caused agent.  Ever.

This is the world Americans live in today.

Hilarious.

UNTL NEXT WEEK

Until the next time we talk… remember to run away… citizens of the home of the brave.  And, if that doesn’t work, hide!  Exactly the same advice we’ve been giving here for quite some time.  Run away (expatriate) and… if need be, hide.  And, as the US Government advises… fight!  But no one does that anymore… and probably shouldn’t anyway.  Violence is rarely the answer.  Find a way to live outside of this socialist/communist/fascist/statist system and be happy.

I wish you all the best!  Live as free as is humanly possible, love your friends and if your family deserves it, them too.. and everyone else.

Peace.  Love.  And anarchy.

“Getting Your Gold Out of Dodge” is available here.  It is free to TDV and TDV Golden Trader subscribers or for a one-time price of $44.95 USD.  It may be the best use of your fiat Federal Reserve Notes you’ve ever spent. Reprinted with permission from The Dollar Vigilante.

Jeff Berwick [send him mail] is an anarcho-capitalist freedom fighter and Chief Editor of the libertarian, Austrian economics grounded newsletter, The Dollar Vigilante. The Dollar Vigilante focuses on strategies, investments and expatriation opportunities to survive & prosper during and after the US dollar collapse.

The Best of Jeff Berwick

Dear Slavey:

Your advice
to Dennis in the July
Edition of Dear Slavey, to simply not repay his credit card
debt, is disturbing.

One of the
most fundamental principals necessary for a free market to operate,
is the honoring of contracts. Dennis was not forced into accumulating
this debt. He was not forced to borrow and purchase goods and services.
Dennis chose to. Therefore, he is obligated to repay the debts that
he has accumulated. He should honor a contract to which he has entered
into with his creditor.

One whom
does not honor their contractual obligations is a crook. One whom
does not honor their contractual obligations cannot be a part of
a productive free market economy.

You have
it wrong on this one. Way wrong.

Eric
Reno,
NV

Dear Eric:

You bet it’s
disturbing. Attempting to pay a debt you can never hope to repay
isn’t a moral imperative, but rather a ridiculously stupid business
decision that will keep you enslaved for decades.

I’m not into
stealing from anyone, and not into being any more “creative”
with my business affairs than any large corporation is allowed to
be in this extremely dysfunctional country. But I refuse to be intimidated
by big corporations and governments (which are one in the same in
this fascistic system) who play financial and authoritarian games
that screw with my life and the lives of my friends. You don’t have
to live with a 500 pound weight on your shoulders 24/7 if you don’t
want to and, contrary to a lot of the comments we’ve received, you
will not end up homeless or in jail if you break free (in most States).

Let me tell
you a little bit about how the large credit card companies and financial
institutions are honoring their contractual obligations with their
customers these days.

I have a close
friend who had a credit score well over 800. He was using credit
to help manage the ups and downs of his business and doing it responsibly:
never spending anywhere near his credit limit, always paying more
than the minimum payment each month, and never missing a payment.
The credit line on one card was $5000 and he maintained a balance
of around $3000 during a slight down cycle in his business – far
below his credit limit. One day out of the blue the credit card
company called him up and said, "We’re reducing your credit
line to $2000, and as a result you’re now over your limit. Please
reduce the balance to below your new limit within 7 days."
He had a very difficult time coming up with an extra $1000 that
month, but he did it, then because they’d lowered his limit dramatically
his credit was suddenly maxed out, which immediately dropped his
credit score by 100 points. This set off alarms with his other creditors
and began a downward spiral that made it impossible for him to obtain
an ongoing line of credit to keep his business afloat. He had played
by the rules, been responsible with credit, but because the credit
card company felt like it they made him a slave to debt.

On the corporate
side, read this
article about two huge companies that walked away from a $5.4
billion real estate obligation in Manhattan to avoid having to declare
bankruptcy. Tell me it’s morally wrong for a middle class guy to
walk away from credit card debt when these companies couldn’t care
less about pulling the rug out from under their excellent customers,
and do the exact same thing themselves but on an exponentially grander
scale.

Dear Slavey:

In response
to Eric of Reno, NV, who complained about Slavey advising a fellow
to skip on his contract to the bank/credit card company:

Three reasons
why the bank/card company has breached contract first, and Slavey
is on the moral high ground here:

A. The "money"
they loaned was book money, not deposit money. Meaning they took
deposits, and created about 21 times the deposits as a book entry
and lent you the book entry money. So it cost the bank nothing to
create the so-called money and then they charge you interest on
it as you pay it back. I would call this fraud at the root of the
contract, since you thought you were borrowing actual money that
somebody had saved and deposited.

The banks
have created a system whereby everyone has to borrow to keep up
with the inflation (caused by their lending practices), but there
is never enough money in the economy to pay back the debt plus interest.
It’s like a board game where every round, one of the players must
go bankrupt, and the bank takes their real assets. It’s a great
game for the banks, but a fraudulent contract at the root. See "The
American Dream" for an excellent and entertaining video
on how this all works:

B. All bank/card
contracts include the law of the land as part of the contract. The
law of the land includes the right to declare bankruptcy, as well
as the 7 year limit on collection (apart from bankruptcy). The interest
rate you paid to begin with took into account the statistical rate
of people who default. So defaulting is not a breach of contract,
it is in the contract, and you’ve been paying for the right to do
it all along.

The bankruptcy
law had its basings in the Bible which had a seventh year expiration
for all debts. It was a brilliant law (common law element of all
contracts) back then, and it is a good law still today.

Without
a pressure release valve to eliminate bad debt, the bankers would
in time enslave everyone on the planet even while productive businesses
starve for capital.

C. The lender
and the borrower are both responsible for their actions.

I think
we can all agree that the massive failure of the banking system
in 2008 happened because the banks have been protected by government
from suffering the results of their own bad decisions. This created
moral hazard, and they all went for the immoral gain knowing the
government would bail them out. They deliberately lent money to
irresponsible people, securitized the bad loans, and sold them to
other investors, and then cried to the government to be bailed out
when it imploded. That is fraud on a massive scale!

So, default
– to the banks – if you need to, and don’t lose any sleep
over it. It is not immoral. God wrote the first bankruptcy clause,
and I’m pretty sure He wrote it to protect folks like you.

Keep up
the great work Slavey!

Ken G

Dear Ken:

We had to edit
your letter down a bit to fit. We have no need to add anything except,
thanks for breaking it down for us!

Dear Slavey:

Thank you,
thank you, thank you. This kind of column really helps people get
a grip on reality. I ran into credit problems after my divorce and
they didn’t kill me or eat me. I just got used to ignoring them.
You can’t get blood from a turnip. Thanks for the great advice and
keep up the good work. The troops need the reality check!

Jim

Dear Jim:

It’s going
to be an interesting ride showing people that are mad as hell that
they don’t have to take it anymore! Someone this week asked me what
would happen if they walked away from their debts and wanted to
rent an apartment. Part of de-slaving yourself is working with people
in your network (your friends, family, and business associates)
and avoiding “the system”. TDV has been writing about
what an illegitimate, fraudulent and corrupt at its core system
we have been forced to live in. TDV often writes that it is best
to get out and go to a freer country… but many of us don’t want
to or can’t and that’s why TDV asked me to give my insights on how
to live in one of the least freest countries on Earth and still
survive and prosper.

Part of the
solution is disengaging from the system. If you have a bad credit
score but want to rent an apartment, start asking around and I bet
you’ll find someone in your circle who knows someone who they can
speak to on your behalf who owns property and, if you have enough
income to support it, will rent to you without pulling a credit
report. In this regard, look to places like the Free
State Project in New Hampshire where thousands of people have
moved and either want to try to change the system and bring it back
to where it was prior to 1913 – when the Federal Reserve and
income tax were put in place – or to get rid of the system
altogether. Or just create your own free state wherever you live.
The internet can enable you to attract other like minded people
who are sick of being stolen from (taxes), abused (the police state)
and tricked into debt slavery (by the fascist banking system) all
while having almost any opportunity vanquished by government regulations,
rules and taxes.

Thanks for
writing, everyone, and keep sending in questions or feedback for
Dear Slavey at tdv@dollarvigilante.com.
We’ll be back in August.

“Getting
Your Gold Out of Dodge” is available here.  It is free
to TDV and TDV
Golden Trader subscribers or for a one-time price of $44.95
USD.  It may be the best use of your fiat Federal Reserve Notes
you’ve ever spent. Reprinted
with permission from The
Dollar Vigilante.

Jeff
Berwick [send him mail]
is an anarcho-capitalist freedom fighter and Chief Editor of the
libertarian, Austrian economics grounded newsletter, The
Dollar Vigilante. The Dollar Vigilante focuses on strategies,
investments and expatriation opportunities to survive & prosper
during and after the US dollar collapse.

The
Best of Jeff Berwick

Oh, how I hate
the Fourth of July.  And Canada Day… and Dia de la Revolucion
in Mexico.  And any other day celebrating a nation state.

What an absolutely
ridiculous concept, to celebrate your own enslavement.

As in most
countries, the date chosen to celebrate your enslavement is usually
the date when the nation state was founded or when it freed itself
from the enslavement of another nation-state.  In the case
of the US, it broke free from the tyrannical rule of England in
favor of a more local tyrannical rule.

Hilariously,
now, Barack
Obomba cowtows and proudly extends his video greetings to the UK
royal family from which the US seceded, talking about what a
“special relationship” the US and the UK have.  Not only does
he seem to harbor no ill will for all the terrorist attacks done
by the UK in the US during the times of succession, but he even
seems to have put aside any resentment for the torture of his grandfather
by the English under the rule of the very same Queen to which he
now loves so deeply.

In 1949, according
to writings from his bizarre and mostly delusional, Dreams From
My Father, who he never knew or met (mostly because his mother
was a slut extraordinaire and an amateur porn star – see
naked photos of her here), he says his paternal grandfather
Hussein Onyango Obama, who served as a cook in the British Army,
was imprisoned in 1949 by the British for helping the anti-colonial
Mau Mau rebels and held for several months.  During that time,
according to Sarah Obama, they would sometimes squeeze his testicles
with metal rods. They also pierced his nails and buttocks with a
sharp pin, with his hands and legs tied together. He was lucky to
survive, she said.

Apparently
Barack can let bygones be bygones as he makes no mention of that
to the Queen!  That may be, however, because it
was all made up lies.

Anyway, the
Prince of Peace now oversees torture and the killing of thousands
of innocents worldwide, so he may not want to bring that up too
much although he certainly would never resort to squeezing testicles
with metal rods!  That’s barbaric.  Now he hangs people
upside down and creates the sensation that they are drowning repeatedly.
 It’s a much more civilized way of torture… probably another
reason he won the Nobel Peace Prize.

PATRIAUTISM

Luckily I was
no where near a TV for the entire day of July 4th so I missed most
of the action.  I know what it entails as I’ve seen it countless
times before.  Slaves lathering themselves into a frenzy at
sporting events when some nameless troop walks out as they sing
the national anthem to celebrate all the glorious and beautiful
bombs bursting in air from a fight they had nothing to do with but
take special pride in for some unknown reason.

But, a TDV
subscriber ruined my day and forwarded me a “July 4th Chain Email”
which was making the rounds asking all “proud Americans” to pass
it along and give thanks for living in the freest country in the
world.  Cough.  Gag.  And that god should bless the
murderers on welfare… the troops, for protecting those freedoms
by taking $1 of every $15 produced in the US each year and paying
for them to go off and murder people on the other side of the world.
 Better they murder people over there than have them murder
people here the saying goes, I think.

The word patriotism
is thick in the air on days like this.  But a better word for
it is patriautism.

Patriotism
is defined by Reference.com as “a person who loves, supports, and
defends his or her country and its interests with devotion.” and
autism is defined by Wikipedia as being “a disorder of neural development
characterized by impaired social interaction and communication,
and by restricted and repetitive behavior.” 

Putting the
two together, patriautism can be defined as “a disorder of neural
development characterized by a love and defense of your slaveowner
or captor often including repetitive behavior such as repeatedly
stating that their country is the freest country on Earth despite
all evidence to the contrary”.

It’s sort of
a Stockholm Syndrome with flag waving.

Although there
is no known cure, there are instances of people who have recovered.
 Those who have recovered made mention that it was fairly soon
after going to websites such as LewRockwell.com,
Mises.org, Freedomain
Radio, WhiskeyandGunpowder.com,
Anarchast.com
and DollarVigilante.com.

WE’RE
#1!

I shouldn’t
pick on Americans too much here.

Almost every
country on Earth has the same patriautism disorder.  Canada,
America’s freezer, is even worse than the US now.  The Canadian
dollar, which had lingered at about $0.55 to the US dollar for decades
recently surpassed the US dollar, turning Canadians from funny people
who joked about themselves in the days of Bob
& Doug Mackenzie to furiously proud Canadians who are adamant
they live in the best country on Earth!  They’ve even begun
expanding their military empire worldwide to spread the virtues
of ice hockey, insane taxes and “free” medical care through bombs
from above.  They’re still working out the kinks in Libya.

Even in Mexico
many people proudly fire (illegal) guns in the air on Revolution
Day to celebrate the courage of the people in 1910 which overthrew
dictator José de la Cruz Porfirio Díaz Mori.  I
ask them, “When’s the next revolution?” which is often met, like
in the US, with blank stares.

The thing that
no one seems to get is this.  If everyone who is born in a
country just happens to think their country is the best… then
everyone else, outside of their country, must be wrong if they are
right.  What a coincidence that everyone born in a country
thinks their country is the best!  If I ever meet an American
who is celebrating Gabon Day on August 17 with some sparklers and
a Gabon flag on his porch because he really feels that Gabon is
the best country on Earth then I might actually stop and listen
to why he thinks that.

If he’s got
an American flag and some stupid bumper sticker about the US being
#1 then he’s just got patriautism.

PATRIAUTISM
IS SO 2012

The thing that
most people are completely missing is that a massive paradigm shift
is already in progress.  Nation states are dinosaurs on their
way out.  Think about it.

Humanity started
as tribes which were mostly a big family.  Over time, as population
grew they began to associate on the basis of religion or through
feudal overseers… Kings and Queens… some of whom still exist
today as embarrassing artifacts.  Then, as people realized
it was ridiculous to worship or work for royalty a new idea developed…
democracy!  It sounded great.  We, the people, could rule
ourselves.

This has been
proven completely wrong now.  But, because of never before
imagined wealth and prosperity due to free market innovations over
the last century it is changing the political landscape.

In the olden
days of the 20th century people were mostly still homogenous in
a certain geographic region.  This made nation states make
sense somewhat.  Mexicans were all descendants of the Aztecs
and Mayans.  The Thais were all Thais.

No more.  Thanks
to air travel, the internet, mobile phones, bank machines and countless
other conveniences we can now live almost anywhere… only limited
somewhat by the imaginary borders of the dying nation states.  And
so the Great Migration has begun.  There are more Chinese in
Vancouver than Anglophones.  Many places in Mexico are becoming
overrun by Americans and Russians fleeing their countries.  Mexicans
are fleeing the US in record numbers.  And Europe is and
will be mostly Muslim in the coming years as Africa and the Middle
East migrate North.

It’s an interesting
time.  Most of Africa would like to move to the US for its
perceived security and opportunity.  Most of the US would like
to move to Asia for the opportunities or to Latin America for the
lifestyle.  And many in Asia are migrating all over the world
to places like Chile, Paraguay, Canada and many more.

It’s geographical
musical chairs.  You won’t even recognize the world twenty
years from now.  And that just goes to point out the stupidity
of Patriautism.

Humanity is
in motion and to think that the people who grew up around you are
your countrymen is ignorant.  I grew up in Canada and I can
assure you I had nothing in common with almost anyone there but
I find that the people in the area where I live in Mexico are much
more aligned with my idea of what is correct in life… and many
are moving down to
Acapulco to join me as I spread the word!

Many people
think we are headed for another World War but I don’t think so.
 You think Chinese, Black, Muslim and White people who live
in the geographic region known as the US are going to go off and
fight Chinese, Black, Muslim and White people from another geographic
region?  Thanks to modernity and technology, war is obsolete…
governments are obsolete… and with it, patriautism is already
so 2012.

“Getting
Your Gold Out of Dodge” is available here.  It is free
to TDV and TDV
Golden Trader subscribers or for a one-time price of $44.95
USD.  It may be the best use of your fiat Federal Reserve Notes
you’ve ever spent. Reprinted
with permission from The
Dollar Vigilante.

Jeff
Berwick [send him mail]
is an anarcho-capitalist freedom fighter and Chief Editor of the
libertarian, Austrian economics grounded newsletter, The
Dollar Vigilante. The Dollar Vigilante focuses on strategies,
investments and expatriation opportunities to survive & prosper
during and after the US dollar collapse.

The
Best of Jeff Berwick

Many words make me cringe.  "We" and "our", when not specifically pertaining to the people you directly know or associate with on a personal level, top the list.  Probably third is "education".

The word, just like so many, has been twisted, turned and co-opted over time.  Just like the word "liberal" used to mean someone almost of anarchist leanings, but now signifies almost the exact opposite: a leftist statist. Or how the word "anarchism" has also been skewed through propaganda to connote the opposite of what it is. Education can mean one of many things depending on who you talk to.

Education has a different meaning depending on who is doing the educating.  William Torrey Harris, the once US Commissioner of Education, probably best defined education in the US in 1906 when he said that “substantial education, which, scientifically defined, is the subsumption of the individual.”

H.L. Mencken explained further in arguing that the “aim of public education is not to spread enlightenment at all; it is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed a standard citizenry, to put down dissent and originality.”

That is why, really, the only education that matters is to teach someone how to think critically.  Once someone is armed with that ability, then they can seek knowledge in whatever they wish to learn, and be able to think critically in order to separate what is truth from what is fabrication.  Note that the last thing a child would ever be taught in a public school is logic, rationality, and critical thinking, which would be counter to the intended goal.

Margaret Mead put it simply when she said, "Children must be taught how to think, not what to think."

Richard Dawkins expanded on that, stating, "Do not indoctrinate your children. Teach them how to think for themselves, how to evaluate evidence, and how to disagree with you."

What masquerades as education today in public schools in the Western world is, for the most part, brainwashing, subjugation, and mass control.  What students do absorb in terms of basic math or language skills is minimal, as can be seen from the near-universal dumbing-down of Western society.

Look no further than the first sentence of the Wikipedia entry on Education to realize that, "Education in its broadest, general sense is the means through which the aims and habits of a group of people lives on from one generation to the next."

If education is the means to pass along the "aims and habits of a group," no one should ever want to be educated.  What we should want is knowledge.  Knowledge acquisition involves complex cognitive processes: perception, communication, association, and reasoning.

What your kids are getting, and getting good, in public school is education, not knowledge.

PRISON PREPORATORY SCHOOL

What is currently happening in the US is education is preparing students for a lifetime as a wage slave or imprisonment. Harris further stated that the intention of the system was schools that "have been scientifically designed to prevent over-education from happening.  The average American [should be] content with their humble role in life, because they’re not tempted to think about any other role.”

For preparation for prison, as this article from the UK’s Guardian argues, more and more US schools have police patrolling the corridors, and young children are being arrested for throwing paper planes and failing to pick up crumbs from the canteen floor.  10 year-olds are, according to the article, criminally responsible and can be prosecuted as such with a record for the most basic of childhood activities.

Tommy punched Billy?  Assault!  Tommy is now a convicted felon.

Melinda Harmon, a US Federal Judge, explained whose property your kids are when she stated, “Parents give up their rights when they drop the children off at public school.”

And when they aren’t being arrested, teased, bullied, hazed, taught to submit, or memorizing propaganda, they’ll be taught how to fill out a W2 tax form as in this educational program from the Federal Reserve "finance curriculum".

PUBLIC SCHOOL IS CHILD ABUSE

Sending your child to public school in the Western world is child abuse.  If you must live in the Western world you have to do whatever it takes to avoid this system.

The answer generally lies in homeschooling.  But, many families, forced to pay tens of thousands of dollars into the black hole of government every year for "services" such as the education system, feel trapped as most have to have both parents work just to keep the household afloat.  Mothers are forced to work due to the systematic impoverishment of the family via taxes and inflation.  Furthermore, they are encouraged to work through the promotion of "feminism". 

Nicholas Rockefeller told Aaron Russo that his family foundation created women’s liberation using mass media control as part of a long-term plan to control humanity.  The hidden goal of feminism is to destroy the family because a strong family unit interferes with state brainwashing of the young. Side benefits, for the global elites, include depopulation and widening the tax base. Displacing men in the role of providers also destabilizes the family.

THE STATIST LIFE OF JULIA

This anti-family message is constantly promoted by the state.  The most obvious example of this comes from Führer Obomba, in his "Life of Julia" propaganda piece.  In this animated slideshow, he takes a girl (Julia) from childhood through to old age to show her how "under President Obomba" he will help her along the way.  You see, the state is the father now.

He helps her through the Head Start Program to begin her brainwashing in public school.  He then helps her continue her indoctrination via an "Opportunity Tax Credit", with stolen money, to get her into college.  Then, once out of college, father Obomba helps her again via the "Ledbetter Fair Pay Act" where he forces people at gunpoint to pay her more than she is worth at her new occupation of being a web designer, something, by the way, which likely didn’t need 12 years of brainwashing followed by four years of further programming and crushing debt to learn, but that’s besides the point. 

The propaganda continues: "under President Obama, Julia decides to have a child. Throughout her pregnancy, she benefits from maternal checkups, prenatal care, and free screenings under healthcare reform."

Yes, you can even have children without a man in your life, perhaps artificially inseminated by the seed of the great Nobel Peace Prize winner, Obomba?  It doesn’t say, but Julia has not had a man in her life throughout the entire slideshow.  This continues on until she retires without a partner and, thanks to Obomba, doesn’t have to worry about running out of savings, she volunteers at a community garden.

HOMESCHOOLING/UNSCHOOLING

As stated above, the answer lies in homeschooling and unschooling.  And, if you find you just cannot afford to have either the father or mother stay with the kids during the day then you should be finding a way to escape from the system.  You are already enslaved.  You think I’m exaggerating?  Well, if you were allowed to keep the money that is extorted from you each year by the state, would you be able to afford one parent staying with the children during the day?  If the answer is yes, you are a slave and you need to break away from the system.

How?  Start up a small agorist enterprise. Perhaps a small restaurant.  Become your own boss and avoid paying into the state whenever possible.  You can’t, you say, because the state will come after you if they see you operating a restaurant and not paying their myriad of extortive taxes?  Then, why are you living there?  Get out and go somewhere where that is much less likely to occur.  The citizens of most countries on Earth take great pride in not paying taxes. Just look at Greece, as just one example.

WHY STAY IN THE WEST?

Except for the 1%, almost anyone in the West today is a slave to the state, so why stay there?  They’ve got you coming and going.  You pay them to live in your house (property tax), making you a renter not an owner, you pay sales tax, gasoline tax, cigarette tax, alcohol tax, hotel tax, the list is endless.  When you drive too fast they fine you.  When you drive too slow they fine you.  If you do one of thousands of different things including having more than two glasses of wine and driving or having certain dried flowers like marijuana in your pocket they will kidnap you and throw you in a cage.

If you don’t stop when demanded by the state, they will beat you to within an inch of your life, as they did to this man just last week.  If you wish to travel, you and your family will be groped and irradiated.  And they’ll be watching you from their $2 billion data center in Utah or from 20,000 drones in the skies.

If you do not want to leave the West then, at the very least, find places like the Free State Project in New Hampshire and live amongst likeminded people who are striving for freedom.

DON’T SEEK EDUCATION, SEEK KNOWLEDGE

But, don’t my kids need twelve years of education, you ask?  As stated above, that’s the last thing they need.  What they need is knowledge, and all knowledge is free, thanks to the Internet.

A fourteen year-old at PorcFest last week told us how he has been learning Austrian Economics from Tom Woods, online at Liberty Classroom.  Sign up your kids to Liberty Classroom and they will know more real knowledge than PhDs of history from the statist education system.

My own eight year-old son already speaks Spanish and German fluently and is currently learning English.  Within 1-2 years he will speak fluent English and he’ll be signed up at Liberty Classroom.  We have a number of tutors in Mexico who come to our house, averaging about $10 per visit, including a boxing instructor, a martial arts instructor, and a music teacher.  He also goes to tennis lessons four times per week for about $100 per month.

The best part?  He’s not forced to do any of it.  He wants to.  We just ask him what he wants to learn and he tells us.  Kids want to learn, it is only the child prison camps that rob children of desire.  Soon it is our intention to start a small restaurant where my wife can spend more time with the kids and teach them how to work and operate a business.  They’ll bus and serve tables, learn how to treat clients, and how to change the menu to attract more clients.  All before 10 years old.

We do all this from Acapulco where a number of anarchists and libertarians have gravitated, and as the community grows we may start up our own homeschool groups.  They’ve already done that at Doug’s Gulch in Argentina where other libertarians have settled and started their own private homeschool style system of education.  The International School of Cafayate is headed up by TDV correspondents Gary Kinghorn and Meghan Kofod.

Once you get outside of the mindset that most have in the Western system, the sky is the limit in terms of the knowledge you can provide for your children.

Maria Montessori  said that learning "is a natural process carried out by the child and is not acquired by listening to words but by experiences in the environment.”

In the environment provided by the state a child is exposed to subjugation, indoctrination, and imprisonment.  You owe it to yourself and to your child to find a better environment for them to learn naturally.

“Getting Your Gold Out of Dodge” is available here.  It is free to TDV and TDV Golden Trader subscribers or for a one-time price of $44.95 USD.  It may be the best use of your fiat Federal Reserve Notes you’ve ever spent. Reprinted with permission from The Dollar Vigilante.

Jeff Berwick [send him mail] is an anarcho-capitalist freedom fighter and Chief Editor of the libertarian, Austrian economics grounded newsletter, The Dollar Vigilante. The Dollar Vigilante focuses on strategies, investments and expatriation opportunities to survive & prosper during and after the US dollar collapse.

The Best of Jeff Berwick

Hello from
Boston, Massachusetts,

I spent the
last week in what I call the free-er state (for more on the Free
State Project, click here), New Hampshire at PorcFest.
 I say free-er because while thousands of people have moved
there and have tried to live completely free the evidence of the
criminal state is still all around.

As case in
point, in the days preceding PorcFest it was announced that there
will be no alcohol sales allowed on the grounds due to local laws.
 At a freedom festival.  The irony of it all gave me shivers.
 But, to the credit of the attendees almost everyone brought
a cooler with them.  But, evidence of the state was still all
around.  As we pulled out from a restaurant in Lancaster a
police SUV sat across the street.  Friend, and TDV Correspondent,
Pete Kofod, came to a complete stop at the stop sign as we all peered
at the criminals… and they peered right back, trying to gauge
if perhaps we had more than two glasses of wine and could put us
in a prison camp.

That aside,
I’m very happy I went.  I can’t even mention all the amazing
people who were there… but I’ll try.  Stefan
Molyneux, Adam
Kokesh, Bob
Murphy, Bill Bupert,
Luke
Rudkowski, Mike
Shanklin, Stephanie
Murphy, Brett
Veinotte, Boston
T. Party, Seth
King, Gary
Gibson, Megan Duffield and Pasha Roberts of the Silver
Circle movie, dozens more and almost countless TDV and Anarchast
subscribers, readers and listeners!  Many of the above mentioned
I interviewed on Anarchast (subscribe to Anarchast’s YouTube
channel, Facebook
page or mailing
list here) and will be releasing in the coming days. And, of
course, all the people who organized the event including Carla
Gericke and many more.  There were so many sound,
principled and non-aggressive people there that I was surprised
the Guvmint didn’t false flag us all.  But then I realized
that wouldn’t work… because many people would be happy if we all
were gone. Not scared… which is always the point of false
flag events.

But the event,
full of mostly drunk, high anarchists, many of whom were armed with
all manners of weapons went off without any violence or theft.  Imagine
that.

RISE
OF THE ANARCHO-HIPPIE

But, more than
meeting and seeing so many great people, here’s why it is good to
attend events like these and see things with your own eyes.  Somewhat
like Charles Darwin, I discovered an entirely new species in New
Hampshire… the anarcho-hippie!

Every night
at PorcFest there is a bonfire and a certain subclass of anarchists
seemed to gravitate to it like moths with their bongo drums, marijuana
and hackey sacks… it’s the anarcho-hippie!  I didn’t even
know they existed much less having seen them in the wild but as
I walked around the campground and saw many lying on the grass,
peering up at the sky in deep thought with the crumbs of pot brownies
bespeckling the corners of their mouthes I realized what was going
on.  The anarchist/freedom movement is now attracting many
from the left!

Hippies have
long been a mainstay of the left culture but their philosophy made
no sense.  They mostly believe in doing any drugs they want,
listening to music, dancing, rarely do anything very productive
and are known for being quite empathetic and have an interest in
the well being of others.  However, hippies of the past had
a massive gaping hole in their logic when they would say that people
should be taken care of… by stealing, extorting and violently
aggressing on the property of other people!  Some seem, now,
to have realized this and have seen the light and now are soundly
principled and don’t want to do much productive, do drugs, listen
to music, dance and realize the best way to help others is by stopping
aggressing against people… and have even realized that the government
and the central banks are the cause of poverty,
not the cure.

To that, I
say, welcome aboard anarcho-hippies!  Smoke, drink and dance
all you want… if that’s what makes you happy.  As long as
you don’t aggress on others it’s all good with me!  I’ve gained
a new perspective on drum circles thanks to you!  And did enough
weed to last me for a year!

DR.
FEELGOOD

Speaking of
anarcho-hippies, myself and a well known editor of a popular libertarian
financial website found ourselves in the sights of a fairly
attractive, and very stoned, anarcho-hippie around the campfire
around 3am on Friday evening.

She told us…
well, my friend actually, that something about his aura had attracted
her over to talk with us.  She went on to talk about crystals,
peace, love and energy, man.  She then went on to say that
she is an agorist.  For those who don’t know what that means,
it is a person who attempts to live and transact completely in the
free market… which governments call the “black market” so it sounds
scary so you don’t do it.  But it just means not caring what
the criminals in government say, not paying taxes and not caring
about licenses or permissions to work.  She then stated that
she is “Dr. Feelgood”… she sells “drugs”.  

However, here
is where it gets strange!  She then tells us she can sell us
anything we want.  Being 3am and drunk, that sounded like a
fantastic offer so we asked her what she had.  She started
naming incredibly complicated sounding chemical compounds and things
like “diphenhydramine”, “dextromethorphan” and other things that
I can’t even remember, the names were so long.

She even had
some “home made LSD” that she made from some chemicals in her bathroom,
she told us.  I passed on that… my friend partook with her.
 He missed his publishing date on Saturday leading me to believe
his trip lasted longer than expected!

But, I was
confused.  ”What kind of hippie are you?” I said!  ”Don’t
you at least have some weed?”  She responded that she did…
but it was “synthetic
cannabis“.  In other words it was herbs sprayed with chemicals
which supposedly mimic the effects of marijuana.  She said
she offers all those things because they are legal because she is
scared if she sells one of the hundreds of illegal healthy plants
and flowers that she’ll be kidnapped and put in a cage… not to
mentioned, every single year, guaranteed, you will be mugged for
half the income you make.

So, there you
have it.  Now you know why bath salts exist and why people
have begun to start eating people’s faces.  Another big win
for the War on People… err, Drugs.  And, what is the solution
to this travesty?  Let’s get the government
to ban bath salts!  That should fix everything.

BAHSTAHN

After discovering
other species and having a lot of fun in New Hampshire I went to
Boston.  I’d never actually been to NH nor Boston so the trip
was also enjoyable from the perspective of seeing new things.

Nearly every
hotel was full… and most ran from $250-$550/night!  All the
bars and restaurants were full.  I commented to Pete Kofod
that it looks like there is a lot of money in this city.  He
responded, “It’s one of the oldest cities in America… so that
means they have had even more time to build up wealth than other
areas.”

I enjoyed what
I saw of Boston.  It’s a neat city.  I love the accent.
 And the layout is really nice around the bay/wharf area.  I
think if I was forced to live in the USSA, god forbid, it’d be high
on my list along with Miami (the latin vibe and wonderful nightlife)
and Vegas (24 hour city with great poker action).  But, it
is far too dangerous to live in the US at this point in time.  You
could be kidnapped and beaten almost anywhere… especially for
someone who can’t bite his tongue when surrounded by criminals (cops).

So, I headed
to the airport and had some fabulous clam chowder, as you would
expect and then prepared for the TSA.

They had the
x-ray naked scanner radiation bath machine and so I said, “I’m not
going through that thing.”  The woman look perturbed and said,
“Oh, ok, so you want da patdown” in a strong Bostonian accent.  I
said to her, “No, I don’t.”

Her vapid,
blank scare might as well have said “Does Not Compute” across her
forehead.  She stood stunned for a moment.  ”Okay, so
you want the x-ray machine?” she asked.  I responded in the
negative.  She stammered a bit again.  ”So, you want the
patdown?” she asked.  I quickly responded, “no” yet again.
 Her eyes started to cross.  I am almost certain this
conversation could have gone on for days if I didn’t intervene.
 I know because I have this convo every time I go through.
 I said to her, “You see, I don’t want either.”

She still looked
incredibly confused… so I had to spell it out for her, “But, if
you are forcing me to pick one, I guess I’ll take the date rape”.

Finally some
semblance of normality returned to her face.  Ah, yes, force!
 That’s something she knows about.  She happily sent me
through for my patdown and soon after I got very close with
a nice man with soft hands named Steve.

Luckily for
me I was in Boston and not at JFK in New York today though where
one of the TSA zombies didn’t notice that the
metal detector wasn’t working for a number of hours.  You
know, the thing that blinks green or red whenever someone goes through?
 Ya, it didn’t do anything for hours but he didn’t seem to
notice.  Just the thought of all the box cutters that could
have gotten through during those hours whipped everyone into a frenzy
and they decided it is just best if they evacuate the entire terminal
causing massive delays and problems.

It irritated
some slaves but I calmly read through the news article waiting for
the super slaves and their mantra.  It was only half way through
the New York Post article when useful idiot, Jason Bailey,
stated, “It’s a big inconvenience, but it’s better safe than sorry."

“Better safe
than sorry.”  I cringe everytime I hear that.  I’d rather
be sorry than safe at this point!  I don’t know how much I
want to live in Jason Bailey’s kind of world anyway.

As I write
this I just noticed a news
article stating that a bill is in Congress right now which will
put TSA in charge of screening all mass transit.
 Get ready for your morning grope on the subway.  Better
safe than sorry, right!

The way it
is going, South Park’s hilarious take on the TSA with, “Mind
If I Touch Your Balls, Sir?” will be coming soon to a toilet
near you!

But don’t worry,
the sociopaths in government are working hard to make air travel
much easier according to, “‘Checkpoint
of the future’ takes shape at Texas airport”  They plan
to introduce iris scanners and fingerprinting for domestic travel
to “speed things up”.  The nazis would be jealous.  They
are speeding things up… but I don’t think many people are really
going to like where we are going.

If I lived
in the US I wouldn’t be walking, I’d be running to at least get
a second passport at this point.

“Getting
Your Gold Out of Dodge” is available here.  It is free
to TDV and TDV
Golden Trader subscribers or for a one-time price of $44.95
USD.  It may be the best use of your fiat Federal Reserve Notes
you’ve ever spent. Reprinted
with permission from The
Dollar Vigilante.

Jeff
Berwick [send him mail]
is an anarcho-capitalist freedom fighter and Chief Editor of the
libertarian, Austrian economics grounded newsletter, The
Dollar Vigilante. The Dollar Vigilante focuses on strategies,
investments and expatriation opportunities to survive & prosper
during and after the US dollar collapse.

The
Best of Jeff Berwick