printIs Big Media catching up with guerrilla writers? In “Planet IRS,” just over two weeks ago, I wrote that “[d]ue to the onerous burdens imposed by the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act, foreign banks, as well as hedge and private equity funds are closing American accounts. Barack Obama’s legislative baby (signed on March 18, 2010) is driving Americans abroad into banking under the mattress.”
Today Bloomberg caught up, in “U.S. Millionaires Told Go Away as Tax Evasion Rule Looms.”:
Go away, American millionaires.
That’s what some of the world’s largest wealth-management firms are saying ahead of Washington’s implementation of the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act, known as Fatca, which seeks to prevent tax evasion by Americans with offshore accounts. HSBC Holdings Plc (HSBA), Deutsche Bank AG, Bank of Singapore Ltd. and DBS Group Holdings Ltd. (DBS) all say they have turned away business.
“I don’t open U.S. accounts, period,” said Su Shan Tan, head of private banking at Singapore-based DBS, Southeast Asia’s largest lender, who described regulatory attitudes toward U.S. clients as “Draconian.”
Oh dear. We’re usually years ahead of mainstream (as in this September 19, 2002, article).
If I want to start writing about “the 99%” and “the 1%”, I would talk about the “99%” of Congress, political “leaders” of both parties, and the American people who have gleefully embraced the welfare-warfare deficit Leviathan. Going after every dollar here or overseas is a natural outgrowth of an Authoritarian Culture. No doubt, the Republicans will claim that all the ill effects are the fault of Obama The Space Alien but keep in mind all the garbage like Sarbanes Oxley and McCain Feingold passed under Bush. EACH “SIDE” gleefully blames the other for the “abuses” of the system yet the Wars, the SWAT team invasions, the TSA gropes continue and increase year after year.
I’m glad to be old enough that I can probably live my declining years in the US but I have no idea what my kid can do. Overseas it is as bad or worse in many aspects…. – but with banks being corrupted outlets of the Welfare State, we may all be returning to home schooling, backyard vegetables, canned food, gold coins under the mattress, and guns.
I forget who coined some term “totalitarian anarchy” but this seems to be the direction we are moving into.
No action may be thought to cause a reaction. Laws created in a vacuum will work in an atmosphere. Human nature is not recognized as existing until it is demonstrated. All of which leads me to believe evolution is not a one-way trip.