Category: Z Legacy: Expat

May 11, 2012 Undisclosed location Former US Republican presidential candidate Michelle Bachmann receives the Sovereign Man dumbest person of the week award for obtaining… then almost immediately renouncing… Swiss citizenship. I’ll explain: Bachmann’s husband is a Swiss national; they’ve been married since 1978, and as a result, Bachmann eventually became qualified for Swiss

May 10, 2012 Florianopolis, Brazil Brazil is undoubtedly a land of superlatives. One may easily defend that it is the most beautiful country in the world, or claim that Brazilians are the friendliest people in the world. And yes, even the most attractive. Economically, the story is the same; at $2.4 trillion, Brazil’s

May 9, 2012 Sao Paulo, Brazil When most people think of Brazil, it’s the incredible beaches that come to mind. Or the crazy parties of Carnival. Or the spectacular vistas and great weather. Or how indescribably gorgeous (and welcoming) the locals are. But here’s a little known fact, and it’s something that sets

May 8, 2012 Jakarta, Indonesia If you swallow the line parroted by the mass media in the West (my adopted country of Australia being the prime offender), you’d think Indonesia was a strict Islamic state where terrorists run around bombing nightclubs frequented by tourists. And you probably have a mental image of an

May 7, 2012 Asuncion, Paraguay Long-time readers know that I’m unabashedly bullish on agriculture. The supply and demand fundamentals for food speak for themselves, but let’s briefly review: On the demand side: 1) World population isn’t getting any smaller for now. Even some of the most Malthusian models show a continued rise in global population for the

May 3, 2012 Hong Kong One of the most important habits of highly successful investors is that, when market conditions call for it, they have the ability to sit on their butts and do absolutely nothing. Great investors wait patiently for the next slam-dunk opportunity to present itself.  They do not jeopardize their capital in half-baked ideas,

May 2, 2012 Santiago, Chile Stephen King (yes, that Stephen King) is fired up. Angry. Furious. Why? Because he doesn’t get to pay enough income tax. It’s not enough that King could simply write a check, voluntarily, to the government. He wants to make sure that -everyone- is forcibly coerced under threat of

May 1, 2012 Santiago, Chile Friedrich von Hayek, a major figure in the Austrian school of economics, wrote in his seminal work the Road to Serfdom, “By giving the government unlimited powers, the most arbitrary rule can be made legal; and in this way a democracy may set up the most complete despotism imaginable.” It’s hard

April 30, 2012 London, England [Editor’s note: Tim Price, a frequent Sovereign Man contributor and Director of Investment at PFP Wealth Management in London, is filling in for Simon today.] In a week that saw Britain slide into its first double-dip recession since 1975, we quite fittingly also saw evidence of the sort of insular bigotry and

“Should we crawl into bed with the IRS?” Thanks to the steady barrage of US government regulation ranging from the obtusely insipid Dodd-Frank financial reform to the impossible-to-implement Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA), banks everywhere have to make this decision. In short, Congress has arrogantly passed legislation to control foreign banks on foreign soil. FATCA, for

April 25, 2012 Santiago, Chile I was approached recently by a member of our Sovereign Man community who filed the paperwork to relinquish US citizenship some time ago. Long story short, after an incomprehensibly long wait, the US government finally sent him a reply: Application DENIED. Absolutely shocking. That you even have to ‘apply’ to relinquish

April 23, 2012 London, England Roy Ward Baker’s 1958 classic film A Night To Remember, recounts the final night of the RMS Titanic based on survivor interviews from Walter Lord’s 1955 book of the same name. One scene from the movie depicts a lounge in one of the upper class quarters of the ship as it