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Yesterday, the IRS announced the International Data Exchange Service. If you’ve not heard of it, it’s is an outgrowth of the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA), which requires every single bank in the world to get in bed with IRS to share information about customers. We’ve said this over and over, FATCA
In January 1933 Albert Einstein was visiting the US under a research grant from Princeton University. Meanwhile back home in Germany Adolf Hitler had just become elected chancellor and started creating an atmosphere hostile for Jews, intellectuals and pacifists, of which Einstein was three times guilty. Recognizing the danger of continuing to hold
December 18, 2014 Santiago, Chile On the morning of September 19, 1873, an excited crowd of people gathered outside the Fourth National Bank in lower Manhattan. It was a wet morning, yet the line continued to grow, stretching across Pine Street down Nassau Street as rain-soaked customers jostled with one another for position.
December 9, 2014 Santiago, Chile In the moment after the musicians finished their last song, the silence was broken by the faint tune of someone singing “Mu isamaa on minu arm”. The singers on stage quickly looked at each other nervously, but seeing strength in each other’s eyes they began to join in.
December 4, 2014 Santiago, Chile On May 15, 1855 one of the greatest gold robberies in history occurred. Three British firms had arranged for some of their gold to be sent from London to Paris by ferry and train. The gold was stored in solidly built boxes secured within iron safes with two
November 26, 2014 Sovereign Valley Farm, Chile I can’t say I’ve known too many guys in my life named ‘Boris’ who were shy about standing up for themselves. The name itself means ‘wolf’ in an extinct Turkic language. And if the current mayor of London Boris Johnson is going go to toe to
November 14, 2014 Santiago, Chile What’s the biggest lure of elections? That people have the ability to change things by voting someone else in power. At least in theory. I try not to get too caught up in US politics these days, because that’s one of my favorite parts about going international—I don’t
At USD $1160, a lot of gold owners are looking at the paper price right now and panicking. The conventional wisdom is that, because it takes fewer pieces of paper to buy an ounce, gold is a bad ‘investment’. This isn’t the right idea. It shouldn’t be viewed as an investment at all.
November 10, 2014 Santiago, Chile It started off as a simple border checkpoint to keep what Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov called “Western agents” out of East Berlin. Then they erected a barbed wire fence and started using a system of official travel passes to cross the new border. East Germans who wanted
November 10, 2014 Santiago, Chile It’s happening. With increasing speed and frequency. The People’s Bank of China and the Canadian Prime Minister’s office issued a statement on Saturday stating that Canada will establish North America’s first offshore renminbi trading center in Toronto. China and Canada agreed on a number of measures to increase
November 5, 2014 (Remember, Remember) Santiago, Chile Long ago when I was a fresh young Army lieutenant straight out of the academy, I spent six months at Fort Huachuca, Arizona, learning how to be an intelligence officer. Fort Huachuca (pronounced wah-CHOO-kuh) is nestled snugly on the Mexican border, so there were a lot
November 4, 2014 Santiago, Chile Don Quixote is easily one of the most entertaining books of the Renaissance, if not all-time. And almost everyone’s heard of it, even if they haven’t read it. You know the basic plot line- Alonso Quixano becomes fixated with the idea of chivalry and sets out to single-handedly
October 16, 2014 New York, USA For a casual observer of the US economy (most “experts”), you could say that things look pretty good. Unemployment is at its lowest rate in six years. Earnings of S&P 500 companies are higher than ever, while their debt is lower than it’s been in the last
October 15, 2014 En route to New York True story. One of our Sovereign Confidential members just received a package from HSBC giving him and his wife a deadline to comply with FATCA—US’ global tax law. As Canadians they’d long felt bad for Americans having to deal with the overbearing burden of FATCA.
October 1, 2014 Santiago, Chile Edmundas B. was in Tel Aviv when he and his co-founders got the idea for an SaaS service to better connect web designers and developers with their clients. Grabbing his mobile phone and laptop, he quickly set up an LLC, for his startup TrackDuck, back in his home
