| The Sovereign Society - Some of the world's
best known investment & privacy advisors have teamed up to provide
advice on asset protection. Having the Sovereign Society on your
side is like having the world's best investment advisor multiplied.
A perfect concept from an excellent team. |
|
|
| Index
of Sovereign Society Articles |
| How to Overcome the Greatest
Threats to Your Wealth |
| By Mark Nestmann |
|
|
| ABC News commentator
John Stossel remarked a few years ago, “If you watch television news regularly,
you can’t help but think that the world is a very scary place.” |
|
| Stossel’s words still
ring true, although he could have easily deleted the word “television”
from his commentary. |
|
| Living in Austria, I
no longer have access to U.S. television news (no loss there), but judging
by the online newspapers and magazines I read, there are still plenty of
things to be scared of. A few examples: |
|
| Radio frequency identification
devices (RFIDs). Privacy advocates worry that these devices, which
automate inventory control functions, will eventually enable our clothing,
our appliances and even our razor blades to spy on us.2 Somehow, I find
this hard to take seriously, although perhaps my razor blades have something
to tell Big Brother that I haven’t yet figured out. |
|
| The stock market. Certainly,
for some investors, the bear market from 2000-2002 was a disaster. And,
we could see a recurrence, since stock prices can just as easily go down
as they go up. But…no one is forcing you to buy stocks |
|
| Lawsuits. Lawsuits are a
serious problem—and not just the frivolous ones, such as the newest craze
of suing companies or restaurants for serving food with too many calories.4
Yet, by following the strategies presented right here in TSI (the most
important one being to move a portion of your assets offshore, off the
U.S. “surveillance screen”), you can dramatically reduce your vulnerability. |
|
| But there are two threats to your
wealth today that are even more dangerous than the above… |
|
| They are two words beginning with
“D”: demographics and the dollar. Together, the “deadly D’s” threaten to
deny the vast majority of Americans a prosperous retirement. Fortunately,
by knowing about these threats, you don’t need to share that fate. |
|
| Most of us are looking forward to
either a government or private pension; if we’re lucky, perhaps both. |
|
| Yet, the Social Security old-age
retirement system doesn’t have a ghost of a chance of ever paying close
to its promised benefits. Demographics are the culprit: fewer people working
in relation to the number of people receiving benefits. In the United States,
bankruptcy of the Social Security system is projected in 2038, possibly
sooner. |
|
| What about corporate pensions? Not
much difference here, and for the same reasons. And corporations are being
allowed, courtesy of Uncle Sam, to hide their pension liabilities in a
maze of accounting gobbledygook. For instance, early in 2003, nine of America’s
largest companies legally transformed US$30.6 billion of pension losses
into pretax earnings of US$7.9 billion. (Just to let you know how clueless
the U.S. media is to this problem, these statistics were published in an
Australian newspaper.) |
|
| Then, there’s the biggest whopper
of them all: the myth that the U.S. dollar, the currency in which most
members will receive their retirement benefits, will preserve its value.
The dollar has lost over 95% of its value in the last 85 years. Nor is
it likely to recover its value, given a US$600 billion annual budget deficit,
a US$500 billion annual balance of trade gap and unfunded federal government
obligations that now total an astonishing US$44 trillion. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
| Why don’t you hear about these threats
from U.S. financial advisors? First, they may not be aware of them. Second,
even if they are, they are generally prohibited from recommending any investment
not registered or approved by a state or federal agency. Third, if they
did recommend the types of investments or strategies on which we focus
at The Sovereign Society, it would probably reduce their income. The result
is a “conspiracy of silence” about the real threats to your retirement. |
|
| What’s the solution? It’s to set
up your own retirement plan, outside the U.S. dollar. There are many ways
to do this that we’ve discussed in TSI, and will cover in upcoming issues.
Two of the very best ideas we’ve covered are to move your pension plan
overseas (TSI 7/03) and to purchase Swiss franc denominated fixed or variable
annuities (TSI 6/02). (Back issues of TSI are available free to members
on our website at www.sovereignsociety.com
) |
|
| Good luck—and don’t let the media
misdirect you from the real threats to your wealth. |
|
|
|
