The United States has not had capital controls (i.e., restrictions on the ability to move money out of the country) for a long time. Here is an article about what it’s like in Iceland where such restrictions exist.
By curious coincidence, the last few years of tax law and tax enforcement are propelling the United States to a position where currency restrictions will be easy to implement.
If you can’t send your money abroad, at least you can jump on a plane and leave the country, right? Well, funny you should mention that.
OK. Time to take off the tin foil hat, Phil. Red pill or blue pill?
Reader comments (5)
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All is not lost. I’ve met people from South Africa when capital controls where in place and their money was brought out in diamonds. Does the US want to resort to this non-sense? Some people will always get their money out regardless what the US will do with the US dollar. Capital controls means paying a middle man (like a diamond merchant) his cut to cash in. They limit the flow out of the country but doesn’t stop it. Capital controls are like kicking the can down the road but doesn’t solve the overall problem.
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Canadian law STILL allows US citizens to enter Canada on nothing more than a drivers license(Getting back without a passport or EDL(Enhanced Drivers License issued only by NY, MI, and WA is the problem). Almost all analysis of Canadian economic policy going back decades have always assumed that it would be impossible to implement capital controls between Canada and the US due to the long undefended border(The Canadian Dollar went to free float after World War II long before all of Europe due to this issue even when free floating was heavily discouraged by the IMF). I don’t see why it would be any different from the US perspective. The US has already admitted the don’t have to money to fortify the Canadian border anymore and thus are looking for a security perimeter partnership agreement(How this agreement is implemented along with any Ottawa DC FATCA partnership are really the two big outstanding questions out there).
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Yachts are another traditional way to export your capital, and yourself.
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@Anon – I love the yacht idea, as you see the shoreline fade from behind leaving in class.
If anyone has time there’s a guy doing an internet radio show at this link -
http://www.truthandliesradio.com/fatca/
with his big FATCA clock. It’s alternaive stuff with ads selling their wares. Also go to the following with different ex-pat radio shows -
Phil – I don’t know if you’ve ever run across this before?
Maybe you can host your own internet radio show? All the shows in the archives tend to be people from various fields offering ex-pat services.
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Yachts don’t work either. I sailed my small sailboat across the Pacific years ago to Australia and around the Pacific. At every port, the Customs Officials were filling out the Small vessel report tracking your activity and faxing it to the US in Hawaii, so they knew where you were, where you came from and where you were going. That is when it occurred to be, that they was no escaping Big Brother US of A. Only the French, in French Polynesia refused to go along with this reporting regime. That is when I came to love the French!