Confiscation Insurance – Get Yours Now

How many prime ministers does it take to defraud millions of pensioners?

Just one – and his name is Donald Tusk.

You probably haven’t heard about him, given the Syrian war games playing out on cable news 24/7, but Tusk has turned Poland’s elegant Chancellery on Ujazdów Avenue into a crime scene.

Tusk’s government has unilaterally moved private pension-fund assets into a state-controlled social-security system. His goal? To paper over Poland’s deteriorating public finances and, by a magical sleight-of-hand, enable yet more government borrowing by confiscating private funds.

We better hope the Obama White House isn’t taking notes.

Tusk’s shocking step amounts to a unilateral cancellation of all Polish state bonds in the hands of private-pension companies – almost half of their assets. Critics rightly see this as an unconstitutional move designed to score a hit with voters increasingly disenchanted with Tusk’s Civic Platform Party.

Unfortunately for Tusk, even his labor-union allies are furious at his heavy-handed move. Markets have responded predictably: Yields on the government’s 10-year zloty-denominated bonds increased to 4.79%, and the Polish stock market dropped by 3%.

The bottom line is this: The Polish government has chosen to steal from its people. And EU bureaucrats in Brussels have remained ominously silent.

So have our politicians here in the U.S. But, I don’t believe they will stay quiet for long …

It Could Happen Here

Poland is actually a relatively healthy economy – healthier than the U.S. – and I recommended it as an ancestry second-passport option in The Passport Book.

So, where did this pension shocker come from?

Like the proverbial frog in slowly heated water, Poles simply didn’t understand that their government’s incremental steps (like suspending the fiscal law to allow borrowing to rise over 50% of GDP) could one day add up to a massive shift like this. All those little laws that seemed so innocuous, taken one by one, turned out to be a giant leap into fiscal and constitutional insanity.

Could such an act of financial confiscation happen here? Could your hard-earned retirement funds be forcibly transferred to state control to enable more out-of-control government spending? Yes.

President Obama made his own “Polish joke” in his 2010 State of the Union address, where he floated the idea of forcibly redirecting 10% of private-pension savings into U.S. Treasury bonds. He let it go once his handlers realized just how bad the idea was playing with the American people – but he could resurrect it at any time, when it serves his political purposes.

I’ve raised the prospect of state-sponsored financial confiscation of this sort many times. It’s becoming more and more common. It happened in Argentina in 2008 and Cyprus in 2012. And on September 4, Poland followed suit.

The reality is that the threat of state theft of your retirement savings is becoming more real by the day. Governments the world over have been trying to spend their way out of economic downturn. Since this doesn’t work (except in the feverish imagination of Paul Krugman), the result has been an increase in public debt with little economic growth. High levels of public debt mean currency depreciation and costlier imports. But you can buy some insurance to protect yourself …

Get Confiscation Insurance

When governments take private property to fund their spending, they usually claim to be engaging in “an accounting exercise,” as the Polish central bank called its country’s recent actions. I call it what it is: larceny.

One of my top recommendations to avoid this tyranny has always been international-funds diversification. And there are some places that are far more secure than others. Uruguay is one of those safe, off-the-radar nations.

If I were looking to make a move to escape government theft of my wealth, Uruguay would be among my top picks.

Uruguay’s solid financial reputation has made it an important regional financial center for all of Latin America. Unlike the U.S, where the PATRIOT Act has destroyed financial privacy, Uruguay protection is based on a bank secrecy law that forbids sharing information unless court ordered.

There are no exchange controls or capital restrictions, and the banks pay greater competitive interest rates than in the U.S. Bank failures have been unknown in recent years. It is simple for foreigners to open an account, and minimum deposits for investment accounts are low; commercial accounts are available at banks such as Bank Itaú. One-third of all funds are foreign held and the dollar and euro are used widely.

Bank Itaú is one of the largest banks on the planet. It has operations in over 20 countries, with its most sizeable presence being in Latin America. Itaú has been named the most sustainable bank of the year for four years in a row. I recommend you deal with its branch in Montevideo.

With the “Polish scenario” looming on the horizon in the U.S., it’s high time to start packing your bags to head offshore to prevent Uncle Sam from picking your pension pocket.

And if you’re looking for a great place to shield your assets from Washington’s overreach, and fully enjoy your life’s hard-earned retirement savings, I encourage you to watch this brief video.

Faithfully yours,

Bob Bauman JD
Chairman, Freedom Alliance