Announcing Peter Macfarlane’s new report on how to invest offshore in rare earth metals and rare industrial metals – and how you can invest in these physical methods for privacy and profit!

With gold having reached an all time high again yesterday, and silver soaring back upwards, investors’ eyes are once again closely focused on precious metals. Our advice in Q Bytes of a few weeks ago to buy up gold has paid off handsomely again. One client recently wrote in about how surprised he is that the world seems to be going bankrupt. On both sides of the Atlantic, emotions and concerns are running high. Asia is the notable exception to the doom and gloom – which is why we are running our next event there this October. More details soon, or email us if you would like to be notified in advance.

Meanwhile, offshore banking expert and consultant Peter Macfarlane has just finished his latest new research report that he’s been busy on for the last few months. It’s downloadable as of today free of charge for Q Wealth members – just log in and look under ‘Special Reports for Members.‘. It’s about another metal investing class, one that we also expect will see substantial gains over the next few years. And once again it’s also about investing in physical, hard money assets with no reliance on banks, stock markets or the global financial system.

This report is about rare earth and rare industrial metals. These rare metals are essential ingredients in many high tech products, from iPads to solar panels. They have been called ‘green elements’ (although this report explains why that is really a misnomer) Still, we believe that the world will continue to consume and demand more and more of these metals for complex industrial processes

Investing offshore in rare metals is also an investment play on Asia and especially the Chinese economy and currency. China currently controls 97% of the world’s supply of rare earth metals. The Chinese have effectively stopped exports of these essential rare metals to the rest of the world, simply because they need their entire production capacity and more to feed the Chinese industrial giant.

This report explains how you as a private individual anywhere in the world can buy physical rare metals and have them stored in a tax-free Swiss vault. Any time you want to take physical delivery you can (subject of course to taxes and shipping costs and government restrictions.) Stockpiling rare metals seems to us like an excellent way to secure a part of your wealth offshore for the future. Unlike gold and silver, these metals are less sensitive to governments since they are not traditionally used as money. There are no reporting requirements on this asset class. In fact, there’s even a way to hold this investment completely anonymously.

For further details of how you can achieve privacy, profit and asset protection read our Rare Metals Investing page, or go directly to the report in the Members Area. If you are not yet a member of Q Wealth, besides instant access to this report you can get a whole range of other exclusive benefits that are listed here.

IMPORTANT: this report also contains a number of warnings about how NOT to invest in rare earth metals. Some classes of investment are already in bubble mode. Please take note.

The following article by Peter Macfarlane appeared in this week’s Q Bytes, our free newsletter dedicated to international asset protection, offshore wealth creation, investing and private banking. We are republishing it here on the Q WEalth blog as we feel it is of general interest. If you would like to receive future editions of Q Bytes free of charge, be sure to sign up here.

Hardly a week seems to go by at the moment without Gold being a hot topic here at Q Wealth. But this last week has been an especially rough ride, with gold ‘pulling back’ quite substantially. Is this cause to start crying, or is it an opportunity to stock up on gold?

I thought this week I would briefly discuss some divergent opinions and strategies on gold, and propose a couple of solutions that I believe will put readers into profit.

A reader from California recently wrote me:

“Thank you, Mr. Macfarlane, for accepting my divergent opinion in good spirits….” he begins. Well, everyone is entitled to their opinion and as I always say, I may be wrong! I may be way off track. Maybe Bernanke and Obama will save the world shortly and we’ll all live happily ever after. I doubt it, but anyway I am one of the biggest believers in the world in free speech and liberty of expression.

May I add an additional comment related to gold ownership in ones portfolio?” continues our reader. “When the market price increases from one day to the next, the purveyors of gold advise purchasing the metal for its price is only heading higher. When the price declines from one day to the next, the decline is characterized as a ‘buying opportunity’. One thing is consistent among the purveyors of gold though, they never – repeat, never – issue a “_sell_” recommendation? It’s always buy, buy, buy.

And, least I forget, if one truly believes that the market price of gold is headed higher, why not purchase a gold futures on contract on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange? – which can be rolled over for a distant contract indefinitely. The CME affords the trader enormous leverage on such futures contracts, and there’s no applicable interest charge for the market price that exceed the initial “earnest money” deposit. And the traders’ earnest funds can be in the form of Treasury bills, which are segregated from the funds of the futures merchants account.

Well, I guess we are coming at this equation from polar opposite perspectives. This reader is clearly valuing his gold holdings in US dollars. I do the opposite – my base currency is gold, and dollars are a forex speculation for me, just like euros or yuan or Paraguayan guarani.

My reasoning behind this is that gold is the stronger currency, that has been around infinitely longer than the dollar. The dollar is ‘fiat’ money (see for example these earlier articles) that is created, figuratively speaking, by a printing press currently controlled by Bernanke and partners. The dollar can come and go, but gold won’t. The purchasing power of an ounce of gold has been pretty much constant for generations – whereas the same can certainly not be said for the dollar.

What is the dollar backed by?

One of the better arguments for the backing of the dollar that I’ve heard recently, is that it is backed by the work and entrepreneurialism of the American people. There’s some truth in that. Basically if they keep working hard and handing over the fruits of their labour to the government, there is something of value backing the dollar.

I’m just not sure that those hard-working American people really agreed to have their futures – and that of their sons and daughters and grandchildren – mortgaged in this way by a small subset of politicians and banksters. Maybe it was like the sub-prime mortgage borrowers who didn’t really understand what they were getting into. Cheap and plentiful short term money trumped long term prudence. And we all know how that ended up. Now we are just seeing a much expanded version of it.

I’m far from convinced that investing in the dollar is good business. If it were a case of supporting a stock of a company where the management were borrowing to the hilt for short term fun, while treating stakeholders reprehensibly and not giving a damn about the future, there would also be an ethical argument against getting involved. And I don’t see why governments should be treated any differently than companies. Abuse of the American people is not something I want to get involved in, any more than I would support abuse of cheap labour in Asian shoe factories.

Now I know this may be hard to swallow for people who have valued everything in one reference currency – be it dollars, or pounds or something else – for their entire lives. It is quite a leap of thinking. But it’s totally possible. You need to become a Sovereign Individual, not reliant on any particular country or currency. You need to think in different currencies and look at all currencies, including the one in common circulation in your home country, from the perspective of an outsider. If you were from another country, would you be investing in that currency right now?

Of course, I am not talking about day-to-day expenses. You certainly need some local currency on hand to buy the groceries. Multi-currency credit cards per se don’t exist, but you can easily, for example, obtain a regular credit card billed against a multi-currency bank account. You can sign charges in any currency you like, converting only what you need at that moment. You’ll find information on this, including how to open a foreign multi currency bank account in some of the world’s safest and best offshore banks, in the Practical Offshore Banking Guide 2010

The Dollar Bear Market Continutes

With that in perspective (that I value currencies against gold, not the other way around) let’s get back to the reader’s question. I don’t see so much of a gold bull market right now, as a dollar and euro bear market. My personal view (and there’s no substitute for taking professional advice here) is that this situation will continue as is for the foreseeable future.

Wild swings are caused by day to day speculations, but don’t affect the overall trend. So to turn it around, I believe the price of gold valued in fiat money will continue to rise, and will do so significantly. The more Quantitative Easing that takes place, the less the dollar will be worth. This is what I have written about in the past: stealth devaluation. If there’s more of something, it’s worth less. This logic is hard to argue with.

After all I’ve said above, you can probably figure that US Treasury Bills are the last thing in the world I would want to sink my money into. For me, that would be like buying bonds in a company that I know is about to go bankrupt. Unfortunately, as Ron Holland has explained in the report Are You Ready for the Coming Obama Retiement Trap (available in the Q Wealth Members’ Area) that is exactly what US retirement funds are being encouraged, even forced, to do. This is a seriously scary prospect.

As for buying contracts on the CME, well why not… I’m all in favour of speculation. There are lots of ways you can obtain leverage through brokerage accounts within the system. I keep a large portion of my personal wealth in physical gold, safely outside the financial system. I also keep a ‘play money’ account that I leverage to the hilt and buy financial contracts like this with. It’s doing rather well at the moment. But it’s money I know I might have to lose, for example if a sudden catastrophe hits and the financial markets are closed down. I would put the odds of something like that happening in the foreseeable future at perhaps 15% – 25%. Not a huge risk, but definitely not one I would bet my entire net worth on.

The fact that you can roll over CME contracts indefinitely is part of the problem, of course. It’s extremely likely that the counterparties would be completely unable to fulfill their obligations if everybody wanted to exercise their right to physical gold at once. The whole system relies on punters rolling over.

So, why I don’t like the idea of buying gold futures using T-bonds as earnest money? Because you are using one form of promise to buy another form of promise, when nobody – not even the people involved, I am sure, if you could talk to them and get a straight answer – would really earnestly claim that the promises are backed by anything of value. That is just unsustainable in my view. You might make short term paper profits, yes. Fine… I have nothing against speculation, just as I have nothing against casino gambling – but when I go to casinos I just enjoy the ambience, I don’t gamble.

If you want to use leverage to speculate on the price of gold, here’s what I would do. Get yourself a regular brokerage account that allows you to trade on margin. Get yourself a subscription to Casey’s International Speculator – they even have a 25% discount offer running at the moment. Casey’s International Speculator is one of the longest-running, most respected newsletter services of its kind anywhere, so it’s got a track record. It was founded by Doug Casey, self made international man.I have a subscription and consult it frequently. Then go speculate. That way you’re investing in companies that actually have intrinsic value, rather than pure promises.

At the end of the day, it’s big picture against small picture, short term against long term. We live in interesting times. Enjoy the rest of your weekend!

We have just a few minutes ago wound up the free conference call with our subscribers, presented by Linda Dixon – founder of Commodis Corp -  and the chance to buy silver and gold bullion at a discount for forward physical delivery in Peru or worldwide. Thank you to everybody who participated.

Linda gave a fascinating presentation about her company’s mines in Peru, and answered questions from participants about physical bullion delivery, social and environmental responsibility and more. We also promised to look in to bullion storage options in Canada and Panama.

Of particular interest is the fact that this is a private mining company, incorporated offshore, doing business in a private manner with private individuals. You can even fly to Peru and pick up your metal in person if you wish.

We promised to publish here Linda’s contact address. It is: bullion01 (at) gold-economy.com If you were on the call and haven’t yet contacted Linda, please do so and she will be happy to send you an information pack. Replace the (at) with the @ sign. We do that to help reduce spam caused by automated address harvesters.

Linda is offering a special incentive until the end of April for Q Wealth members who decide to go ahead with a bullion purchase. Contact her today so you don’t miss out on this offer.

Several people have asked if they can listen to a recording of the call. The answer is no. This was a private, invitation only call about a private offshore opportunity.

If you didn’t receive an invitation to participate, but would like to receive such invitations in the future, please make sure you are signed up to receive our free weekly newsletter, Q Bytes. Sign up for Q Bytes here.

The bailout of General Motors is another nail in the coffin of the US dollar. But still, most people haven’t even noticed the real ‘stealth’ devaluation being imposed by the United States government. And yet all of us, Americans or not, are affected by this in a big way, due to the dollar’s status as a reserve currency (and also due to China’s effective control of the dollar, that I have previously touched on…)

Is the dollar “collapsing” or merely “declining”? I believe it is collapsing, but some people might misunderstand this. The dollar is not just going to crash one day, or even one week. It’s an ongoing thing, that started many years ago but has substantially speeded up in the last five years or so (yes, even during the times when the US economy was supposedly booming, that too was based on scams by the financial services sector)

Geithner, Bernanke, Obama and the whole crew are involved in a constant battle to patch over the dollar collapse.  Yet in spite of their attempts, the cracks have widened. The greenback continues its inexorable march downward. This week’s events at G.M. have accelerated the collapse a little more. And I believe that the collapse of the dollar will continue to accelerate with time. What will happen when it hits the bottom is anybody’s guess, but I certainly want to be well prepared when it happens. You should be too. And the Q Wealth website is about helping you do just that – protecting your assets from this stealth devaluation.

The US is not going to crash like Mexico did in 1995, or like Argentina and Brazil have done since with overnight currency devaluations. Neither will go bankrupt in one day like Iceland. The US government still has way too much influence and political power for that to happen. It’s a stealth devaluation because your portfolio will appear to be going higher. You will have more dollars. The stock market will be up. But in real terms, you are losing money faster than ever before. This is what some people have a hard time getting their head around – but it’s very important. The government will try to persuade you that things are going well, when really they are not. Bottom line? It’s a scam being perpetrated on you by government. If you care about protecting your assets and creating new wealth, you have to understand this.

So where can you actually put your money to protect against the stealth devaluation and collapse of the dollar? What about other currencies? Well, necessity dictates that we need to use currencies like dollars, euros and pounds to carry on business. And common investing sense dictates that you should diversify assets, so at least having a proportion of euros is better than having all dollars. It’s a start.

But unfortunately none of these currencies look good. Every other major central bank is participating in the very same scam, meaning that their currencies are equally doomed. So it would not be safe to assume that buying, say, euros, will give you any serious protection against the loss of your assets.

My number one mantra to clients is diversification, diversification and diversification. If you have a portfolio above six figures, it should be in different currencies, in different banks, on different continents. Opening overseas personal accounts, while having no tax consequences, can certainly help asset protection…the geographic diversification protects against the threat called government, while the mere fact that the assets are offshore significantly reduces the risk of you being sued in the first place, especially if you live in a litigious place like the USA or increasingly the UK.

Generally, private international banks are also a whole lot more flexible and service minded too. They offer Swiss-style wealth management banking facilities. For example, I noticed the other day that one of my European private offshore banks (not in Switzerland in this case) had quietly added gold ounces to the list of currencies I could hold in my multi-currency checking account. I guess that means I can even write cheques denominated in gold ounces, though I haven’t tried that yet. I see some of the larger European clearing banks like RAIFFEISEN ZENTRALBANK OESTERREICH AG in Austria are now maintaining gold correspondent accounts for their institutional clients. Interesting, huh?

Which are the best offshore banks for this kind of wealth management? For the answer to that question you need to be a member of The Q Wealth Report. Download the Practical Offshore Banking Guide (available instantly as soon as your payment is approved) and you will find ten of them for starters, with impartial comments on each… together with the form for a free e-mail consultation if you would like to discuss your individual circumstances with me directly.

Gold, probably is number one on my list of recommendations as a hedge against dollar decline. There are ways you should buy gold, and ways you shouldn’t. One way you should not invest in gold is by following typical mainstream advice and investing in ETFs, the most famous of which is GLD the SPDR Gold ETF. Ther are significant concerns about whether you could really get your gold out, or even your money back in dollars (which is not what you would want anyway at that stage) in the case of an economic meltdown.

For example, what do you think of this quote directly from the GLD prospectus?

The Trust’s gold may be subject to loss, damage, theft or restriction on access.

There is a risk that part or all of the Trust’s gold could be lost, damaged or stolen. Access to the Trust’s gold could also be restricted by natural events (such as an earthquake) or human actions (such as a terrorist attack). Any of these events may adversely affect the operations of the Trust and, consequently, an investment in the Shares.

The Trust may not have adequate sources of recovery if its gold is lost, damaged, stolen or destroyed and recovery may be limited, even in the event of fraud, to the market value of the gold at the time the fraud is discovered.

If you would like to know about better ways to invest in Gold offshore, you need my Gold Report – How to Buy and Hide Gold Bullion Offshore which is likewise available free of charge for immediate download to our paid up members.

Not a member yet? Sign up to Q Wealth Report here.

A guest post by the Editors of BIG GOLD for The Q Wealth Report

(NB: we understand that many of our readers are not US persons and so this article may not be directly relevant to them, but there are other similar options for Individual Savings and Retirement Type accounts in other countries, so maybe this could apply to you too. If you are American – this is for you. If you’re already offshore, you don’t need this…)

In a recent article Gold in IRAs – a Safe Haven Nest Egg for Americans? at petermacfarlane.net we considered the pros and cons of putting gold bullion into a self-directed IRA and detailed how to do it. But the arrangements we covered were entirely domestic.

What about having your IRA hold gold offshore? It can be done, but before you go to the trouble, ask why. Your IRA would still be subject to U.S. law, and your IRA custodian would still be in the U.S., regardless of where the assets are.

One possible reason is protection from future creditors, especially of the lawsuit variety. If your IRA exceeds a million dollars, or if you live in the wrong state, or if you inherited the IRA, it may be available to anyone who successfully sues you. There are some rather complex arrangements that can move IRA assets (gold or anything else) offshore and make them far more difficult for a creditor to reach. But if that’s your motive, we’d think twice about the loss of control that such programs involve.

An entirely different reason would be to sidestep some future legal interference with gold ownership – if, for example, you think President Obama may become FDR Redux and embrace draconian measures, such as prohibition of ownership, penalty taxes, confiscation, or forced sale at an official price, as in 1933. No preparation for these possibilities can be completely reassuring, since we can’t anticipate exactly what the new rules might be. But something as simple as wrapping the gold in an IRA and storing the metal in a different jurisdiction could allow you to be one of the few remaining Americans who lawfully owns gold.

One easy way to go about this is for your IRA to hold the metal in the form of a Perth Mint certificate. Not all IRA custodians will do this, but some will.

The more sophisticated approach is to use an offshore limited liability company (LLC). Your IRA would own all of the LLC, while you would be the company’s manager and have direct control over its affairs. The LLC, having but one owner, would be eligible for establishment as a “disregarded entity,” so that its assets are treated, for income tax purposes only, as being owned by the IRA. As manager of the LLC, you would file such an election with the IRS, then open an account for the LLC with a suitable foreign institution, and use the account to buy gold.

Is that worth doing? If you want to have gold in an IRA, perhaps because your IRA dominates your financial picture, or if you’re worried about the possibility of gold confiscation, it may be. The costs are the homework you’ll need to do, and annual expenses of $2,000 or so, depending on how good you are at shopping.

To start, you’ll need an IRA custodian (which will be a U.S. institution — it’s your company that’s offshore, not the custodianship), one that specializes in such arrangements. We’ve identified some possibilities, and while we don’t know any of them well enough to give our wholehearted endorsement, you can begin by looking into Sovereign International Pension Services in Palm Harbor, Florida (www.sovereignpensionservices.com) or the Entrust Group in Paoli, Pennsylvania (www.theentrustgroup.com).

The custodian will get the offshore LLC formed for your IRA. Then you can convert all or a portion of your IRA assets to cash and transfer the money to the new custodian, who will invest it as a capital contribution to the LLC. From there on, you, as manager of the LLC, will run the show. You can buy Perth Mint certificates for the LLC or you can have the company purchase bullion from Kitco, Asset Strategies, GoldMoney, or any other seller of your choice. They will then help arrange storage with a vaulting company such as Via Mat International in Zurich, one of the oldest and most reputable.

Probably not many investors will want to go this route. But if you’re one of the few for whom it makes sense, these are the steps to follow.

***

In light of the demise of fiat currencies and the general stock market, more and more investors are flocking to gold as a safe-haven investment. And no one knows more about the hows, wheres, and whys of buying and owning physical gold than the editors of BIG GOLD, Casey Research’s monthly newsletter for the prudent investor.

One caveat: gold is certainly a safe haven and much preferable to some of the unstable investments around, but the fact is, it’s a non-interest-bearing investment. But there’s a strategy that smart investors – like Steven Lehman, the Federated Investors fund manager who beat 99% of his peers last year – are following now… and you can too. If you want to know how to squeeze up to four times more gains out of gold, click here to learn more.

Some investors are so worried about the prospect of economic collapse that they are buying gold and having it delivered to them, rather than holding the precious metal in the form of futures contracts or other securities. That’s the conclusion of a recent article in the Wall Street Journal.

Perhaps more interesting, however, was the informed discussion that followed on the WSJ’s site, in the “Comments” section.

“Why place your trust in paper that is printed by the government?” asks reader Linda Hawkins. “Gold has been serving as money much longer than governments have been printing fiat currency. The risk is that the government may print so much of it, that we end up like Germany in the 1930s, or Zimbabwe right now.”

Gold, as commenter Avery Goodman went on to explain, “is not bought for “end of the world” planning. It is bought for preserving wealth when the financial system is working incorrectly … People are buying gold to have a thing of value that has no counter-parties, and, in that manner, protect themselves from a collapsing financial system, and a probable depression and/or hyperinflation.”

I particularly liked that point about gold having no counter-parties. That is, of course, assuming we are talking about real physical gold bullion, not about paper or virtual gold like ETFs. I have blogged over on my personal site before about the dangers of investing in GLD ETF, and – for that matter – other commodity ETFs. Journal reader Alex Vasilyevich points out: “I personally believe that the gold short trades on COMEX are not backed by any physical delivery capability. If there is a sudden spike in the deliveries demanded by buyers, the game will be exposed, just like what happened with Madoff and Stanford.”

Of course, regular Q Wealth readers will see nothing new in this discussion, but sometimes it is reassuring to know that even the mainstream financial press reports and respects our views, and that onshore Gold dealers in places like London and New York City are doing a roaring trade. It follows on from the article in January in London’s Daily Telegraph about Why the Rich are Running to Gold Bullion.

We do take matters one step further, however, by suggesting international diversification for your gold bullion holdings. Why? For example, there have been many rumors that the US might once again prohibit private ownership of gold, and confiscate – or, purchase at an artificial exchange rate – existing gold bullion held by individuals onshore. The same applies to many European governments, some of which only legalized private gold ownership in the last decade or two.

There’s also the important matter of how to buy gold bullion. Most gold sales go through a cartel of international bankers and precious metal traders. It is however, possible to go direct to the source and buy pure gold direct from the producers.

All these aspects of buying gold offshore and more are covered – together with step-by-step practical instructions and contact details – in the new Gold Report – otherwise known as How to Buy and Hide Gold Bullion Offshore. Of course we must stress what we are suggesting is a perfectly legal form of offshore asset protection. Unlike bank accounts, or ETFs held through brokerage accounts, real gold bullion is not subject to reporting requirements. If you want to keep it secret you can – legally. That personal and financial privacy aspect is just one more reason why we are so bullish on gold bullion right now. It is a secure, private store of wealth management with a view not just to asset protection but to really creating wealth in a secure, offshore environment. And that is what The Q Wealth Report is all about.

Would you like to obtain your copy of The Gold Report while the unique information in it is fresh and bang up to date? Well the good news is – it’s FREE. It’s available for download right now in our Members’ Area. The bad news, of course, is that you have to be a member to access it. But a membership still costs just $87 per year and brings numerous other benefits. What are you waiting for? Join Q Wealth today!

by Peter Macfarlane for The Q Wealth Report

I’ve written a lot about the difficulties these days in buying physical gold, and why I recommend buying real physical gold as opposed to paper certificates etc. Very soon we’ll be releasing here news of my “Gold Report” which will be available for download to Q Wealth members.

But today I want to tell you about something I noticed during the past year that very few people have commented on, but that lots of people I have talked to have noticed. They have noticed it but have not thought fully about the consequences. It is the opposite problem – people don’t want US dollars any more!

Have you tried to exchange US dollars for local currency in a foreign country recently? Or to deposit US cash in a foreign bank? Then you probably know what I’m talking about. Various petty restrictions. $50 or $100 bills with certain serial numbers are not accepted in many countries. In others if you want to spend a $50 or $100 bill a supervisor in the store has to approve it and record your passport number.

Today, for the first time in my life, I actually saw a money exchange business that simply won’t accept US dollars cash any more. This was in Cancun, Mexico. They were welcoming Canadian dollars, Euros, Swiss Francs etc… but saying “no thanks” to the greenback. I asked why, and they said they will still exchange USD for clients who are registered (ID, utility bills etc) but not for tourists. (So they didn’t exactly answer my question, but I think the cashier was one of those people who don’t always think about ‘why’)

So, tourists get sent to the bank around the corner. They will still exchange USD cash, but not more than $500 for non-clients.

The superficial reason for these restrictions is the paranoia surrounding money laundering and fake bills. Most Latin American countries have far more dollars coming in than flowing out (at least in cash) – some of this may be due to drug money, but the vast majority is completely legitimate money related to travel, tourism, remittances by emigrant workers and so on. So casas de cambio (money exchange houses) have to dispose of their excess dollar cash by somehow depositing it into the banking system, which has become nigh on impossible because of pressure from correspondent banks in the USA.

But the pendulum has certainly swung too far. If an American tourist in Cancun has to spend an hour in different lines and be limited to spending $500 per day, then surely this is no different from the pre-Thatcher era in the UK for example when exchange controls were in place? Other places with exchange controls today, like South Africa or Venezuela, also have official daily limits in place on spending by their nationals traveling overseas.

Yes, my friends, the USA has well and truly already succeeded in introducing exchange controls by the back door. The consequences of this, given the USD’s status as a global reserve currency, are simply incredible. It’s amazing that so few people have noticed or commented on this yet!

In case you are thinking this only applies to cash, remember there are ATM daily limits of various sorts (imposed by both card-issuing banks and by local ATM networks around the world such as in Brazil or Argentina) and banks from US, UK and elsewhere have a habit of just blocking accounts for “potential fraud” if anyone spends more than a few hundred dollars outside their home country. Then the cardholder has to make a lengthy international call pressing buttons, listening to music and finally convincing a bank officer that their card has not been compromised before he can start spending his own money again.

Yes, sure, there are ways around all this. Of course you can travel with 10 different ATM cards or you can acquire offshore debit cards and offshore credit cards with much higher daily limits, even in USD. You can buy foreign currency before you leave the US. You can use travelers checks. You can spend a day of your vacation visiting 10 different banks and exchanging a small amount in each. That is not the point. The point is that for the average good-citizen American tourist or business traveler, let’s say the man on the bus in Cancun, it is going to be difficult to spend more than a few hundred dollars a day of their own money overseas. That is why I say “exchange controls are already in place.”

Many of you will already have heard the rumors about the Amero, or about supposed plans to have different colored dollars for internal and external use. Personally, I don’t buy such rumors. They are conspiracy theories. There is a lot of merit in the ideas behind them, but if as the evidence above proves, for all practical purposes exchange controls are already in place, why would the Federal Reserve risk the political backlash of explicitly imposing exchange controls?

What will happen in 2009? How much worse can this get? And how can you protect yourself and your family from the global consequences of USD exchange controls – whether or not you are American? These are questions we answer in depth in each quarterly issue of The Q Wealth Report. If you are not yet a subscriber, you should be! We will show you how to build wealth and take advantage of real money-making opportunities presented by the drastic changes taking place in the global financial system. Subscribe today!