Month: April 2019

A New Mega Cartel Is Emerging In Oil Markets

Submitted by Oilprice.com

China and India—two of the world’s largest oil importers and the biggest demand growth centers globally—are close to setting up an oil buyers’ club to have a say in the pricing and sourcing of crude oil amid OPEC’s cuts and U.S. sanctions on Iran and Venezuela, Indian outlet livemint reports, citing three officials with knowledge of the talks.

This is not the first time that the two major oil importers are working to create such an oil club.

India and China have discussed creating an ‘oil buyers’ club’ to be able to negotiate better prices with oil exporting countries and will be looking to import more U.S. crude oil in order to reduce OPEC’s sway, both over the global oil market and over prices, India’s Petroleum Ministry said in June 2018.

“With oil producers’ cartel OPEC playing havoc with prices, India discussed with China the possibility of forming an ‘oil buyers club’ that can negotiate better terms with sellers as well as getting more US crude oil to cut dominance of the oil block,” a tweet from the Petroleum Ministry’s Twitter account said in the middle of last year, when oil prices were rising ahead of the return of the U.S. sanctions on Iran’s oil industry.

According to the officials cited by livemint, China and India have exchanged senior-level visits several times since then and have made progress on “joint sourcing of crude oil.”

Reports of the strengthened Chinese-Indian cooperation in potentially forming an oil buyers’ club come just as the U.S. sanction waivers for all Iranian oil customers expire this week.

China is Iran’s number-one customer, while India is the second-largest buyer of Iranian oil, so the end of the U.S. waivers will mostly affect refiners in those two oil importers who will be scrambling to source crude from other sources or risk secondary U.S. sanctions.

“China and India should do so to grab more bargaining power to make oil prices more sustainable,” Jawaharlal Nehru University Professor Srikanth Kondapalli told the Global Times in a recent interview, commenting on the benefits of an oil buyers’ club.

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2GTCNMv Tyler Durden

House Democrats Back Bill That Would Result in 500,000 People Losing Health Insurance

Democrats have spent years complaining that Republican health care legislation would result in fewer people with health insurance, often while pointing to Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates showing just how many would go without coverage. But now Democrats in the House are backing legislation that would result in 500,000 people losing coverage, according to a new report from the CBO.

The bill would prohibit the sale of renewable short-term health plans allowed by a Trump administration rule that went into effect last year. These plans, which can be extended for up to three years, tend to offer more limited coverage than the plans sold under Obamacare’s rules, and they also tend to be significantly less expensive. If the bill were to go into effect, about 1.5 million fewer people would end up purchasing short term plans, CBO estimates. About half a million of those people would end up purchasing coverage through Obamacare’s exchanges instead. Others would obtain coverage through their employers. And about 500,000 “would become uninsured.” That is, half a million people who had coverage would lose it—and replace it with nothing.

The bill would also have a modest effect on the deficit, resulting in a decrease of about $8.9 billion over the next decade. For context, CBO projects the deficit will total about $900 billion in 2019.

Although the bill is unlikely to become law while Republicans hold the Senate and the White House, House Democrats in both the Energy and Commerce and Education and Labor committees have already voted to support it. 

The bill’s effects are smaller than those of the GOP repeal legislation introduced during 2017, and total coverage may not be the only or best metric by which to judge such legislative proposals. Nevertheless, the bill exposes one of the fundamental rifts in today’s health policy debates—the division between those who believe health insurance plans should be required, by law, to offer a comprehensive suite of benefits, and those who believe in allowing for more customized and personally tailored options. Essentially, it is an argument about whether politicians and bureaucrats should design coverage, or whether it should be left to individuals to choose for themselves.

That divide was reflected in the structure of Obamacare, which required health insurance plans to offer a suite of “essential health benefits,” from maternity care to mental health, and outlawed an array of existing plans that offered more limited coverage.

The benefits of such comprehensive plans are plain: They offer a broad spectrum of benefits. But so are the drawbacks: They tend to be substantially more expensive, which is one reason why the price of unsubsidized plans sold through Obamacare’s exchanges has soared.

In a report on short-term plans last year, for example, The Washington Post noted the case of one Iowa man who purchased a short term plan for $90 a month; the Obamacare-approved alternative would have cost about $450. Individuals and families have struggled to afford the more heavily regulated plans offered under the law, and some have simply been priced out of the market.

Rather than allow those people to purchase less expensive plans, even as a fallback option, the Obama administration restricted their sale, with backers of the health law deriding them as “junk insurance.” In this view, a second-best option is not worth allowing at all. 

Yet as Michael Cannon, the Cato Institute’s health policy director, has pointed out, those plans can fill gaps in Obamacare’s coverage scheme. With some exceptions, the health law’s exchanges only make new coverage available during a few weeks or months at the end of each year known as an open enrollment period. Someone who purchased a three-month plan under the Obama-era rules in, say, January, would not be able to extend it and could find themselves unexpectedly sick and unable to renew the coverage for months. Allowing short-term plans to last for a year, as the Trump rule does, offers them a better option.

But these sorts of options are apparently not what Democrats have in mind when they say they want to expand coverage. Instead, they appear willing to potentially allow hundreds of thousands of people to go without coverage entirely in order to prevent anyone from having coverage they deem insufficient.

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Judge Denies ACLU Request To Help SPLC In McInnes ‘Proud Boys’ Lawsuit

An Alabama judge on Tuesday struck down a bid by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) to help the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) defend itself against a lawsuit filed by Gavin McInnes, the founder of the ‘Proud Boys’ – a fraternal organization which the SPLC labeled a hate group. 

The SPLC says the group is “known for anti-Muslim and misogynistic rhetoric,” and that members “maintain affiliations with known extremists.”

McInnes hit back – filing a defamation lawsuit in early February which claims that the ‘hate group’ label is false and has damaged his career.

In response to the ACLU’s amicus curiae Brief – which allows non-parties in a case to offer supporting information – US District Judge Myron H. Thompson ruled that “the court is convinced that both sides of this case can adequately present and argue the issues without outside assistance.” 

Prior to Thompson’s decision, McInnes’ counsel argued that the SPLC is “essentially, a law firm, and -as is well known – a very effective one, and one endowed with phenomenal financial resources, and noted that the ACLU “have not identified any special abilities or expertise that is not already available to the SPLC.” 

Last June, the SPLC agreed to apologize and pay $3.4 million to a British group and its founder after the Alabama-based organization labeled them anti-Muslim extremists. 

The SPLC’s downward spiral

The SPLC has a long and sordid history of labeling mainstream Christian and conservative organizations as “hate groups” – including the Alliance Defending Freedom, Family Research Council, the Ruth Institute, the David Horowitz Freedom Center, and Jihad Watch, according to Life Site‘s Calvin Freilburger. 

Meanwhile, more than two-dozen employees signed a letter of concern over “allegations of mistreatment, sexual harassment, gender discrimination, and racism” within the organization following the ouster of co-founder Morris Dees over sexual misconduct claims. 

Weeks after Dees’ departure, the head of the SPLC, Richard Cohen, as well as the organization’s legal director, Rhonda Brownstein, resigned.

Morris Dees, Richard Cohen, Rhonda Brownstein

“It is long overdue that social media companies stop using the hypocritical SPLC as a reliable source to police their content and discriminate against pro-family and conservative nonviolent organizations,” said Liberty Counsel founder and chairman Mat Staver earlier this month. 

To that end, Twitter dropped the SPLC as a “trusted safety council” member in response to the scandals plaguing the organization. 

“The SPLC is not a member of Twitter’s Trust and Safety Council or a partner the company has worked with recently,” a Twitter source told the Daily Caller News Foundation. Twitter had previously listed the SPLC as a “safety partner” they worked with to combat “hateful conduct and harassment,” according to a June DCNF report.

And now, the SPLC is fighting alone in its battle against Gavin McInnes.

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2IWrDsX Tyler Durden

House Democrats Back Bill That Would Result in 500,000 People Losing Health Insurance

Democrats have spent years complaining that Republican health care legislation would result in fewer people with health insurance, often while pointing to Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates showing just how many would go without coverage. But now Democrats in the House are backing legislation that would result in 500,000 people losing coverage, according to a new report from the CBO.

The bill would prohibit the sale of renewable short-term health plans allowed by a Trump administration rule that went into effect last year. These plans, which can be extended for up to three years, tend to offer more limited coverage than the plans sold under Obamacare’s rules, and they also tend to be significantly less expensive. If the bill were to go into effect, about 1.5 million fewer people would end up purchasing short term plans, CBO estimates. About half a million of those people would end up purchasing coverage through Obamacare’s exchanges instead. Others would obtain coverage through their employers. And about 500,000 “would become uninsured.” That is, half a million people who had coverage would lose it—and replace it with nothing.

The bill would also have a modest effect on the deficit, resulting in a decrease of about $8.9 billion over the next decade. For context, CBO projects the deficit will total about $900 billion in 2019.

Although the bill is unlikely to become law while Republicans hold the Senate and the White House, House Democrats in both the Energy and Commerce and Education and Labor committees have already voted to support it. 

The bill’s effects are smaller than those of the GOP repeal legislation introduced during 2017, and total coverage may not be the only or best metric by which to judge such legislative proposals. Nevertheless, the bill exposes one of the fundamental rifts in today’s health policy debates—the division between those who believe health insurance plans should be required, by law, to offer a comprehensive suite of benefits, and those who believe in allowing for more customized and personally tailored options. Essentially, it is an argument about whether politicians and bureaucrats should design coverage, or whether it should be left to individuals to choose for themselves.

That divide was reflected in the structure of Obamacare, which required health insurance plans to offer a suite of “essential health benefits,” from maternity care to mental health, and outlawed an array of existing plans that offered more limited coverage.

The benefits of such comprehensive plans are plain: They offer a broad spectrum of benefits. But so are the drawbacks: They tend to be substantially more expensive, which is one reason why the price of unsubsidized plans sold through Obamacare’s exchanges has soared.

In a report on short-term plans last year, for example, The Washington Post noted the case of one Iowa man who purchased a short term plan for $90 a month; the Obamacare-approved alternative would have cost about $450. Individuals and families have struggled to afford the more heavily regulated plans offered under the law, and some have simply been priced out of the market.

Rather than allow those people to purchase less expensive plans, even as a fallback option, the Obama administration restricted their sale, with backers of the health law deriding them as “junk insurance.” In this view, a second-best option is not worth allowing at all. 

Yet as Michael Cannon, the Cato Institute’s health policy director, has pointed out, those plans can fill gaps in Obamacare’s coverage scheme. With some exceptions, the health law’s exchanges only make new coverage available during a few weeks or months at the end of each year known as an open enrollment period. Someone who purchased a three-month plan under the Obama-era rules in, say, January, would not be able to extend it and could find themselves unexpectedly sick and unable to renew the coverage for months. Allowing short-term plans to last for a year, as the Trump rule does, offers them a better option.

But these sorts of options are apparently not what Democrats have in mind when they say they want to expand coverage. Instead, they appear willing to potentially allow hundreds of thousands of people to go without coverage entirely in order to prevent anyone from having coverage they deem insufficient.

from Latest – Reason.com http://bit.ly/2XURrsz
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Ray “Capitalism Is Broken” Dalio Was The Highest Earning American Of 2018

Less than a month ago, Bridgewater founder Ray Dalio was warning the world that there would be a “revolution” unless the country could fix its income inequality problem. He’s also been repeatedly claiming that capitalism is broken. 

Broken, that is, for everyone other than Ray Dalio, who was last year’s best paid hedge fund manager, according to DealBook; and since hedge funders generate the highest current income of all “workers”, he was effectively the highest paid American in 2018 (this, of course, excludes capital gains and other non-current income), when it is estimated that Dalio earned $2 billion over the last 12 months, up from a reported $1.3 billion in 2017.

Dalio beat out other big names like Jim Simons of Renaissance Technologies, who earned $1.5 billion, Ken Griffin of Citadel, who earned $870 million, David Shaw of D.E. Shaw, who earned $500 million, Chase Coleman of Tiger Global Management, who earned $465 million and Steve Cohen of Point72, who earned a tiny, by his standards, $70 million. 

Of course, this raises the obvious question of whether or not Dalio is doing enough to reform a system that he rails against. 

Dalio

“As most of you know, I’m a capitalist, and even I think capitalism is broken,” Dalio wrote on Twitter in early April. He then defended the hedge fund business model to NPR last week, stating: “If you were to ask the pensioners and you were to ask our clients, who are teachers or firemen, whether we’ve contributed to their well-being, they would say that they, we, contribute.”

Andrew Ross Sorkin questioned whether or not Dalio is putting his money where his mouth is: “…the magnitude of the hedge fund managers’ compensation raises a very basic question about whether capitalism is ‘broken’. Even if Mr. Dalio took home $500 million, the rest of his income could pay 10,000 families $150,000 each.”

But in his latest 18-page treatise entitled “Why and How Capitalism Needs To Be Reformed (Part 1)”, published – as per usual – on LinkedIn, Dalio kicks his fearmongering approach up to ’11’, surpassing redistributive rhetoric of Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and going straight for Vladimir Lenin.

According to Dalio, the flaws in the American capitalist system are breeding such horrific inequality between the wealthy and the poor that at some point in the not-too-distant future, the only sensible recourse for the unwashed masses will be a bloody revolution.

To support this theory, Dalio points to statistics showing that the bottom 60% of Americans are lagging further and further behind the top 40% in the areas of education, social mobility, assets, income and – crucially – health. American men earning the least will likely die ten years earlier than those making the most.

In previous essays, Dalio has warned about the threat of economic populism (the anti-establishment trend that helped deliver both Brexit and President Trump’s stunning upset victory over Hillary Clinton). Now, he’s apparently identifying with populists of a different stripe (namely, those on the left). All of these sources of inequality, Dalio argues, represent an “existential threat” to the American economy, that will only be exacerbated by falling competitiveness relative to other nations and the “high risk of bad conflict.”

Conveniently absolving himself and his fellow billionaires of any blame for this sad state of affairs, Dalio claimed that the cause of this sad state of affairs was simply a poorly designed system that can, with a little effort, be corrected.

“These unacceptable outcomes aren’t due to either a) evil rich people doing bad things to poor people or b) lazy poor people and bureaucratic inefficiencies, as much as they are due to how the capitalist system is now working,” Dalio said.

Maybe we’re just conservative old fashioned pragmatists, but isn’t there a bit of extremely convenient hypocrisy in calling for socialism in the year that capitalism made you the best paid person in America? And, if we’re mistaken, why isn’t Dalio shelling out his billions for the cause he so loudly has been advocating for?

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2UR7vd9 Tyler Durden

Democrats Agree To $2 Trillion For Sweeping ‘Bipartisan’ Infrastructure Plan

Not long after Acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney told Maria Bartiromo that he believed USMCA (the Nafta 2.0 trade deal that the Dems have promised to obstruct) had a better chance of passing than a long-hoped for bipartisan infrastructure plan, Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer emerged from a lengthy meeting with President Trump with some interesting news.

The leaders said the talks had gone well, and that the two sides had agreed on a $2 trillion figure for a forthcoming plan to rebuild American bridges, roads railways and other vital infrastructure. Schumer told reporters that another meeting about financing will be held in three weeks.

Amusingly, Republican leaders in the House have told reporters in recent days that there’s no appetite for such a large plan among Republicans in Congress.

Schumer

In a letter delivered to Trump ahead of the meeting, the Democratic leaders advised Trump that a bipartisan deal must include new sources of financing, considerations for clean energy, and protections for labor, women and minority business owners.

Judging by the bond market’s reaction (which was pretty subdued), the market agrees with Mulvaney and expect that an infrastructure deal likely won’t happen. Yields remained anchored near sessions lows, suggesting that investors have shrugged off the prospects for an even wider budget deficit.

Treasury

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2VGrvn0 Tyler Durden

Labor Department: Gig Workers Are Contractors, Not Employees

In a letter issued Monday to an unidentified sharing economy platform, the federal Department of Labor clarified that gig economy workers are independent contractors, not full-fledged employees.

That seems like a common sense reading of the relationship between those workers and the platforms—like Uber, TaskRabbit, and dozens of others—that connect them with potential clients. Someone who drives for Uber, for example, gets to set their own hours and is responsible for their own vehicle. That certainly doesn’t look like a typical employer-employee relationship, but some activists have been trying to get courts and state governments to identify sharing economy workers as full-fledged employees.

Defining gig economy workers as employees would make the platforms responsible for providing health insurance and other benefits, and would force them to follow federal minimum wage laws. In all, employees can be 20 to 30 percent more expensive than contractors. It’s a designation that would potentially jeopardize the business model that has allowed the gig economy to grow and prosper—and one that would likely limit workers’ ability to exercise the independence that those jobs offer.

The Labor Department’s letter only applies to a single company—an unnamed firm that “connects service providers to end-market consumers to provide a wide variety of services, such as transportation, delivery, shopping, moving, cleaning, plumbing,
painting, and household services”—that had asked the department to determine whether workers using its platform were employees or contractors.

Still, the ruling is an important indication of where it stands on the broader question of how gig economy workers should be classified.

“Today, the U.S. Department of Labor offers further insight into the nexus of current labor law and innovations in the job market,” Keith Sonderling, acting administrator of the department’s Wage and Hour Division, said in a statement.

The ruling is also an important break with previous Labor Department guidance. Under the Obama administration, the department had issued official guidance advising that Uber and Lyft drivers would likely be classified as employees if the department was asked to make a determination about their status. Shortly after taking office, the Trump administration removed that guidance from the Department of Labor’s website, prompting the unnamed company in the letter issued Monday to seek a specific ruling from the department.

In making its determination, the department considered six factors: the degree to which employers have control over workers, the permanency of the workers’ relationship with the employer, the employer’s level of investment in workers’ equipment and facilities, the level of skill required for the work, the workers’ potential to earn profit, and the integration of the workers’ services into the employer’s business.

While the latter four are more technical in nature, the first two categories are probably the most important. Gig economy platforms have very little control over their employees, who typically can log in or log out of the systems as they please.

“A business may have control where it, for example, requires a worker to work exclusively for the business; disavow working for or interacting with competitors during the working relationship,” the Department of Labor letter states.

But that is not at all how gig economy platforms operate. Drivers can work for both Lyft and Uber—often switching between the two apps during a single shift—and completing other odd jobs on TaskRabbit does not mean a worker can’t also deliver food on DoorDash.

Indeed, research from JP Morgan Chase, an investment bank, shows that most gig economy workers are active only a few months out of the year. Rather than being full-time jobs, the data indicate that workers are likely to use the gig economy to earn extra income when needed or when time allows.

Similarly, there is very little in the way of permanence to the employer-worker relationship within the gig economy. For an Uber driver, for example, ending that relationship is as easy as deleting an app.

Defining that relationship at all is “inherently difficult,” the Labor Department letter reads, in part, because “as a matter of economic reality, [workers] are working for the consumer, not [the platform].”

from Latest – Reason.com http://bit.ly/2GToA2e
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The World Is Sadder & Angrier Than Ever

Authored by Mac Slavo via SHTFplan.com,

In this day and age when most people have everything they could possibly need and then some, the world is sadder and angrier than ever before. The standard of living around the globe has never been higher, but neither has the discontentment.

According to a major analysis of global well-being, the world really is getting more miserable. Human beings worldwide are sadder, angrier and more fearful than they have ever been before.  Something just isn’t right on Earth. In Gallup’s annual Global State of Emotions report, all three emotions (sadness, anger, and fear) rose to record levels in 2018, for the second consecutive year.

Chad took the undesirable honor of being the world’s most negative country. Wrought with war, political crisis, and human rights violations, the country is the world’s worst in terms of emotional health, according to CNN.

Gallup charted humanity’s prolonged slump by holding 151,000 interviews in 2018 with adults in more than 140 countries. It has measured emotions annually since 2006.

In 2018, about 4 in 10 people said they experienced a lot of worry the day before the interview, while a third said they were stressed and nearly 3 in 10 said they felt a lot of physical pain. A quarter experienced sadness, and 22% were angry. –CNN

Futurism reported that the researchers who conducted this study found that the number of people who said they’d experienced anger increased by two percentage points over the previous year, while both worry and sadness increased by one percentage point which is setting new record highs for all three negative emotions.

Research has noted the impact negative feelings can have on a person’s physical health — studies have linked angerto an elevated risk of heart attack and stroke, while chronic worry and sadness can be signs of anxiety disorders and depression, which carry an increased risk of heart disease.

If people continue to experience these negative emotions in greater numbers, we could be headed toward a future in which the global population is increasingly unhealthy — a situation that carries its own troubling side effects. –Futurism

Research has indicated that stress and other negative emotions can wear on the body and even manifest in the form of health problems. According to the people living on the Earth, the world is just not that happy of a place. But there are ways to improve our happiness.

Alcoholism and other addictive behaviors and suicides are also on the rise in the United States. Feelings of hopelessness and despair are overwhelming far too many in the U.S. So much so, that people are turning to alcohol, drugs, and suicide to numb the pain of their lives.  Government enslavement and the stranglehold on the economy are making life even more difficult on those already struggling to get by. And this is seen in new “death” numbers released.

This isn’t the best news for any of us, but there are things we can do about it.

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2V3rFFI Tyler Durden

Labor Department: Gig Workers Are Contractors, Not Employees

In a letter issued Monday to an unidentified sharing economy platform, the federal Department of Labor clarified that gig economy workers are independent contractors, not full-fledged employees.

That seems like a common sense reading of the relationship between those workers and the platforms—like Uber, TaskRabbit, and dozens of others—that connect them with potential clients. Someone who drives for Uber, for example, gets to set their own hours and is responsible for their own vehicle. That certainly doesn’t look like a typical employer-employee relationship, but some activists have been trying to get courts and state governments to identify sharing economy workers as full-fledged employees.

Defining gig economy workers as employees would make the platforms responsible for providing health insurance and other benefits, and would force them to follow federal minimum wage laws. In all, employees can be 20 to 30 percent more expensive than contractors. It’s a designation that would potentially jeopardize the business model that has allowed the gig economy to grow and prosper—and one that would likely limit workers’ ability to exercise the independence that those jobs offer.

The Labor Department’s letter only applies to a single company—an unnamed firm that “connects service providers to end-market consumers to provide a wide variety of services, such as transportation, delivery, shopping, moving, cleaning, plumbing,
painting, and household services”—that had asked the department to determine whether workers using its platform were employees or contractors.

Still, the ruling is an important indication of where it stands on the broader question of how gig economy workers should be classified.

“Today, the U.S. Department of Labor offers further insight into the nexus of current labor law and innovations in the job market,” Keith Sonderling, acting administrator of the department’s Wage and Hour Division, said in a statement.

The ruling is also an important break with previous Labor Department guidance. Under the Obama administration, the department had issued official guidance advising that Uber and Lyft drivers would likely be classified as employees if the department was asked to make a determination about their status. Shortly after taking office, the Trump administration removed that guidance from the Department of Labor’s website, prompting the unnamed company in the letter issued Monday to seek a specific ruling from the department.

In making its determination, the department considered six factors: the degree to which employers have control over workers, the permanency of the workers’ relationship with the employer, the employer’s level of investment in workers’ equipment and facilities, the level of skill required for the work, the workers’ potential to earn profit, and the integration of the workers’ services into the employer’s business.

While the latter four are more technical in nature, the first two categories are probably the most important. Gig economy platforms have very little control over their employees, who typically can log in or log out of the systems as they please.

“A business may have control where it, for example, requires a worker to work exclusively for the business; disavow working for or interacting with competitors during the working relationship,” the Department of Labor letter states.

But that is not at all how gig economy platforms operate. Drivers can work for both Lyft and Uber—often switching between the two apps during a single shift—and completing other odd jobs on TaskRabbit does not mean a worker can’t also deliver food on DoorDash.

Indeed, research from JP Morgan Chase, an investment bank, shows that most gig economy workers are active only a few months out of the year. Rather than being full-time jobs, the data indicate that workers are likely to use the gig economy to earn extra income when needed or when time allows.

Similarly, there is very little in the way of permanence to the employer-worker relationship within the gig economy. For an Uber driver, for example, ending that relationship is as easy as deleting an app.

Defining that relationship at all is “inherently difficult,” the Labor Department letter reads, in part, because “as a matter of economic reality, [workers] are working for the consumer, not [the platform].”

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This is one of the best countries in the world to have your child

Most of us have only very few opportunities to do something that has a true lifelong impact on someone else.

One of these opportunities is to do something for your children that will pay dividends for a lifetime in the form of freedom, choices, and safety.

And that gift is a second passport.

A passport from a foreign country gives you the right to live, work, invest, bank and thrive there. And it serves as a travel document for the rest of the world.

To me, a second passport is the foundation of a solid Plan B. It’s an insurance policy, in case things go wrong in your home country and you need to escape somewhere else.

And, when done right, there’s ZERO downside. Worst case– citizenship in a thriving country opens up doors for you that you might not find back home, like unique business, travel, and lifestyle opportunities.

There are several ways to obtain a second passport. Many European countries offer citizenship through ancestry for descendants – like Luxembourg, Poland, Italy or Hungary.

Others offer Citizenship by Investment programs – like St. Lucia or Malta.

But the most common route to citizenship is by establishing residency in a foreign country and living there for a number of years.

For example, Chile will grant citizenship to people who’ve lived in the country for five years or more. And in Andorra, you will have to spend as much as 20 years before you can file for naturalization.

Other countries, however, will grant citizenship to anyone born on their soil.

This is the standard legal concept in the Western Hemisphere, including countries like Brazil, Chile, and the United States.

This means that, if you’re thinking about having children, you could choose to do so in one of these Latin American countries that grants birthright citizenship.

So from the time your child is born, s/he will have dual citizenship… for life.

And that second citizenship will pass on to future generations as well.

If you have a child in Brazil, for example, his/her children, grandchildren, etc. will also be entitled to Brazilian nationality.

So this single decision can literally create generational benefit.

Now– there is ONE country I want to tell you about that has an even better policy.

These other places I’ve discussed provide immediate citizenship to any child born on their soil. But not to the parents.

Argentina is an exception.

Like most places in Latin America, children born in Argentina are automatically Argentine citizens.

But as our lawyers in Buenos Aires have explained to us, as a parent of an Argentinean citizen, you can also apply for naturalization right away.

This is an incredibly unusual benefit.

So if you’re looking for a second passport in a fantastic country for you and your new baby, Argentina should definitely be on your radar.

(Even if you’re not planning on having children, you only need two years of residency in Argentina to qualify to apply for naturalization there.)

One strong benefit of Argentina is that it’s a great travel document. You can move freely across Latin America and travel to places visa-free that even Americans cannot go.

Our Sovereign Man passport index ranks Argentina as the second best citizenship in Latin America after Chile.

And it’s also a safe option– you’ll notice that no one ever hijacks an airplane and threatens to kill all the Argentines.

Argentina is also a fantastic place to be. Buenos Aires is vibrant and feels very European. The wine country is simply gorgeous (and right now, Argentina is ridiculously cheap).

And with a second passport, should you and your family ever need to get out of dodge, you’ll have a place to go live, work, bank and thrive.

To me, it’s a no-brainer that makes sense no matter what.

And giving your child and yourself this opportunity is an invaluable gift that will pay off for generations into the future.

Source

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