Category: simonblack

I thought in this age of insanity that we are living in, nothing would surprise me anymore. But sure enough, there was a headline in the Financial Times the other day, “Central banks should consider giving people money.”

It seems almost impossible that someone could believe in something so ridiculous. And yet this is the world we are living in. The path to prosperity is now based on unelected central bankers conjuring millions of dollars of out of thin air.

Bankrupt governments are issuing bonds with negative yields, meaning they are being paid to go deeper into debt. And there are more than $13 trillion of these negative yielding bonds in the world.

If anything this makes a compelling case for why people should consider owning gold.

It’s a store of value with a 5,000 year track record of withstanding inflation, political crisis, and monetary stupidity.

I’ve been suggesting people consider buying gold for quite some time, especially over the last year. I argue that the supply of gold, is actually declining, yet the demand will increase in large part due to all of this central bank lunacy.

And that has absolutely been happening. The price of gold is up more than 25% over the last year, and just surpassed $1,500 per ounce. But unlike most other assets like real estate, stocks, bonds, etc, gold is still far from it’s all time high.

There could still be plenty of gains ahead.

And silver would have to triple before it reaches it’s all time high.

Every summer for the past eight years, I’ve enjoyed a week or two in the italian countryside at a 400 plus year old villa. Here I relax with friends, family, business colleagues, and some of our Total Access members who fly in from around the world, to break bread and enjoy really stimulating and entertaining conversation.

This year Peter Schiff has been one of my guests. He’s an old friend who shares many of the same beliefs. And when our conversation this morning turned to gold, I thought it appropriate to record it, and make a Podcast out of it.

In our conversation we talk about why gold and silver have plenty of room to rise, and a number of different ways to invest.

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Welcome to our Friday roll up, where we highlight the most absurd and concerning stories we are following this week.

Dad sued for slander because he criticized the education system

Careful what you say about your kid’s public school curriculum.

The company behind a controversial common core math program in North Carolina is suing a dad for libel and slander.

The parent of a high school student has been on a “crusade,” the lawsuit claims, against the math program. Instead of teacher led instruction, students are taught through self-discovery.

He and many others see strong evidence that the old methods are better. That’s why he created a Facebook group and website where he lays out his criticism of the program.

We checked out the guy’s website, and it is full of well thought out rational criticism. Whether he is correct or not is irrelevant. He is just expressing an opinion on the type of education his child will receive in public school.

We’ve moved beyond gender neutral pronouns and triggering micro-aggressions. Now just expressing any old opinion offends people.

Apparently you can’t do that in the USA, anymore. If you offend someone with constructive criticism, they turn around and sue you.

Click here for the full story.

The government has a new way to spy on you

The Pentagon is currently testing high altitude surveillance balloons in several midwestern states.

Flying at about 65,000 feet, the balloons are able to track multiple vehicles at once, in any type of weather, using radar.

The Pentagon says the purpose of the solar powered unmanned balloons is to “provide a persistent surveillance system to locate and deter narcotic trafficking and homeland security threats.”

The data gathered over broad swaths of the country will be saved so it can be rewound and reviewed after the fact.

Big Brother is really watching.

Click here for the full story.

City evicts entire family after houseguest commits crime

In this week’s edition of no good deed goes unpunished…

An Illinois family let a 19 year old friend of their son stay with them when he became homeless. They kicked him out after he stole from them, and burglarized a nearby restaurant.

And then the family got an eviction notice.

But it didn’t come from the landlord, it came from the local cops. They were enforcing an ordinance which requires private landlords to evict all the occupants of a home when any inhabitant commits a crime.

Even though this young man was a house guest who victimized them as well, the family will be punished for his crimes.

The family’s landlord says they are model tenants, and he does not want to evict them. So he joined their lawsuit against the city.

With the help of the Institute for Justice, the family is suing to protect their due process rights, so that they won’t be punished for someone else’s crime.

Click here for the full story.

Bernie’s ingenious solution for student debt

Total outstanding student debt now stands at $1.65 trillion dollars.

But the solution is all too simple for Bernie Sanders. He tweeted in response, “We should cancel it.”

That’s the solution, just cancel $1.65 trillion dollars of debt. What could go wrong?

The idea that you can just solve this problem by canceling the debt shows how clueless these people really are.

Student debt is the number one financial asset of the federal government. There is no bigger money maker in the asset column or the government’s balance sheet.

And in case you missed it, the government isn’t in great financial shape. At $22 trillion dollars, the national debt is larger than the entire US economy.

Cancel the student debt, and you’re wiping away a trillion dollars that the taxpayers will have to pay for.

That’s bigger than the direct costs of the Iraq war. It’s bigger than the 2008 TARP bailout.

The whole thing is really a sad state of affairs. But countless people will buy into Bernie’s two-word solution… cancel it.

Click here for his cringy twitter feed.

City shuts down 11 year old girl’s lemonade stand

If she was just selling lemonade, city officials said, they probably would have let the lemonade stand slide.

But this young girl made the mistake of offering her customers fruit smoothies as well.

The city said the girl needs a permit for that, so the city can reduce the risk of foodborne illnesses.

That risk seems pretty small. How is it any different than going to a friend’s house for dinner?

The real tragedy is that this trend is robbing kids of entrepreneurial experience at a young age. She bought the supplies, made a sign, created a menu, set the prices, attracted the customers…

And instead of learning a lesson about business, she learned a lesson about how the government treats business owners.

Click here for the full story.

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It was probably after 2am last night when I walked up the stairs to bed after a marathon seven hour dinner.

But that’s pretty normal here. This is the eighth year in a row I have spent my summer holiday at this 400 year old villa in the Italian countryside.

I invited a number of my close friends, family, and Total Access members to relax and break bread. We always end up engaging in some of the most insightful, stimulating, and exciting conversations that often go late into the evening.

The food and service here at the villa are always incredible. After prosecco and Aperol Spritzes on the deck overlooking the valley with mountains in the distance, we had dinner beneath a grape trellis. It started with homemade lasagna, and ended with chocolate mousse.

In between, the staff urged us to take more chicken, potatoes, and so on… this is Italy after all.

The staff here is exceptional.

One of the women taking care of us is from the United States. When I was talking to her this morning, I found out that she is here in Italy to become an Italian citizen.

Because she has Italian heritage, under current Italian law she can apply to become an Italian citizen based on her ancestry.

She could apply from the US, going through an Italian embassy. But it could take a year just to get an interview, and even longer to correspond back and forth with the Italian bureaucrats who verify the documentation of your lineage.

Instead, this young woman decided to expedite the process by moving to Italy. Living here while you apply can bring the timeframe down to just a few months. You basically cut to the front of the line.

And while she’s here, she is making the most of it by experiencing Italy, learning the language, and getting some work experience.

Just out of curiosity, I asked her why she was getting Italian citizenship. The look in her eyes was almost bewildered. She said, “Why wouldn’t I do it?”

And that’s the point. It was such a refreshing thing to hear.

Having a second passport just makes sense. With VERY few exceptions, there is typically ZERO downside whatsoever. And yet enormous upside.

Having a second passport means you will always have a place to live, work, and invest outside of your home country. It gives you options, so that all your eggs aren’t in one basket.

Plus, you are giving an enormous gift to future generations of your family. They will benefit from what you do today, when you pass down this citizenship to your children.

Italy is just one of many countries where you can obtain citizenship through ancestry.

Ireland, Greece, Armenia, Lithuania, Poland, and more also give citizenship to those who can trace their ancestry back to these homelands.

One way to get started is by talking to your local embassy… but this can be pretty discouraging.

It often seems like some of the laziest human beings on the planet tend to work at consulates and embassies.

If you call and they give you the runaround, or you find it difficult to get an appointment, don’t give up. Just call another embassy.

You’ll be astonished to find you may get a remarkably different answer from one embassy to the next.

And there are also private organizations that can help you short circuit the process– take a look at this free preview of a recent Sovereign Man: Confidential alert we sent to our premium members on the topic if you’re interested in getting started.

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I feel like a complete broken man right now.

I’m exhausted. Sleep deprived. Malnourished. My muscles are sore. My back is killing me. I’m so hoarse I can barely speak.

Yet despite all that I couldn’t possibly be feeling more excited and exhilarated.

My 10^th annual liberty and entrepreneurship workshop just ended yesterday here in Lithuania. And as you can tell, it’s a physically and mentally draining event.

The workshop is five full days (and nights) of training and mentorship that go practically round-the-clock. It’s common to go to bed at 3am and be up again just at few hours later at 6am.

My fellow instructors and I cram in as many sessions as we can and teach a wide range of topics– from big picture ideas like strategy and leadership, to specific skills like raising capital, pitching to investors, recruiting top employees, marketing on Instagram, negotiation tactics, in-person sales, tax planning, critical accounting concepts, time management, selling your business, etc.

It’s a ton of highly actionable material packed into a few short days.

And it’s an absolute blast. The team-building, camaraderie and relationships born there are probably the best part of the event.

We even hold morning yoga and afternoon workout sessions with group calisthenics– the final sprint competition nearly killed me.

This was the TENTH annual event, so the whole weekend was incredibly nostalgic.

One of our alumni– a former oil roughneck from Canada turned software entrepreneur– blew us all away by putting on an amazing 10^th anniversary fireworks show that was reminiscent of the movie V for Vendetta, complete with a perfectly-timed cannon finale from Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture.

I’m really pleased with how the event turned out.

And I’m especially impressed with the amazing 64 students who came from 30 different countries– places as diverse as Greece, Russia, Hong Kong, Zimbabwe, Afghanistan, Peru, Australia, and the People’s Republic of California.

Now it’s time for a few days of rest in the Italian countryside. But before I sign off, I wanted to say a few words about Lithuania and why it should be on your radar.

Like I said, I’ve been coming here for a decade. And Lithuania’s capital city of Vilnius has really grown on me in that time; honestly it’s one of my top five favorite cities in the world, and definitely my top pick in Europe.

For starters the architecture is gorgeous; Vilnius boasts one of the best-preserved medieval city-centers on the continent, full of palaces, castles, and churches that go back to the 1300s.

There’s very little vehicular traffic with plenty of fantastic street-side restaurants, cafes, and ice cream shops. It’s also really clean– you can practically eat off the cobblestone.

But aside from the aesthetic pleasantries, Vilnius has a lot going for it.

The standard of living here is very high, yet this city is one of the cheapest in Europe in terms of cost of living.

According to an old colleague of mine who started the largest real estate brokerage in the country, apartment prices in Vilnius average around 1,500 euros per square meter– about $160 per square foot.

That’s a fraction of the price of nearly every major city in Europe like Lisbon or Brussels, and it’s cheaper than even its Baltic neighbors.

Lithuania is also a cheap place to do business. Wages here are low, yet the quality of the talent is exceptionally high.

We recently invested in a thriving AI business that employs a number of data scientists, programmers, and other technical professionals here in Lithuania. I visited their office last week and was thoroughly impressed with their skills and experience.

Similar jobs can easily command a six-figure income in the United States. But in Lithuania the market salary for a top programmer can be around 3,500 euros per month. And that’s considered a really great salary here.

Non-technical jobs, ranging from customer support to social media managers are often under 1,000 euros per month.

And in case you’re thinking, “Yeah but I don’t speak Lithuanian,” I’ll assure you their English is probably better than mine.

I’ve never met a Lithuanian who isn’t bilingual, and it’s not uncommon for them to speak 3-4 languages fluently.

Not only is the cost of doing business here cheap, but the EASE of doing business is quite strong.

Lithuania’s government is lean… with minimal bureaucracy. It’s easy (and cheap) to form a company, establish a bank account, and start doing business.

Taxes are low– most Lithuanian corporations are taxed at 15%, and small businesses can pay just 10% or even less.

Lithuania has capitalized on the Brexit uncertainty and positioned itself as a major hub for financial innovation.

It now takes just three months to obtain a banking license… something that has attracted more than 200 Fintech companies (including Revolut) to shift at least a portion of their operations from London to Vilnius.

(It also helps that Vilnius has lightening-fast Internet and ranks #1 in the world for public WiFi.)

A final point I’ll make about this place is that it’s small. The entire population of Lithuania is less than 3 million, and Vilnius only has about 600,000 people.

I love this. Small populations make it really easy to quickly build a great network.

Even when you’re not trying, in a capital city this small you can’t help but meet movers and shakers.

Just last week at the gym I bumped into an Olympic champion, a prominent TV hostess, and a government minister.

And all those factors together make this a really unique and extremely pleasant place. So if you’re a budding entrepreneur or digital nomad, definitely put Vilnius on your radar.

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Welcome to our Friday roll up, where we highlight the most absurd and concerning stories we are following this week.

10 year old charged for assault… with a dodgeball

A ten year old boy will be brought to juvenile court on assault charges.

His heinous crime was hitting another 10 year old in the face with a dodgeball at recess.

He originally got suspended from school for one day… which seems like a more reasonable punishment.

But the tattle-tale mother of the injured child felt the need to get the authorities involved over a month after the incident.

So now before the next school year starts, the 10 year old deviant will be hauled in front of a juvenile court to answer for his playground crime.

We all know that you aren’t supposed to aim for the head in dodgeball… and we all probably did it anyway as kids.

That’s something you should explain to the principal, not a judge.

Click here for the full story.

10 days in jail for 79 year old who fed stray cats

A kind-hearted 79 year old woman started feeding her neighbor’s cats after he moved away and abandoned them.

Unfortunately, no good deed goes unpunished. Her other neighbor’s ratted her out for violating a city ordinance against feeding stray cats and dogs.

But what is she supposed to do, just watch as these living breathing animals she cares for starve?

Unlike her neighbors, she had the compassion to keep caring for the cats despite three citations from the city.

Finally she was hauled in front of a judge who saw it fit to sentence this old woman to ten days in county jail. For feeding cats.

I don’t know who is worse, the neighbors or the judge?

Click her for the full story.

SWAT team raids a guy’s home over Facebook parody of police

One creative gentleman created a Facebook page that looked almost exactly like his local police department’s page.

But the differences became apparent when you looked closer. For instance, in the jobs section, it said “minorities need not apply.”

It also included posts about the department giving honorary police commissions to pedophiles.

It was a parody page, and clearly this man had an interesting sense of humor…

But as offensive as these posts may be to police, and others, it’s not a crime.

That didn’t stop the police from sending in the SWAT team. They raided the man’s home, arrested him, and charged him with impairing police services.

He spent a few days in jail before posting bail. And when the case went to trial, he was acquitted by the jury.

Since his arrest was an obvious violation of free speech, the man sued.

Usually this is the part where cops get qualified immunity, meaning they can’t be sued because it wasn’t clear to them that they were violating someone’s rights.

But in a rare moment of clarity, a judge decided that this one was pretty obvious: police should have known they were violating this man’s well established rights.

The First Amendment suit will move forward.

Click here for the full story.

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Ten years ago, at the peak of the global financial crisis, the Board of Trustees which oversees Social Security in the United States issued a stark warning:

They projected that Social Security’s enormous trust funds would completely run out of money in 2039.

Naturally nobody paid attention. Back in 2009 the economy in shambles, so focusing on a future economic crisis that was more than three decades away was a low priority.

And for the past decade, the US government has continued to ignore its Social Security problem.

But it’s become much worse.

Ten years later, the Board of Trustees now projects that Social Security’s primary trust fund will run out money in 2034.

That’s five years earlier than they projected back in 2009. And it’s only 15 years away.

Now, 15 years might seem like a long time. But take a minute to grasp the magnitude of this problem:

According to the US government’s own estimates, Social Security and Medicare combined are underfunded by $100 TRILLION.

$100 trillion is literally more than FIVE TIMES the size of the entire US economy. And this giant fiscal chasm is actually growing.

The big problem for Social Security is that tax revenue is no longer enough.

Every worker who is legally employed in the United States currently pays roughly 15% of his/her wages each month to help fund Social Security and pay benefits to retirees.

But there are now so many people receiving Social Security benefits that all the payroll tax revenue is no longer enough.

Social Security also derives a portion of the income it needs to pay benefits from the investment returns on its $3 trillion worth of assets.

Problem is– Social Security is forbidden by law to invest in anything EXCEPT United States government bonds.

Most countries who have large Sovereign Wealth Funds or Pension Funds have the latitude to invest that capital in a variety of asset classes.

I personally know several national pension fund and sovereign wealth fund executives in Europe and Asia, and they typically buy a wide variety of assets– real estate, private equity, stocks, bonds, etc., with a target annualized return of between 6% to 8%.

(Norway’s sovereign wealth fund earned an average 7.6% between 2010 and 2017. And California’s state employee pension fund, CALPERS, earned 6.7% last year.)

But Social Security doesn’t have this investment freedom. Instead, Social Security is required BY LAW to invest in US government bonds, which yield less than 3%.

In fact Social Security’s investment return last year was 2.9%.

You’re probably starting to see the problem–

At the moment, Social Security is the #1 owner of US government debt, having spent years stockpiling $3 trillion of dollars worth of US Treasury bonds.

Month after month, as payroll tax revenues exceeded the total retirement benefits paid out, Social Security invested its surplus into government bonds.

But now that flow of money is about to reverse.

We know that Social Security’s payroll tax revenue is no longer sufficient to pay out benefits. There are simply too many retirees.

We also know that the 2.9% invest return is pitiful and not going to help at all.

This means that Social Security is about to start burning through the trust funds in order to meet its monthly benefit obligations.

The Board of Trustees has already acknowledged this fact. And they project the trust funds will be fully depleted in 15 years.

But it could likely come much sooner than that.

Before they can use the trust funds to cover their financial shortfall, Social Security will first have to convert its government bonds into cash.

Doing that will require that they either let the bonds mature (and demand the government to repay them in full). Or it will require them to dump tens of billions… hundreds of billions of dollars worth of bonds on the open market.

Either way, Uncle Sam loses its biggest lender. Instead of borrowing money from Social Security, the Treasury Department is going to have to pay Social Security back.

We’re talking $3 TRILLION. That’s not exactly pocket change. And it’s coming at a time when the US government is already losing more than $1 trillion per year.

The Congressional Budget Office already forecasts that the federal government will have to borrow $12.7 trillion in additional debt through the end of 2029.

Now, on top of that already-prodigious figure, the Treasury Department will have to find some sucker willing to lend an additional $3 trillion to repay Social Security… not to mention tens of trillions of dollars more down the road.

That’s extremely unlikely.

What’s far more likely is that the US government simply freezes the repayments to Social Security.

Maybe they pay back a trillion or two. But not the full amount. The rest of it would be frozen, which means that the trust funds would be effectively depleted MUCH earlier than expected.

Prudential, one of the largest financial institutions in the world, estimates that 86% of current retirees, 88% of baby boomers who are about to retire, and 71% of Gen-Xers, rely or expect to rely on Social Security when they retire.

But the Social Security trustees themselves tell us that the funds will run out of money in 15 years. And as I’ve just shown, it could happen a lot sooner than that.

So it’s clear that a LOT of people will have their lives turned upside down.

Look, maybe I’m totally wrong.

Maybe the Treasury Department does find a sucker to bail out Social Security. Maybe that sucker is us. Bank deposits, managed IRAs, etc. are all fair game for Uncle Sam. They could seize anything they want.

But even if I’m totally wrong, it certainly doesn’t hurt to have a Plan B… to take back control of your own retirement.

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Our annual Sovereign Academy is just around the corner.

Each year, I invite the most talented entrepreneurs I know to teach and mentor a group of 50 young people from around the world.

The camp is entirely free for students – I pay for everything myself out of pocket. It’s also one of my favorite times of the year.

One of the mentors there has been with me since the inception of the camp nearly ten years ago.

He’s hands-down one of the most talented entrepreneurs I know.

For simplicity’s sake, we’ll call him Michael.

A couple of years ago, Michael started an automated domain sales business.

The business model was brilliant. Michael’s proprietary software would scan the internet for attractive domains for sale, purchase them, and then scour the web for a potential buyer.

So for example, Michael’s company would acquire ilovedomains.com, and then find out who would be interested in buying it – including owners of similar domains like ilovedomains.net.

The business immediately became highly profitable. And Michael made a lot of money.

But a couple of years ago, Michael was sued by somebody who claimed they had been victim of a phishing attack on a domain that Michael had owned six years prior.

(A phishing attack happens when hackers build fake websites who resemble real ones to extract sensitive data like online bank login details or social security numbers from people).

But here’s the interesting part… Michael owned the domain for exactly 30 minutes– in 2009.

Since then, it has been bought and sold multiple times, eventually ending up as domain for a scam website.

And so the victim sued Michael, even though he was no longer in possession of the domain – and wasn’t when the attack happened.

Of course, any rational person would have seen that Michael couldn’t possibly have been involved in the scam.

But lawyers on the other side refused to budge.

That’s because no matter the outcome of the lawsuit, they’d collect their fees. That’s the sad truth of America’s justice system.

Lawyers are willing to take on completely baseless cases – simply because they know that most people will settle at the simple prospect of facing a lawsuit that could drag on for years.

It used to be that success was celebrated in America. But today, it puts a target on your back that says “come after me, I’ve got money.”

Remember, if you pay any kind of income tax at all, you’re better off than 50% of Americans.

So lawyers will not care whether their case makes any sense at all, as long as they get paid fat fees for dragging you in court for years.

And since I started Sovereign Man ten years ago, the situation has only gotten worse. I hear almost daily of cases like my friend Michael.

That didn’t use to happen. But now it seems like it’s almost a full-time career to spend your time suing successful people.

It’s pathetic and sad. But it’s the new norm in the Land of the Free.

Therefore, it makes sense to take simple steps to ensure that even if frivolous creditors come after you with bogus lawsuits, you and your family are protected.

You can form a domestic LLC for asset protection purposes – or even better, you can consider opening a foreign LLC in a country with solid asset protection features.

And despite what pornstars might tell you, opening offshore corporations for asset protection is completely legal.

In fact, they’re the grease of the world economy. They allow international entities to come together on neutral ground, and operate under a recognized legal system.

That way, a Chilean investor in a Sri Lankan infrastructure project can structure their investment in the British Virgin Islands, to have recourse under one of the most recognized and clear legal systems in the world.

Unfortunately, most people are completely misinformed and think all offshore structures are used to shelter dirty terrorist money.

But that couldn’t be further from the truth.

Offshore structures have the benefit of offering some of the strongest asset protection benefits in the world.

Members of our flagship international diversification service, Sovereign Man: Confidential have access to an in-depth video library with over a dozen videos covering everything you’d ever want to know about asset protection.

Domestic and foreign companies, trusts, estate planning, taxes, compliance– you name it, we’ve got it.

But it’s such an important topic that I want to make sure our free readers also benefit from it. So I decided to share one of our premium videos with you.

Inside, you’ll learn why a well-structured foreign asset protection company will terrify lawyers of frivolous creditors that are trying to come after you and your assets.

The beauty of this strategy is that once you implement it, it becomes almost pointless to come after your assets. Even if a frivolous creditor wins a suit against you, they still lose (you’ll learn in the video how that’s possible).

You can watch the video here. 

And if you’d like to get access to every other premium video, intelligence report and black paper we’ve released over the past ten years… There hasn’t been a better time to join Sovereign Man: Confidential in years.

As part of Sovereign Man’s 10-year anniversary we’ve been offering a large 63% discount on Sovereign Man: Confidential.

But we’re closing this rare offer ON WEDNESDAY.

So click here to learn about Sovereign Man: Confidential and take advantage of our offer to join and save 63%.

(And you can try it risk-free for 30 days with our 100% money back guarantee)

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The federal government sold your Social Security Number for FIVE dollars

Welcome to our Friday roll up, where we highlight the most absurd and concerning stories we are following this week.

Equifax fined $700 million… for 147 million person data breach

Do you remember back in 2017 when Equifax (the giant consumer credit agency) admitted that it had been breached?

Hackers broke into Equifax’s databases and stole personal and financial records of 147 million people.

And we’re talking EVERYTHING– names, addresses, Social Security Numbers… all the ingredients that an identity thief needs to destroy your life.

Equifax was totally at fault; the company had sloppy, irresponsible controls in place to safeguard this critical personal data.

So sloppy, in fact, that the hackers had been inside their system pillaging data for 10 weeks before the company realized anything was wrong.

Perhaps that’s not such a surprise given that the company’s Chief Security Officer had zero credentials related to either IT or security.

Last week Equifax was fined $700 million by the US Federal Trade Commission.

I found this interesting, given that it took TWO YEARS for this fine to be issued… even though Equifax already admitted to wrongdoing.

(I wonder how much money the FTC wasted investigating this data breach…)

The other thing that sticks out, though, is that the $700 million fine is roughly the amount of money that Equifax used to make each year.

In 2016, for example, the last full year prior to the breach, Equifax’s operating cash flow was $796 million. And in 2015 it was $742 million.

So Equifax was fined less than a year’s profit… And by the way, that $700 million fine constitutes less than $5 for each of the 147 million people who had their data stolen.

On the black market (and in the Internet’s infamous ‘dark web’), that sort of personal data can easily fetch more than ten times that amount.

Less than half of the money will be earmarked for victims; the rest will end up in the government’s pocket.

Click here for the full story.

Obesity is a “disability,” so you can’t discriminate

Some jobs are dangerous. And sometimes, they are even more dangerous when you are unhealthy, or obese.

A company in Washington required health screening before hiring a railroad technician. They had preset health standards for the job, for the safety of employees.

One man was given preliminary approval for the job, but his health screening revealed that he was considered obese by medical standards.

Instead of downright rejecting the man for the job, the company explained that it would still hire him if he lost 10% of his body weight.

Naturally, the man sued, claiming discrimination.

And now the Washington Supreme Court agreed that obesity is a covered disability, protected under the state’s anti-discrimination laws.

“It is illegal for employers in Washington to refuse to hire qualified potential employees because the employer perceives them to be obese. . .” even when being physically fit is a necessary job requirement.

Click here for the full story.

FaceApp was fun… now they own your face

The mobile phone app “FaceApp” has been hugely popular as of late; it allows users to upload images of their own faces, and, through digital editing, show you what your face would look like decades into the future.

It turns out that everyone who downloaded and used FaceApp gave the company a never-ending, irrevocable, royalty-free license to do whatever it wants with your name and pictures.

FaceApp could, for instance, use your picture on a billboard. Or they could edit the photo, and use it in a commercial for acne medicine. They could even put your real name next to the photo. Users gave them permission to do all of this.

But more likely, the company will sell the 150 million faces and names to whoever they want… probably a company training facial recognition programs.

Click here for the full story.

The City of Berkeley, California goes gender neutral

In the City of Berkeley, California, manholes are now maintenance holes. Craftsmen are artisans. And pregnant women have become pregnant employees.

According to a new ordinance, all words and phrases written in the official city legal code must be changed to become gender neutral.

“Language has power. And the words we use are important,” the local politician who introduced the provision said.

That’s true. Which is why we have specific words that clearly refer to particular objects and ideas.

For instance, fraternities and sororities are supposed to refer to different things. But they are now known in Berkeley as “collegiate Greek system residencies.”

Click here for the full story.

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In 1993, William Kurt Hauser, a San Francisco investment analyst, presented his results from an incredibly interesting study.

Hauser had analyzed tax revenues in the United States over time and came to the conclusion that tax revenue as a percentage of GDP had remained around a narrow band of 19% since 1946.

That was astonishing. After all, over that same period, tax rates had been all over the place.

The top marginal tax rate was as low as 28% in the 1980s and as high as 94% right at the end of WWII.

But despite those extreme variations, overall tax revenue had barely changed.

To better understand why, try and imagine the economy as a giant pie. Hauser’s data shows that the government’s slice of the pie is always around 19%– no matter how big the pie (or how high or low taxes are).

That means that the obvious solution to increasing tax revenue is to grow the pie itself.

While a few places in the world (like Singapore) have figured this out, this productive mindset completely escapes nearly every major western government.

And in the Land of the Free, the cries for higher taxes are getting louder and louder.

In the US, almost every candidate supports a government-run healthcare and university system, and claims it should all be “free”.

Their solution to everything is more government, more regulation, and of course higher taxes– all things that shrink the pie instead of increasing it.

Some of the presidential candidates now support income tax rates of 70-90%.

Elizabeth Warren wants to go as far as taxing not just income, but also wealth (a policy that’s been dropped by virtually every “socialist” country in the world, by the way).

Some want higher estate taxes and some want an investment sur-tax… But they ALL want higher taxes.

The Bolsheviks simply don’t understand that their higher tax rates won’t actually increase tax revenue.

Again, the numbers undeniably show that the size of the government’s piece of the economic pie always remains 19% of GDP– no matter how high the tax rates are.

But that’s a concept they will never bother to consider.

Instead, they’ll just keep riding their Bolshevik high horses.

Of course, they tell you not to worry because their higher taxes will only hit rich people who earn over $400,000– you know, those greedy dentists and small business owners.

But taxing just the top 1% will barely make a dent in the budget required to fund all of these socialist programs.

So then they’ll start talking about taxing the top 5%. Then the top 10%. And soon these higher taxes will end up slamming right into the middle class.

The much-despised “Alternative Minimum Tax” is a great example; it was originally passed back in the 1960s specifically to tax the very wealthy. But today millions of people are ensnared by the AMT.

Even the US federal income tax itself is a great example.

When it was originally passed in 1913, federal income tax targeted wealthy people, and was only paid by the top 3% of income earners. 97% of Americans paid no federal income tax.

Today tens of millions of people in the middle class pay income tax.

Fortunately, there are simple steps you can take to dramatically reduce your tax obligation.

This is something that makes sense no matter what happens next.

Think about it like this… if you can eliminate capital gains tax, you’ve essentially earned a RISK-FREE return of 23.8%.

Reducing your taxes is the easiest and SAFEST way to generate a significant return on investment.

And there are MANY legal strategies to do just that.

If you are a business owner or a self-employed professional, such as a consultant or dentist, then you know the pain of crippling taxes and regulations all too well.

Fortunately you also have access to some of the greatest opportunities to drastically slash your taxes (potentially to nearly ZERO).

These legal tax-reduction strategies used to be available only to giant mega-corporations with armies of lawyers at their call, but globalization has changed the game.

Now, even small business owners can take advantage of them– if they have the right knowledge and tools.

Even regular employees can still take advantage of a little-known opportunity to slash your taxes and boost your retirement savings at the same time.

Here’s a small selection of strategies to legally pay minimal taxes…

• Anyone can stash away up to $56,000 in 2019, TAX-FREE, for their retirement through a solo 401(k) with a small side hustle (such as driving Uber or renting out a room on Airbnb)
• Business owners and self-employed professionals can slash their business’ corporate tax to just 4% (and pay NO tax on dividends) by moving to Puerto Rico…
• …or they can earn up to $2 MILLION per year and legally not pay corporate tax by using a captive insurance company (without moving their business)
• Investors and day traders can legally cut their capital gains tax to 0% by moving to Puerto Rico
  Location-independent individuals can earn upwards of $150,000+ per year, nearly TAX-FREE by taking advantage of the Foreign Earned Income Exclusion
• Investor’s who are sitting on capital gains can take advantage of Opportunity Zones, an overlooked tax incentive, that could save them $279,996 (or more) over the next ten years
• And much, much more…

And all of these strategies are completely legal.

For example, captive insurance is in section 831(b)(2), the Foreign Earned Income Exclusion is in section 911, Puerto Rico’s incentives are in section 933(1) and Opportunity Zones can be found in section 1400Z-2.

These aren’t hidden loopholes. They’re right there in the tax code.

I encourage you to learn more about them because reducing your taxes is the easiest and SAFEST way to generate a significant return on investment.

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“Gentlemen… the National Debt… is paid.”

That sentence has been uttered in Washington DC exactly one time ever, by a Senator announcing that the US government was officially debt free.

That was on January 8, 1835 when the debt that the United States government had accrued since it’s birth was finally paid off.

Never again would the United States be debt free.

It took 174 years for the debt to rack up to a mind boggling $11 TRILLION in 2009.

And then it took only ten years to balloon ANOTHER $11 trillion.

Today the national debt is larger than the entire economy of the USA, $22 trillion.

It took 147 years to get a trillion dollars into debt. The USA now routinely adds at least $1 trillion in debt every 365 days.

And why exactly are we adding all this debt? These are the good times!

The economy has been growing for a decade. The stock market is pumping up to all time highs. Almost every asset class is practically bursting with wealth. We’ve even seen record tax revenues.

And still, routine spending is a trillion dollars more than the government collects.

Any semblance of financial restraint is not even an afterthought on politicians’, or their constituents’, mind.

This is really insane.

Back in 2009, people were actually talking about how troubling the debt was… when it was half of what it is now.

A 2009 Forbes article is almost adorable as it predicts the US debt will be $14 trillion by 2019. Only about 50% off… and still, the author was extremely concerned. As he should have been.

As we all should be, even more so now.

Back then, 7.7% of the revenue the federal government collected went towards servicing the debt, about $162 billion.

This year about 15.4% of the $3.4 trillion tax revenue was spent entirely on interest payments for America’s massive debts. That’s $523 billion of productivity taxed away, because the politicians don’t care to balance the budget and pay down the debt.

That is just the interest. It’s like if you or I paid just the minimum balance on our credit card every month, while spending 33% more than we earn each year.

Eventually, your card would be declined.

But the US government has the power to raise the limit on it’s own credit card, the debt ceiling, which it routinely does.

They may be able to ignore economic realities for much longer than we can. But rest assured, the same principles apply.

Remember, these are the good times, interest rates are low, and everyone still considers the US government good for their debts.

But suppose a recession take a chunk out of tax revenue. Or suppose the US gets embroiled in even more, larger, costlier wars– far fetched, right?

There’s no telling what kind of turmoil this unsustainable debt could cause, even without a major event. From Rome to the Weimar Republic, massive debts have wreaked havoc on the value of money, and society in general.

That’s not to say that the same would necessarily happen in the USA. But what is certain is that countries with healthy finances fare better.

It is the Universal Law of Prosperity: take in more money than you spend. And when that hasn’t even been an afterthought for politicians in decades, it is time to prepare for the havoc that could wreak on society.

Rational people don’t ignore these things.

There are so many steps that you can take to insulate yourself from the consequences of this runaway debt.

One is to move some of your savings into precious metals like gold and silver. Chances are that what’s been true for the last few thousand years will continue to be true: they hold their value.

It also makes sense to spread some of your risk outside the USA.

That could mean getting a second passport, so that one country doesn’t get to dictate where you can live, work, and travel.

Foreign property gives you somewhere to go in the worst case scenario. Foreign bank accounts mean you have some money outside the reach of certain governments, and American lawyers.

And the best thing about taking all these steps to survive and thrive through the likely turmoil the debt will cause, is that you aren’t any worse off, even if nothing happens.

There is absolutely no downside to protecting yourself and your family with these, and many other “Plan B” strategies.

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