Friday, November 30, 2012

34 Signs That America Is In Decline

The United States is clearly in an advanced state of decline.  Many people around the world (and even inside America) rejoice at this, but not me.  I mourn for the country that I was born in and that I still love.

Yes, the United States has never been perfect, but the Republic that our Founding Fathers started truly has been a light to the rest of the world in a lot of ways over the centuries.  Unfortunately, our foundations are badly rotting and our nation is collapsing all around us.  Many Americans like to think that the United States is greater today than it has ever been before, but the truth is that America is like a patient that has stage 4 cancer that has spread to almost every area of the body.  Our nation is being destroyed in thousands of different ways, and more distressing news emerges with each passing day.  This article will mainly focus on the economic decline of America, but much could also be said about our social, political, moral and spiritual decline as well. 

We are simply not the same country that we used to be.  Americans are proud, selfish, greedy, arrogant, ungrateful, treacherous and completely addicted to entertainment and pleasure.  Our country is literally falling apart all around us, but most Americans are so plugged into entertainment that they can’t even be bothered to notice what is happening.  Most Americans seem to assume that we will always have endless prosperity just because of who we are, but unfortunately that simply is not true.  We inherited the greatest economic machine the world has ever seen and we have wrecked it, and now a very painful day of reckoning is approaching.  But most people will not understand until it is too late. Read more....

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  2. The International Monetary Fund said today that it is considering classifying Canada’s dollar, nicknamed the loonie for the image of a loon on the C$1 coin, and Australia’s dollar, as reserve currencies........and.........

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  3. On its surface, the withholdable payment is designed to ensure that “pre-tax” monies are not sent abroad without applicable US federal taxes being paid. Looking a little deeper however, the law does two things that go beyond the responsibility of each tax payer to pay what they owe to the IRS:

    1.under Section 1474 of the bill, the law makes banks, as a third party, responsible for the enforcement of government tax policy. The banks are liable for the customer’s tax obligation on transferred funds, if they don’t withhold the required 30% to cover any possible tax liability. The banks essentially become the tax police, working for the government as hammers to bring about individual compliance.
    2.the same provision holds the banks harmless and indemnifies them if they improperly withhold the 30% tax and it is not due.
    [As such, according to #2 above,] if banks are third-party tax enforcers on the one hand, and completely indemnified from improper tax withholding on the other, then it is clear what banks will do. It would be difficult in any case for banks to determine the difference between a pre-tax remittance versus a post-tax payment.

    They will be inclined to simply withhold 30% tax on all foreign payments to banks and countries that do not have what are considered “information sharing” agreements with the United States.

    The net effect of provision #2 will be to greatly discourage any financial transactions between US banks and foreign banks not entering into information sharing agreements with the United States government. [Read status of U.S. in Talks with 50+ Nations on FATCA Tax Enforcement.]

    To wire transfer $100,000 to Panama, for example, to purchase a piece of real estate, one would have to agree to send $142,000 so that a net $100,000 would reach its destination. Who would be inclined or willing to pay 30% more in a global transaction in order to satisfy these requirements? Almost nobody.

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    International payments beginning January 1, 201[7] will be subject to these new withholding requirements to:

    1.force foreign governments (especially those in tax havens) to enter into agreements with the United States [by January 1, 2014 now, instead of the original 2013 date - see this article for the current list] and
    2.put extreme pressure on individual foreign banks to enter into private-sector agreements with the IRS to disclose all United States account holders, or risk having all US transactions moving to their individual bank being subject to 30% tax withholding.
    In addition to those intended effects, I believe the new law will have a number of unintended consequences as well, namely:

    1.Both US and non-US persons, fearing how the implementation of the new law will impact them after January 1, 201[7], may be inclined to move asserts outside the United States before the effective date, meaning we could see significant capital flight… [out of] the U.S….
    2.Foreign financial institutions may drop US clients as one way to avoid being subject to the 30% withholding requirement, as well as avoiding the US regulatory compliance costs (again, probably an intended consequence of the law). These compliance costs to worldwide bankers have been estimated by the Swiss Banking Association to total nearly $40 billion dollars annually, while the measure is projected to generate only around $8 billion to the U.S. Treasury in increased taxes.

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  4. 3.Foreign financial institutions and many foreign, private sector interests may simply stop conducting their business in dollars. A dollar-denominated transaction will ultimately pass through a US Federal Reserve Bank and potentially subject the transaction to the risk of a US bank levying a 30% withholding tax on any payment. One method for foreigners to ensure that this would not happen would be to designate the contract in a currency other than US dollars. So if a German businessman for example contracts with his Japanese counterpart to do a deal to sell equipment in China, the best way to ensure that the transaction would not be subject to US withholding tax would be to designate the contract in Euros, Yen, Won or any other currency than dollars. Those currencies would not pass through a US Federal Reserve Bank and therefore not become subject to the backup tax regime. Russia and China announced at the end of last year that they would no longer be doing trade transactions in US dollars but rather in their own currencies. The two countries indicated that there was too much risk in utilizing the dollar for their trade.
    4.As more global transactions (especially oil, gold and other commodities) are done in non-dollar currencies, the global demand for the U.S. dollar will decrease and it will no longer be the world’s reserve currency. As demand decreases, the value of the dollar will surely fall as well.
    Given the above, while exchange and private capital controls may well have been envisioned in the HIRE Act, additional unintended consequences of immediate capital flight and long term devaluing of our currency through simple supply-and-demand manipulations were probably less well-considered.

    Conclusion

    [As mentioned at the beginning of this article,] while the intent of the new law is admirable – to force US tax compliance with regard to foreign accounts and transactions between the U.S. and individuals in countries that are considered to be tax havens – the unintended consequences could result in:

    ■the flight of capital from the country and
    ■long term devaluing of our currency through simple supply-and-demand manipulations.

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