Introduction – What we are going to do here is look at a number of problems facing the USA. This article will be cynical. The idea is we are trying to illustrate the massive amount of problems they are facing so you can act accordingly.

Banks – Bank failures keep coming. People have become so conditioned to them they hardly pay attention anymore. The USA has had 29 bank failures this year so far.

Homes and Mortgages – One in every 159 USA homes received a foreclosure notice JUST in the first quarter of 2009. Shocking. There were over 800,000 foreclosures in the first quarter of 2009. March 2009 foreclosures were 46% higher than they were a year earlier. In Nevada during the first quarter of 2009 one in every 27 homes received a foreclosure notices.

Jobs Lost – Two million more jobs lost in 2009. In March alone 663,000 jobs lost. In the last 16 months 5.1 million jobs were lost, two thirds of those in the last five months. The government admits to 13 million unemployed. They tend to not count those whose unemployment benefits have run out and are still not working, those who gave up looking, and those who took part time work and those who retired early. The real figure is probably closer to 20 million or more. Obama is creating non-productive jobs in the public sector, government jobs. The private sector jobs are rapidly going away. Government jobs do not build an economy; they do not even sustain one. The real jobs are gone.

Police State – The constitution is basically being ignored by those working in the various governments that have taken an oath to enforce it. People have no rights any more. Courts no longer appoint a lawyer to those who cannot afford one. They ask the people to fill out an affidavit attesting to finances and sometimes they appoint one, sometimes not and in that case the judge is supposed to protect the rights of the defendant. Not kidding here, it is true.

The first conflict of interest is the judge is paid by the government. How is he supposed to favor a defendant against his employer? The system is flawed and now it is coming into its fullness. Now there are checkpoints inside the USA run by border patrol up to 100 miles inside the USA. Soon these checkpoints will be applied when you cross state lines and the no fly list will be enforced on people driving across state lines. The “border” checkpoints are applied to people traveling within the USA. Police search with impunity anything or anyone they want. All records Internet, bank, phone, etc are open to the government at all times.

The police have taken to using tasers on people who are reluctant to obey their verbal commands. These tasers are never used if the officer thinks his life is in jeopardy, for this they have guns. These devices are used to condition the public to blindly obey the police and rapidly with no questioning tolerated at all, zero tolerance. Tasers don’t save life; they actually kill a large amount of people each year yet they are being used (abused) by more and more police departments each month.

Crime – Crime is on the rise in the USA. Frauds are way up. One in every 31 adults is in the criminal justice system in the USA. This is the highest in the world and the true test of a police state. The streets are not safe. The people do not feel safe in their homes. Home alarm systems sales are soaring. People are buying firearms in record numbers. This year alone 1.5 billion rounds of personal ammunition were sold in the USA.

Who do you think the people are interested in protecting themselves against? Two groups – the criminals and their government. When the people feel this way as evidenced by the gun sales no government can continue. In the face of this Obama wants to push for more gun control. When the people are happy, content, the economy is good, the crime rate is low the governments never go off on a gun control campaign. The government is afraid of the people and the people are afraid of the government. This is a state that can only exist temporarily. Either the people get their freedom back through a constitutional government, secession or the government wins and the people will lose even more rights than they have now. Like what you might say.

The freedom to live where they want inside the USA, freedom of choices in healthcare, freedom to travel, freedom to communicate freely, freedom to have an uncensored internet, freedom to travel outside the country, freedom to have a convertible currency, freedom to own gold, and many other freedoms can be removed. What do you think it would take to get the government to go back to a constitutional government? Good question.

Intrinsically Flawed Political Practices – The USA was a republic. One could not vote unless one owned land. One could be free but not vote unless they owned some land. Why? The founding fathers said if we do not take this measure those with nothing would eventually vote in politicians to take our wealth from us and distribute it to them for nothing, no fair exchange of labor for funds. And what happened.

Obama is creating more public sector jobs while he is losing private sector jobs and no country can ever survive like this. The concept of corporate welfare seemed to have escaped the founding fathers but they did severely limit the government from taxing them. They also laid out rules for a gold and silver coined monetary supply to prevent the banks from owning everything they have. The government did away with this in 1913 with the Federal Reserve Act (many say this was an illegal act not correctly ratified by 2/3 of the states) and look what happened. The banks own everything and they ruined the country.

The politicians have a goal, which is to get elected and then reelected. They lie, cheat, steal, deceive and this is referred to as broken campaign promises. They get the poor people to vote for them through handouts. They get the wealthy corporations to support them through favorable laws, corporate welfare, contracts and other methods your mainstream media is never going to talk about because they are owned by these corporations. So they give out handouts for votes. Taxes go up. They print money like crazy that is worthless. The debt soars. They stifle business. New businesses do not start. Old businesses fail. Then they wind up where they are today printing more money to get votes. Problem is they have destroyed the core of the real businesses. The politicians would rather get reelected by destroying the economy instead of acting responsibly and losing the election. There are no fundamental changes coming from the politicians thus no end in sight until it collapses. It has to fail.

The Federal Reserve System – This is the core of the problem. The Federal Reserve System is a private bank owned by private owners who profit directly from this abomination created in 1913 at the same time the IRS was created which is just the collection arm of the Federal Reserve Bank. A brief explanation of this atrocity will explain why this is doomed to failure. The US Mint prints money for the Federal Reserve, which are called Federal Reserve notes but this only accounts for 3% of the money supply. The rest is computerized bookkeeping entries. Banks can loan out roughly 10 times what they have on deposit. They make money out of thin air. All the debts of the USA government, private companies and individual persons are owned by these private banks. It used to be that 20% of the tax dollars were used to pay the debt to this Federal Reserve, which winds up in the pockets of these private bankers controlling the Federal Reserve. With the recent increase in money supply this figure can go to 50% of the taxes collected. The Federal Reserve has never been audited, does not have to file a tax return and pays no taxes yet is a private corporation. Does Obama say hey lets go after the Federal Reserve and tax them to help the poor people? No he raises taxes instead. The Federal Reserve is a government-sanctioned tax haven for a select few of the elitists.

How Does the Federal Reserve Create the Damage – They buy $10,000 of US debt called treasury bills. The money the Federal Reserve uses to buy this debt is created out of thin air. They then loan this $10,000 to a bank and the bank has to pay the Federal Reserve the required fed funds interest rate. Banks refer to this as going to the fed window. The bank then loans this money to a borrower and is listed as an asset of the bank, the loan being the asset. Now the bank can make more loans using the ten times multiplier against this loan, which is listed as an asset in their flawed bookkeeping rules. This allows the banks to get interest on these loans.

More loans equals more assets and thus more loans. The more loans out there the more interest the Federal Reserve collects from the taxpayers and they call it things like national debt. It is basically impossible for the USA taxpayers to ever pay off the debt to the Federal Reserve. The banking system uses loans or debt as collateral instead of hard assets like silver and gold. This is why the constitution called for money to only be gold or silver coins so the government and the banks could not mess everything up. The Federal Reserve Bank has created slaves out of the people. How many people percentage wise in the USA understand the Federal Reserve. I would guess less than of 1%, probably closer to 1/4 of 1% best case. They do not teach this in the government run schools.

The sad thing is the money the Federal Reserve bankers got in their pockets has been used to buy buildings, land, houses, factories, airplanes, boats, cars, natural resources and governments. They converted these ill-gotten gains to hard assets that will always have value in any economic system. This is how they assure themselves the right to continue controlling things. They do know the Federal Reserve System has been milked dry and will fall apart. They do want to keep it running as long as they can. The Internet was their undoing. This is something they did not understand until it was too late. Now they are trying to pass laws to be able to shut the Internet off when they want to. There is encryption available on the Internet for voice, chat and email that they cannot break. This bothers them greatly.

What Happens If the States Quit the USA – This is brewing. The term is secession. The states are realizing that the federal government is going to take over if left unchecked. This is a threat to those in state government because they become irrelevant to the federal government. The states will be left to run the highways, sewers, bridges etc with no power, say or authority. They do not like this. They are all of a sudden sending warning signals to the federal government in the form of state bills affirming states rights and saying if the federal government over steps the powers granted to it in the constitution they will consider the federal government irrelevant, illegal and ignore them seceding from the union and forming a nation unto itself. This of course would mean voiding the Federal Reserve debt for their inhabitants.

The federal government is completely over stepping its rights and violating the rights of the states now and has been for years. The fear the states have is the federal government going to martial law and just basically telling the state governments they have become irrelevant, go home while they run everything. Obama is the right guy to have in the white house for this sort of movement. He is scared, confused, overwhelmed and bewildered; basically afraid to do anything except print money and play the I hope game. I hope I can keep it together long enough to get of this mess. Never happen, just a question of when it falls apart.

The problem is the other countries are not going to keep using the USD as a reserve currency forever. When they switch to something asset based then the US will have to buy those currency units with their low grade USD which is not asset based and the debt is ten times the USA assets. The USD will not buy many of these asset based units. This will result in hyperinflation. The USA will probably go to a more extreme police state since the standard of living will plummet to that of a third world nation fast. Think people not be able to afford hot water, air conditioning, cable TV, internet, cars, anything resembling adequate health care, beef, sea food, and even guns. Foreigners will move in to buy the cheap housing in the luxury areas that is still there. The women in the USA will be working as maids, men as gardeners, drivers, handymen, etc. Factories will popup and wages will be low, very low. People will learn to live on $100 a week. $200 a week will become low middle class and $2000 a month will be way up there. I am saying the today equivalent of the money value.

Remember housing prices are still in free fall so rents will be low. Some that have their home free and clear will keep it if they can pay the property taxes. When the cars fall apart they will not be able to afford new ones. When the currency goes to hyperinflation what is left of savings will be evaporated. Equity in houses will be greatly diminished if not completely gone. Stock market values will drop greatly. The USA labor force will be available for extremely cheap wages. USA laborers are a lot more educated and skilled that the workers found in most third world countries. That is the probable future for the USA if it does not break up into several nations. The people working for the government and on government support will not want the breakup because the handout is over for them if this happens. In this way Obama is smart in creating public sector jobs but this is only a tactic to delay the inevitable. If foreign countries will continue to treat the USD as a real currency and use it for their reserve currency in spite of how many times Obama increases the money supply, then the game works. And the chances of this are slim and none. You can only fool some of the people some of the time.

The Immigration Problem – The USA opened up the country to immigration during the 1960’s. They picked up 100,000,000 people legally and perhaps another 20,000,000 who are there illegally. These people came to the USA for a variety of reasons. Many of them came to exploit the USA. They paid as little in taxes as they could preferring to work off the books. They did a poor job of fitting in to mainstream America instead living in enclaves with each other from their respective countries. They did not grow up in America. Their children became dual nationals and spoke two or more languages and were multi-cultural. Their children were not really American; they were learning to exploit the system. Their children never went into the military and fought for the country. They were there to take and not give. Some of these people had it better in the USA but they viewed the USA as a sucker country to be exploited. The USA offered them free education, medical, welfare, disability, retirement and freedoms.

America used to be free a few decades ago. When people came to the USA in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s they came to work hard and have a better life. There were no handouts, no social programs. They were there to sweat and toil to have a free and better life. This was not the case with the immigrants coming in the last few decades. Sure some did believe in hard work and elevating themselves up the right way but the majority were there to exploit the system. These people eventually got the right to vote. What do they want from their politicians – a handout? Benefits, public sector jobs, the ability to use their mother tongue in the USA system etc. Eventually this too took its toll.

These new voters had little idea of what being an American was. This was not their land, their culture, their language, their race and often their religions were very foreign to the USA. They did not fit in and integrate. This further fed the desire to exploit the system. They asked what they could get out of the system as easily as possibly and had no interest in growing the country. They favored higher taxes for more handouts. They had little regard for the business community having not even a superficial appreciation for how a free economy functions. If there were no politicians offering these handouts for votes none of these people would ever be in the USA. There is no end in sight to this policy. They are talking about legitimatize the illegal aliens and getting them to be tax-paying voters. More handouts for votes. Problem is this has already gotten so far out of hand there is not more core businesses left to support these handouts. So what do they do? They keep printing money and make public sector jobs and these jobs pay taxes and this money goes to handouts. Does not work. They hit the brick wall. You can get into a recession by over spending but cannot spend your way out of one. End game has arrived.

What Should You Do – The first answer is to diversify your assets and do that outside of any police state. Hold several different currencies, gold, and real estate outside the USA. This only works if you do not get locked inside the USA. Judging by the way things are moving this will probably happen sooner than later. Leave now while you can. You can always come back later if it gets better.

State Secession – Pay attention to states secession. Many of you will want to run to any of the states that drop out of the union. Freedoms beyond your wildest dreams, constitutional governments, fair and honest courts, one language government, law and order, honest government, real money supply, minimal government, very low taxes, no red tape in government, no government handout programs, no handouts to foreign governments that are awful dictators, schools teaching the truth so this never happens again, etc. Such a government will cause businesses to thrive and prosper beyond your wildest dreams and fast too.

These states are going to restrict immigration. Montana will have no obligation to accept people from Texas or New York if they become their own nation. Smart people will be going now to the states getting ready to secede and get driver licenses, residencies now. Set up a few in the states most likely to drop out. Keep your money offshore and then when the states that have dropped out set up their money supply and banks then you can repatriate the money.

The USA as it was forty years ago will never ever return. The best hope is the states seceding from the union. There you can have a chance for a real free and prosperous life with some hard work. The people will remember the mess the USA became and take great pains to stop it from happening again. The people working in the public sector with jobs paying $90,000 a year in some cases that are just paper pushers will never want to leave what they have. For them it works. Well it won’t for long but they will never want to believe it will ever come to an end and they do not know enough to understand what is going on. These are bureaucrats that contribute nothing to anything. Those benefiting from the government handouts will not want anything to change.

The bottom line is the states leaving the union will not have these drains on their economy. What happens to these people is a good question. I expect the majority of them over time will realize it is time to get to work in a productive way or starve. I think some one who sat like a bump on a log in some government building pushing papers for 20 years with eight weeks vacation, 12 days sick leave, medical, dental, retirement, freedom from termination, no worries about how business is doing, and getting double or triple what their friends and neighbors make in a bad economy, well this person is always going to want to go back to the way things were. The problem with secession is the people in these states that benefit from the government programs and jobs do not want to leave the union, some states will at least attempt to leave and some probably will. Some states will probably group together and merge into new nations.

A lot of new immigrants will probably return to their home country or look elsewhere for a handout nation where the politicians sell handouts for votes. For secession Obama is the perfect President, could not ask for a better choice when it comes to breaking up the USA into individual nations. Let’s see what happens.

Montana has drawn a line in the sand with their new gun law. This allows companies in Montana to manufacture guns and sell them in Montana free of any federal controls. Guns are the thorn in the side of oppressive governments. Montana is hitting them where it hurts most to see what happens. Obama will more than likely do nothing not risking an encounter with Montana. Montana residents will grab a gun and enforce their rights and this attitude is not something Obama wants to tangle with. More states will follow suit with gun laws and other laws. Eventually they will get around to sacred cow tipping like taxes, coining their own money, setting up their own banks immune form the fed, restricting federal powers in their state etc. Georgia in a bill they passed said the federal government only has the right under the constitution to arrest people for Treason, Piracy and Slavery. Posse comitatus used to apply to federal agents. The original FBI agents did not carry guns, bet you did not know that.

Here’s a good question. Where will the tax police, agriculture police, border police, transportation police, park police, forest police, gun police, food and drug police, judges that do not follow the law etc. go to live if the USA breaks up? Not sure anyone would want them, tolerate having them, or trust them knowing their skill sets and training in these states that have seceded. Good question, huh.

-Aurelia Masterson, www.panamalaw.org

Introduction – When we surf through the web we see many entities selling American Trusts, Corporations and other structures that they consider to be asset protection strategies. These run the gamut of corporations in the states of Wyoming, Delaware or Nevada, trusts of various types in different jurisdictions and other structures all based in the USA.

What is wrong here is that nothing in the USA can protect you from an aggressive judge who feels your assets should be seized to satisfy some sort of debt or perceived debt. You are subject to the mercy of any Judge who may or may not be following the law. Now if the Judge over steps his bounds you are faced with paying massive legal bills to correct the situation in the appeals process. Your odds of winning an appeal are probably under 1%. Ask some of these law firms that do these asset protection structures what their rate per hour is going to be to try and protect your assets if they come under attack from a financial enemy of yours. Figure on rates starting at $325.00 per hour (very low) and going up to $1250.00 per hour for a partner in a top–drawer law firm in the USA. Ouch.

So the point is judges do not always follow the law in this country therefore no asset protection structure is going to be very protective. Litigation in the USA is too prevalent and expensive to allow one to comfortably use this jurisdiction for asset protection. The legal expenses of defending the asset protection structure can wipe out your assets. If you locate your assets offshore the odds of ever having to defend them against a financial adversary are miniscule.

USA Private Detectives – Now we can talk about private detectives in America getting bank information, credit card information, phone records etc. Go look at the ads on the Internet and call these private detectives up, they even take credit cards. The credit card fraud perpetrators use these people to get dossiers on potential victims they are going to fleece through an identity theft scam, and they even use stolen credit cards to pay for the files for their next victims. They will get your bank statements, cell phone statements and bills, phone bills and records, credit reports, driving records, public records – just about anything you wish to pay for. Big law firms have retainer relationships with private detectives.

We can also go on to discuss identity theft from security violations perpetrated by private detectives concerning bank accounts, credit cards, public records. If you vest your Panama real estate in the name of an anonymous bearer share corporation how could that possibly help someone do an identity theft on you? If your bank accounts were covered by bank secrecy laws wouldn’t that help insulate you from identity theft? If your credit card came from a bank under bank secrecy laws wouldn’t that help protect you? Panama is a much safer place legally and practically.

Confiscation of Funds and Assets – Next problem is civil court ordered pre–trial confiscation of funds. This can happen in a civil matter such as divorce. Remember any judge on a Federal, State, County or City level can pretty much get at any asset located anywhere in the USA. Usually this is a temporary hold or confiscation pending some court date but could be permanent in theory and/or practice. They usually refer to these actions as liens, levies, seizures, garnishments, attachments, and even injunctive relief. The terms vary with the jurisdiction. In the USA some government agencies can confiscate funds without taking you to court, thus no trial, no being judged guilty by a court of your peers, no due process, no trial by judge etc.

There are other government agencies that would need to get a court order to confiscate your funds in a civil matter and other assets but the courts tend to listen hard to these agencies and usually give them what they want which is going to be your assets. There are no really anonymous corporations in the USA. There is no bank secrecy or privacy at all. There is really no secure way to protect your assets from confiscation from any judge for any reason the judge deems lawful in his or her opinion as a jurist. Sure you might be able to go to court later on after the confiscation and convince a judge to return all or some of your assets but with what funds are you going to pay for your legal defense since your bank accounts, real estate etc is now all frozen.

Now you have to convince a lawyer to take your case hoping he can get the judge to allow your money to be used to pay for your legal defense. These lawyers that want to confiscate your funds without you even getting to give any testimony don’t even want you to be able to pay for your defense. They will argue that they are so sure of winning it is a waste of money to let you use the funds to pay for a high–powered law firm. How can there be asset protection in this legal environment? The ONLY way to accomplish asset protection where the USA is concerned is to liquidate the assets and move the funds offshore where the money is placed in a corporate or foundation bank account, stock brokerage account or into real estate in Panama.

USA Civil Lawyers Methods – Let me explain what an Ex–Parte proceeding is to start off. It is a legal proceeding where one of the other parties is not present and probably does not even know such a proceeding is taking place, usually the defendant. Let us assume you “feel” you have a good case in a court of law against a person or corporation. You hire a reputable law firm and prepare a complaint with whatever evidence you may or may not have. Next you file a complaint but do not serve the complaint and at the same time file an emergency motion with the court for an Ex Parte hearing in the Judges chambers in private, before the other party even knows you are suing them. You basically tell the Judge that you feel you have an excellent chance of winning and you are most concerned that the defendant will attempt to flee with their assets when the lawsuit commences thus causing you irreparable harm in that the money damages you suffered will then never be recoverable from this alleged culprit who has never had a chance to say one word in his or her defense so far. You then ask the court to freeze the defendant’s bank accounts, real estate and other property of the defendant so the defendant cannot flee with the assets thus allowing you to recover your debt when the court rules in your favor, which you are so very sure, they will do. You of course post a bond to cover any damages in case you lose. This plays much better when you are using a large politically active law firm. Now it is going to be an unlikely event that you lose since your adversary now has all his money frozen so how is he or she going to pay for an adequate legal defense.

Essentially the victim (defendant) is suffering as if he were broke, all before he had a trial in court, and in this case even before he knew anyone is even suing him let alone having been convicted by a jury of his peers. Imagine you wake up one morning find all your bank accounts, stock brokerage accounts, and real estate all frozen by a court as a result of an ex–parte motion. Your cars, boats, planes have been towed away by the sheriff, all based on the allegations of some large rich corporation or plaintiff claiming you did something to them in a secret tribunal with the judge.

Secret tribunals are a very bad thing for asset protection. If the defendant argues that he needs the money for defense the plaintiff argues that it is going to be a waste of time and money to let the defendant blow money that should go to them on a legal defense, which will never prevail. They are arguing to prevent the fair trial by jury guarantees provided in the constitution and instead substituting in unconstitutional confiscation without due process and secret tribunals all of which are acceptable practices these days.

So now the defendant is essentially broke, how can he manage his business and retain adequate legal counsel? Mind you all of this happened without the defendant ever having a chance to defend himself in court. What if the plaintiff forged or falsified evidence against the defendant? This is one–tactic wealthy corporations and individuals employ against small business people that get in their way.

Don’t let your lawyer tell you this is rarely done. If it happens to you they will still insist it is rare. It is a common procedure in the USA just restricted to those who can afford to pay large law firms unscrupulous enough to do it. To your lawyer it may be rare because your lawyer doesn’t work in a firm with 750 other lawyers defending billion dollar conglomerates that routinely will spend a few million dollars on a legal case. Most of the Internet giants do this in their litigation; look up their court cases to see it happening. Government regulatory agencies have a very similar way of doing this in the court system as well. It operates slightly more openly but has the same effect – frozen assets before you get your day in court thus preventing you from operating your business and mounting a good legal defense since you have no money.

The Summary Judgment Scam – This is another one unscrupulous tactic lawyers use to get your assets away from you. They file a case in court and serve you. They wait the 20 or 30 days for you to respond. Assuming you respond with a denial or rebuttal against the claim they then file a summary judgment motion. The argument will be your defense is frivolous and you cannot possibly win and thus it is a waste of the courts time to allow this case to proceed to a full trial. It is a way to guarantee that you never win. They want the judge to summarily dismiss your counter claim if you filed one and summarily award the case to the plaintiff.

The more ethical use of this procedure is when the defendant is properly served and ignores the complaint. Thus the defendant is not fighting back so why have a full trial and waste the courts time and money. In a summary judgment you have no chance to confront witnesses against you, or be tried before a jury of your peers, not even a trail before a judge. No day in court for you. These summary judgment motions are nasty in that they in themselves are often unfounded and designed to make the defendant (you) spend money to defend against them. Sometimes in the course of a civil case there could be seven or eight summary judgment motions all of which are expensive to defend against. If the plaintiff decides to run up a legal bill by taking numerous depositions the defense could decide to ignore going to the depositions thinking these witnesses are basically irrelevant and thus saving money.

A dangerous game for sure but if the other side is taking depositions frivolously to run up a bill on both sides (common tactic) and one has limited funds you could still stay in the game by conserving funds and ignoring the depositions letting the plaintiff go to the depositions themselves. You could also ignore overly broad subpoenas served on the defendants or on witnesses. Rather than filing protective orders to restrict the discovery power of the plaintiff back to being on point you could elect to let them run wild on fishing trips to save money and you would still be alive in the lawsuit awaiting trial where you could win. The summary judgment motion cannot be ignored. To ignore it means an automatic loss for you. Technically if you had an ethical judge and you were defending yourself the judge would look at the summary judgment motion and protect your rights. While operating pro per (acting as your own attorney) may help spare you from a summary judgment your odds of winning at trial would be statistically extremely low, too low for wisdom.

Running Up the Legal Bill – Many lawyers practice this as an integral part of their practice in the USA. They bring the other side to their knees for a settlement by making the litigation very expensive. Forget the facts, the fight now becomes surviving the lawsuit long enough to make it to trial and thus pre–trial preparation is likely to suffer greatly. If you can’t keep paying the lawyers, you will not make it to trial (think summary judgment) and lose. The ways of them doing this are numerous. They must always appear to be legitimate in their quest for useful knowledge to help them make their case or the judge may award sanctions against them for filing frivolous motions (rarely ever awarded). The lawyers that practice this are expert at it since this is how they practice law. Below are some methodologies that are used to run up the legal bill for the other side. Of course these practices favor the one with the most money. Essentially with offshore asset protection we are reversing the game and making the plaintiff spend a big fortune if they want to chase your assets to Panama or Guatemala with little or no chance of success.

Excessive Discovery – All sorts of records are subpoenaed. Tons of witnesses are set for deposition. In one instance the large law firm set a witness for deposition every day for several months continuously, knowing it would shut down the small lawyers practice. He had to go to court and was fortunate enough to get the judge to limit the depositions to one per week but this dragged everything out much longer. All sorts of records are subpoenaed. This is to bait you to spend money limiting the discovery. All sorts of motions are made up. Some motions will have names never to be found in any law books. The large firms have databases of all sorts of motions they have gotten away with over the years.

Emergency Arbitration – This is a real gem. Here the plaintiff drags you and your expensive lawyers in to try to settle. Judges love this stuff since it can clear their calendar. If you are far from the court it can really run up your bill. Very wasteful way to get legal bills high.

Long Trials – Plaintiffs ask for many days for trial. This makes it harder to get on the calendar and drag things out longer so hopefully more discovery can take place, which means bigger legal bills. Courts have found ways to streamline litigation but lawyers have also found ways to get things perverted again so they can run up the legal bills.

Venue Shopping – Plaintiffs try to file their lawsuits in a jurisdiction that will be the most expensive for you to defend in or where they can have the best chance of winning due to prejudices based on the past rulings of the court. Courts and Judges do not like to reverse on themselves. There is even a way where they can file in a federal court for violation of state civil laws. Imagine that, sounds incredible to get a federal court to enforce a state law but have seen it done successfully. They do this to get a judgment that they can enforce anywhere in the USA and also to take advantage of the way the courts have ruled on sensitive issues in this district in the past. If you have to hire counsel thousands of miles away it gets expensive. Then add in all the travel time they can inconvenience you with like with their emergency arbitration, regular arbitration, and the 25 day trial itself for which your lawyer charges $3000 to $25,000 per trial day.

John Doe Lawsuits – Do you know what a John Doe lawsuit is? I will explain this unusual tool of legal chicanery that we know works in the USA.

Let us say you are a large billion dollar corporation and you feel you have been harmed in some way but are not able to identify the party or parties responsible for the tortuous act. Say someone has been violating copyright protected material of yours by distributing it for free or for gain. You file a lawsuit in Federal Court against John Does 1–99 stating that you will identify the actual defendants, as their identities are uncovered in the course of discovery. You send a law clerk down to the courthouse and he has the court clerk officially stamp the lawsuit and now this lawsuit is live. OK now you have the subpoena power of the federal court at your disposal and there is no opposing counsel to block your subpoenas and depositions. There is no opposing counsel because the people you are suing have no idea they are going to be sued and you are not yet sure who they are or if you can even sue them yet.

So you go about your merry way issuing subpoenas for bank accounts, phone records, stock brokerage accounts, insurance records, internet records (like every website they ever visited, all email sent – yes the big ISP’s there keep copies of all this forever), credit card bills, email accounts, etc. all very lawful USA subpoenas and the judge has no idea you are issuing these subpoenas unless he decides to read the files (not likely with no opposition) and there is no opposing counsel to fight to protect the privacy of the records on behalf of their client. The company receiving the subpoena has no obligation in the USA to let the customer (think phone, bank, credit card, credit bureaus, or internet records) know that a subpoena has been served on them requesting your records. They prefer not to tell you so they do not get caught up in a fight over the records and then they may have to retain their own lawyer and run up a bill.

If it is a lawful subpoena they can just submit to it and have no liability unless there is some sort of agreement in place to notify you or protect your privacy, which would be most rare. The lawyer might even take a few witness depositions to get the facts explained in more detail. The judge need not individually approve these subpoenas for them to be valid. Normally subpoena copies are sent to the opposing counsel who can make a motion to block or limit them called a protective order. Here with a John Doe lawsuit there is no opposing counsel to get in the way of the plaintiff who can run amuck using the power of the court to get all sorts of records violating the privacy of countless people without their knowledge.

What a great tool if you are an unscrupulous lawyer. By the way this tool could be used against you at any time to get your bank records, phone records, internet records, email copies, credit card bills etc all without your knowledge lawfully. This probably does not make you feel warm and mushy inside about having assets in the USA. So basically you don’t even need to sue a real person or corporation to get to use the subpoena power of the mighty US Federal Courts.

This works best in the Federal Courts by the way but could be applied to some state and local courts. Remember the entity being served with the subpoena like the bank or stock broker has no obligation to tell you the owner of the bank account that a subpoena was served on them for your records and they could even be ordered to keep their mouth shut so as to prevent flight with the assets. Another fine example of the sheer lack of privacy and asset protection laws in the USA whereby a stranger can examine your bank records based on a lawsuit with nobody.

If you haven’t thought of it consider what happens to your bank records after the opposing law firm has lawfully obtained them. Can they enter them as evidence into the lawsuit and thus make them public record? Sure. They enter them as evidence and file the copies of the bank records, phone bills, internet records like all your emails, every website the logs show you visited, credit card bills, stockbroker records all in the courthouse into the file. This file is a lawsuit against no one but still they got it into the public records where it could be picked up and put on the Internet, in newspapers etc. Once the information gets into the public domain anyone can use it lawfully, yes even law enforcement agencies for criminal prosecutions. Can they share this information with others? Good question to ask yourself now, not after something like this happens to you.

Defendants Fight Back – To illustrate the absurdity of their civil court system gone amuck we will site some unethical tactics that defendants use against the big law firms and Judges who favor the big firms.

Recusing the Judge – A recusal is a court action where you motion the judge to remove themselves for some reason usually pertaining to his bias or lack of objectivity (prejudicial) in the case. The motion must be presented to the judge at first. A judge will rarely recuse himself or herself. If they know one of the parties in their private life they would probably recuse themselves. Appellate courts are slow to reverse a judge who refuses to recuse himself unless there is overwhelming evidence. An example would be he was once married to one of the parties in the case. So if the big slick law firm got a judge for a reason then you can recuse the judge if you have grounds, which is rare.

What is done is the defendant files a lawsuit against the judge, which now gives objective grounds for a recusal and then asks the judge to recuse himself. The judge may get mad and try to get a summary judgment dismissing the case but then again you and the judge were still adversaries in a lawsuit and recusal is proper and if the judge refused the appellate court would probably grant the recusal.

Suing the Opposing Counsel – In this scenario one side starts personal lawsuits against the opposing counsel. This lets them take depositions and is mostly to harass the lawyers. Sometimes they even sue the wife and relatives of the lawyers. A dangerous and expensive game reserved for wealthy people but it does go on. This illustrates the actual absurdity of the court systems in that country.

Locking the Other Side Out From Decent Counsel – If you live in a small town this can work. Lets say it is a divorce case. Before filing for divorce go visit all the competent divorce lawyers in the city. Have a paid consultation with them to discuss the case. Explain some non–essential particulars to them and make sure you take notes at the meeting. Then when the other party to the divorce finds out they are being divorced they go out and look for a good lawyer and find out you have created a conflict of interest with all the experienced lawyers in the area. This drives them to go out of town. The out of town lawyer will generally as a rule do worse in court than a local lawyer who knows the judges and how they like to run their courtroom. Again another manifestation of a judicial system run out of control by aggressive lawyers.

USA Trusts and USA Corporations – I know one can argue that their USA trust or corporation is not responsible for personal debts and there are court cases to back this up. Then inquire as to how much money it is going to cost you to defend the asset protection strategy against aggressive collection lawyers who know just how to make it real expensive for you to defend against them so as to bring about a painfully expensive settlement. Unless you have many millions it will not be cost effective to fight. It is a legal jungle in the USA and we cannot see any daylight in trying to protect assets in the USA using any USA based vehicle including trusts, corporations, foundations etc.

USA Real Estate Asset Protection – We get calls constantly from people who want to change the title of real estate from their own name into the name of a Panama Corporation or Foundation to shelter the asset from litigation. This can be done but is probably not going to accomplish too much in terms of asset protection unless the other side is sloppy, careless and does not have much money to spend.

The lawyers pursuing you will be curious that you no longer own a house you live in that you used to own. They will find out about it from credit reports, public record checks, having private detectives talk to neighbors, and other means. Then they will ask you if you sold the house? If so where are the sale proceeds, where was the escrow etc. They will smell a rat and eventually will ask you questions in deposition and then go to the judge and ask the judge to set the transfer aside as a fraudulent transfer in that the property was not really sold it was just a straw man transaction to avoid creditors attaching the asset and also stick you with the additional legal expense they incurred setting the transaction aside. The judge may want to hear from the Panama Corporation before he sets the transfer aside but that isn’t going to do much good unless there is an actual escrow and real money changed hands and then they are going to ask you where the money you got from the sale is now.

The same thing would happen in the case of putting a mortgage on the property through a Panama Corporation. Where was the escrow? What did you do with the money, etc? Their plan would be to have the judge set the mortgage aside as fraudulent allowing the creditor to take the real estate away to satisfy a debt. If a piece of real estate never in your name was acquired through a Panama Corporation and paid for from Panama and your name never came up in any escrow etc then that would be hard for a collection attorney to associate with you and could be overlooked. The collection attorney could take your deposition and ask you questions about any and all assets you had if there is a judgment. This is post–judgment discovery and could occur in the form of interrogatories (written questions) about your assets including any assets transferred or sold in the last few months or sometimes they go back a year or longer depending on the state laws (they call this a look back period).

We never advocate lying as part of an asset protection strategy. This sort of lying is perjury, which is generally criminal so that is not a viable plan. They will ask about any corporations you own. If a structure can be created to let you survive the questioning without lying you would be ok. Not easily done and we are not going to get into this with someone inquiring on the phone or by email who is not a paid client even if they say things like “We are not going to pay you if we do not know what you are going to suggest we do”. Sorry we will remain non–responsive to such queries, which are reserved for paid clients only. The safest position is to liquidate real estate and move the funds to a safe jurisdiction. Hopefully, this is done before any court orders are issued.

USA Attorneys and Conflict of Interest – In the USA if you go to an attorney and ask them to help you shelter your assets offshore they are going to be unlikely to help you do it effectively or even take you as a client. Why?

First of all they do not understand the offshore world in all likelihood. The laws are different than what they are used to. Secondly they cannot operate offshore and must retain an offshore law firm in the jurisdiction they would need to operate in. This means they could get sued in the USA for something the offshore law firm did that the mutual client did not like. Thirdly if the client is evading a debt and the lawyer does a good job of protecting the assets he can be sued in the USA for assisting in a fraudulent conveyance. A fraudulent conveyance is an act whereby assets are removed from the reach of a creditor to avoid attachment.

What a creditor is, is ill defined in the USA. It could be adjudicated that there was a fraudulent conveyance even though there is no judgment or court order. The reasoning is you should have known that there was a likelihood of being sued or if you were sued it would be likely that you would lose. So even if you were in an active and costly legal defense and moved assets offshore it could be argued that you were doing so to fraudulently convey the assets out of the reach of the person that might one day be a creditor. Please note that not all movements of capital offshore are fraudulent conveyances. One can relocate their domicile offshore, one could buy real estate offshore, make investments offshore, start or buy a business offshore etc. The burden of proof should be on the plaintiff to prove that the movement of assets was to take the assets out of the reach of the creditor and if you could show other reasons why the funds were put into another jurisdiction then the case is far harder for the plaintiff to win and of course much more expensive. If it comes out in the debt recovery case that the lawyer assisted the client in moving assets offshore and then the lawyer is complicit and gets sued. Remember the lawyer most likely has malpractice insurance, which means he has deep pockets. Just getting sued means the malpractice carrier will minimally raise the rates on the lawyer or drop him, this is America and that is how things work there.

What the USA “asset protection” lawyer will most likely try to do is put the client into some sort of a superficial USA based asset protection structure. This will not be effective against many classes and types of financial adversaries. The lawyer gets to charge you legal fees and earn some money. If you wind up losing your assets in court the lawyer hides behind the decision of the court to take away your assets and thus avoids any liability or exposure. After people hear the features and benefits of these USA based asset protection structures they generally do not think to ask how much it would cost to defend the structure against an attack. They also do not ask what types of an attack can be effective against getting the assets in such a structure. The list is long. The USA lawyers will not appreciate such a discourse in that it starts to expose them to liability. You will hear things like each case has its own merits, etc. You are not going to hear anything with certainty. There are lawyers who specialize in busting trusts and asset protection structures in the USA. Sometimes it can be cheaper to settle with these lawyers versus drawn out fights using law firms who bill at $650 an hour and they know this and take advantage of it. The worst part of it is that nothing in the USA will keep your assets out of reach from snooping private detectives. Once assets can be tied to you then you become a target for trouble. Private detectives get nowhere in the offshore world.

Obstructing Justice Charges Against Your Lawyer – If your lawyer in the USA is representing you in some action where the plaintiff is a governmental agency (City, County, State or Federal) the lawyer could be charged with obstructing justice. If the case seems frivolous to the prosecutor and the judge who coincidentally get paid from the same employer, decide that the defendant really has no case and mounting a defense is just running up expenses and dragging things out then the lawyer representing you can be told that he is about to be charged with obstructing justice. The prosecutor could just outright so charge your lawyer if they desired to do so. This would mean the lawyer now has a conflict of interest with you and would have to step off the case. This would mean much greater legal expenses for you. Imagine trying to convince a lawyer to step in and represent you after this happened.

Offshore Asset Protection – In Panama and Guatemala lawyer games like those described above do not exist. Corporate and foundation assets belong to the corporation or foundation. Tagging on personal debts is extremely difficult to prove and there are tight statues of limitation concerning such fraudulent conveyances to defraud creditors (three years). USA lawyers cannot practice in Panama or Guatemala; they need to retain a local lawyer if they ever wanted to do anything in these countries. Government agencies from foreign countries have no levy, attachment or confiscatory powers in Panama or Guatemala. You and your assets are much safer in Panama or Guatemala.

-Aurelia Masterson, www.panamalaw.org

Executive Summary - This data comes from USA today, not out of thin air. In the last year the USA took on 6.8 trillion dollars in more debt. The total is now 63.8 trillion dollars. This figure is four times what the average household in the USA owes on all their debts including mortgages, credit cards, student loans, car loans, etc. The amount of debt owed per household if we add in estimated debts other than what is owed to the fed we get an estimate of $682,000. If we run the interest on this at say 5%, which is a low estimate for sure, we get $34,000 a year and this is interest only with no repayment of principal.

If we ran the repayment of each household debt like a mortgage, say 30 years fully amortized at 5% we would get a monthly payment of $3661.12 which is $43,933.44 per year. After this the people need money for food, clothing, medical, transportation electric, heat, phones, education, etc. The point is there is no way that the people in the USA are ever going to pay this amount of indebtedness back without hyperinflation. Also bear in mind using a 5% interest figure is very low, a more real aggressive calculation would use a higher interest rate. So the stage is set for some form of economic disaster.

Discussion - There is no real way out of this mess for the USA. Borrowing and more spending is only going to drag it out for a very brief period of time. The world leaders know the USD is worthless. When the leaders of the world stop using and accepting the USD and want to get paid in other currencies then the US will have to convert their US dollars to other currencies. As they print more dollars, the exchange value of the dollar drops accordingly. Then hyperinflation sets in. This can mean gas is $12 a gallon, bread $8 a loaf.

When the hyperinflation really gets going then gas can be $45 a gallon. Savings get wiped out. More and more money gets printed. The federal debt gets repaid with cheaper money. Wages never keep up with inflation, never ever. This balances the books on paper. Now the USA would be in full third world status. The gov’t would impose currency controls and Americans would not be allowed to hold, pay or accept foreign currency in the USA. USA real estate would become a steal for foreigners if they did not mind living in a police state. Foreigners could come to the US and hire Americans paying them with cheap USD and then exporting the products for harder currencies.

Remember social security, retirement etc will be paid with these cheap dollars so USA people will be desperate fro work. Many of the non-productive government jobs will be gone altogether. The laid off workers who never really ever had to work in a productive job will be going crazy. The message from the police state will be work or starve. This is another reason why the police state must have a tight grip. People would still have their pensions and would be lucky if they could eat at a fast food burger joint a few times a month due to hyperinflation. Medical care will be a mess. Why? Did you ever consider the doctors leaving for greener pastures? Same for computer programmers, engineers, pharmacists, nurses, skilled and licensed medical equipment operators like MRI, respiratory therapists, physical therapists, architects, professional athletes, scientists, pilots, and other people who have transferable skills able to find work in other nations.

Those that worked for government in nonproductive jobs as bureaucrats are going to find that no one has need of them. The window for this to happen is not going to remain open much longer. The USA is so close to locking down their borders now, they could close the nation in hours, not days. Remember that once the USA locks down many Americans are going to overstay their tourist visas in other lands not wanting to return. The other nations will very shortly start requiring formal visas for Americans to visit. To shut the border all they have to do is impose exit visa requirements on the people leaving. This seems to be just right around the corner. One would need to file an exit visa application before leaving the USA. You would have to state the purpose of your trip. They would want assurances that you would be returning. This would be showing things like you own a house, land, businesses; you are leaving spouse and children behind etc. The USSR did this.

The USA does this in reverse for people seeking a visa to visit the USA so they are really quite good at it. If you cannot show a lot of reasons why you would return then you would not get the visa to leave. Before an exit visa system has any teeth the borders must first be locked down for exit and entrance. This they have already down. They even have checkpoints 100 miles inside the country near the borders. I do not know how 100 miles can be near a border. It should take one at least an hour and a half to drive 100 miles. If the USA does not shut down the country tight when the dollar starts to really drop then all their resources will leave. All the highly trained and educated people will be heading out. This will make it hard to find suitable skilled labor to run businesses on the soon coming greatly reduced wages.

Remember foreigners coming to the USA to start business and inject hard currency capital into the USA are not going to want to hear about equal opportunity employer, OSHA, Workmen’s compensation, discrimination for sex, race, religion age etc. These things have to go or the businesses won’t come. They will want to make money or will go elsewhere. If they do not go to exit visas people will depart from the USA with their cars (to Mexico and Canada), their boats, their airplanes, their precious metals and jewelry and of course their cash. None of this is in the best interest for the government so they will put a tight lid on this. The USA will have to change. People will not like the changes, thus the police state. Now there are other variables that might screw up the plans of the USA. Name one thing they have done right in the last 50 years? See what I mean. These would be their plans. What they actually accomplish will never be what they want. In any event when the USD drops the government will become more radical in their actions as a police state. This writer thinks there is a maximum of 12 months or so. Nations like China, Russia, Brazil, India and others are converting their USD holdings into productive resources. When this is over (12 months or so) there will not be a lot of demand for USD anymore. That is when the real trouble will start for the USD, this is nothing compared with what is to come.

Summary – The dollar has a doomed future. It is not going to make any real recoveries. Get out of it now while it is still worth something. It is 100% impossible to spend your way out of a recession caused by excessive debt like Obama is trying. Never happen. As you can see Obama has still not yet even got the falling of the economy to stop yet and this is because his approach is incorrect and the plunge may continue for some time, before it goes into free fall. The window to leave the USA with what you have is still open, take advantage of it.

Countries converting to police states leave the exit door open for a while as they are tightening their grip. They encourage educated politically minded people to leave. This is done subtly, not openly. They don’t want you there. They are dumbing down the future labor force and do not want dissidents around. The business environment goes bad first (already there). More and more non-productive jobs are created as the businesses fail and their productive jobs disappear (already there). Business owners get disgusted and fed up with regulations, taxes, increasing lawsuits, increasing bankruptcies, judges becoming more irrational, and police powers expanding (we are already here but not in the fullness yet). These educated aware people start to leave (we are already here but not yet in the fullness).

Socialism increases thus driving out more of those who understand what is going on because they know socialism never works and always results in a police state (already here). The last push comes from crime. The government starts to go easy on criminals. All the federal agents are protecting the government from you, not you from criminals. The agents run around putting people in jail for breaking regulatory statues, not for crimes against person or property where there is a real victim (already here). The criminals tend to not waste a lot of time and energy with the lower classes instead focusing on those with some assets (not yet here but crime will rise as the economy fails, always does).

The very wealthy are either part of the police state or gone by this point in time. Wealthy people travel internationally a lot. They are used to foreign cultures. It is easiest for them to go. People that stay in the USA are going to be more like the frog boiling in water, while those familiar with foreign lands will have a broad perspective and see the changes for what they really represent. Soon you will see criminals victimize you and are by and large not really brought to justice. Police just take reports, no efforts at apprehension. If you are seeing this you waited too long to get out. Now you might be able to still get out but your assets are probably not going with you.

The next step is a full third world corrupt law enforcement community as the enforcement arm of a full-blown corrupt and dishonest police state. The USA may never get this far. It may fall apart before which is the consensus from numerous experts. If it falls apart the Federal Reserve debt will be defaulted on. The banks will be gone. People will just own their homes. What happens to renters is a good question. Under these circumstances the USD will go the route of the confederate dollar after the south lost the war, completely worthless, as were their bonds. The stock market will also crash completely since the Federal Reserve drives it. Law and disorder is likely to prevail as states join together to form new nations. The unproductive sector of the economy will not have a home. The welfare state will be gone for many decades if not centuries. There is going to be a lot of gangs, and crime. Think the breakup of the USSR. People will be poor. Healthcare will be minimal if at all present. Expect some years of this.

The USA will bounce back much faster and stronger than the USSR since capitalism was foreign to the USSR and they had to figure it out on the fly. The problem is no one knows how hard the police state is going to fight to retain control when things get bad. I would say they would fight all the way, no limits. In any event the potential for some ugly years that are so bad people will suppress the memories for the rest of their life, are on the way. States rights and secession will only be a painless exit if the fed does not fight tooth and nail to retain control. Remember they never accept any blame for anything. They never make mistakes. Do you think Obama will just let the states go ahead and leave?