The following comment from ConfederateH is noteworthy:
I agree, it is far worse than just bumbling; there is a coordinated assault against US persons with any remaining wealth. Check out this new one from Mark Steyn.
I flew in to Montreal from an overseas trip the other day and was met by a lady from my office, who had kindly greed to drive me back home to New Hampshire. At the airport she seemed a little rattled, and it emerged that on her journey from the Granite State she had encountered a “security check” on the Vermont–Quebec border. U.S. officials had decided to impose temporary exit controls on I-91 and had backed up northbound traffic so that agents could ascertain from each driver whether he or she was carrying “monetary instruments” in excess of $10,000. My assistant was quizzed by an agent dressed in the full Robocop and carrying an automatic weapon, while another with a sniffer dog examined the vehicle.
Or this one from Jim Willie (Firestorms & Currency Twisters; ConfederateH’s emphasis):
3) The attack on money market funds is moving apace, in a stealth capital control concept. Systemic risk is posed by a run on money market funds. Oddly, money market funds are no longer the staid boring type sitting on an inert shelf. They are suddenly not cash, by official declaration. The Powerz cannot afford to see that liquidity removed. An attack on the $2.7 trillion in money market funds has come in response. The money market funds serve as scarce capital, a liquidity source that holds together the insolvent banking system. Given how money market funds are the last pool of liquidity that holds together the entire Western banking system, it is under attack to stay put. New rules could force a maintenance of a minimum amount in each account. The new rule concept is called Minimum Balance at Risk (MBR) and is direct capital control applied domestically within the United States. The MBR would be a small fraction (like 5 percent) of each shareholder’s recent balances that could be redeemed but with a delay.
Capital controls are coming and the homelanders are going to get a much needed lesson about the true intents of their government.
This way they can also check US citizens who are coming to Canada for their cottage vacation on Georgian Bay, to see if they owe anything on the IRS account. Later, they will prevent people from leaving, unless the IRS has given them a clean bill of “paid in full”.
Currency has a unique odor and the dogs are trained to detect it.
The Obama administration is not so much interested in stopping arms traffick, since they made sure that illegal firearms made it to Mexico in the Fast and Furious scandal.
It is perhaps time to remind folks everyone about this post that I put up for Just Me on January 15, 2012:
Ten Reasons the United States is no longer the land of the Free: Washington Post*Capital Controls are nothing new – they are a Fabian construct – they were common in the UK from the time of the “Sterling Area” to the 1970s when one had to buy “Investment” US $ at a Premium above the rate of exchange at the time for approved investments in the US – to most of the Fabian inspired old colonies like Jamaica where the controls became known as Exchange Control. At one time in the 1970s in Jamaica (when the Fabian influenced political leadership was promising to walk to the mountain top with Fidel Castro and to take control of the commanding heights of the economy) one could not travel legally with more than US$50 per YEAR and US$ credit cards were not legally available to Jamaican residents. Of course a black market thrived and money, valuables and skills moved at an accelerated pace (much to the US, Canada and the UK though to other apparently welcoming countries as well). To enforce these regulations Jamaica created a secret police force named the Financial Intelligence Unit to spy on and interrogate people they suspected might be trying to move money. Massive fines (multiples of the sums involved) and Prison sentences were introduced for those caught trying to breach the Exchange Controls. There is nothing new in the current US efforts though of course these are new to the American people and with the extra territorial sovereignty grab that is FATCA and the advent of computers things will be made more difficult for the oppressed to flee oppressors with any capital at all. Humans are natural beings however, do not like being suffocated and, like water, will fight to find their way through the brambles. Needless to say, the Jamaican economy has never recovered from this socialist experiment and will not recover for several more generations. Jamaica was not unique – check the former British Colonies around the world and see how few have prospered and how many followed the Fabian path preached to their new leaders by the London School of Economics and which led to underdevelopment and increased poverty though enriching a political class and their inner circles.
@Nervousinvestor. Good comment. I read a comment from a South African who said that they would get their money out liquidating their assets in South African and buying diamonds. Diamonds don’t set off a metal detector, not like gold. Sniffer dogs can detect currency and it is too bulky to carry much out in a purse–as the largest denomination is $100 in order to keep smuggling down.
I imagine that they will introduce capital controls through stealth and without any fanfare, much like the way that the FBAR was suddenly dusted off from the closet with no announcement.
To be fair though, I think that countries like Greece or Spain are probably more at risk of instituting overt capital controls in the near future than the US is…at least until the Eurozone crisis is over and ‘the markets’ shift their attention to the next country/region to whine about. If Greece is kicked out of the Euro I believe that the government there will freeze all bank accounts and savers will see their converted Drachmas lose half of their value overnight. Nothing to stop the US from doing the same if OPEC drops the dollar someday or some other major shock occurs.
*US law requires that if you are carrying $10,000 or more, or its equivalent in foreign currency, you must file a formal report with US customs when you leave the US.
http://www.tsa.gov/travelers/airtravel/assistant/editorial_1848.shtm
This is not new. It has been the law since I can remember.
It is not illegal to transport large sums of money outside of the US, but it is illegal to do so if it has not been delared in accordance with the law. Of course the law could be changed any time. There are many countries that prohibit the removal of their currencies, or hard currencies of other countries by travelers leaving the country. In past years I have have personally been searched by customs officils to confirm that the amounts on my declarations and what I was actually carrying were the same. This happened in the 1980s in Hungary, Jamaica and Guyana. In both of the latter countries foreign visitors also had to declare the amounts of foreign currency they were carrying when entering those countries and, when leaving the country, present offficial receipts for foreign currency spent during the stay when leaving the country. And these amounts had to balance with what you had lefrt when you departed the country. In Guyana jewelry such as rings and watches was also inventoried when you entered and left. Leaving Hungary you were not permitted to take out any Hungarian currency except for small coins.
Some months ago the Miami Herald reported a Central American citizen who had been living illegally in the US decided to return home to his native country, and take with him the savings he had accumulated while living and working in the US over several hears. He reported his intention was to start a business when he got back home.
The cash was discovered in his suitcase when it was X-rayed for security purposes prior to being loaded on the flight. As I recall the cash was confiscated as a penalty for having failed to declare it. I don’t recall if there was an additional fine. As I recall he was permitted to travel but less the undeclared cash.
@Roger, Thanks. Excellent comment. What is new here is that the United States has border guards as you exit the US into Canada. In my many years leaving the United States to return to Canada, I’ve never once experience a border check on the way out of the country. I can’t tell you how many dozens of times I’ve re-entered Canada from the US.
Mark Stein says it is reminiscent of the film, The Great Escape.
The US may not keep the confiscated funds, only the approriate fines. That was decided in the Eighth Amendment case, U.S. v. Bajakajian.
*This is largely a function of border guys having nothing better to do.
A few years ago, there was a fast ferry from Toronto to Rochester NY. They installed a customs post in Rochester. The ferry shut down and the guards had nothing to do.So they started patrolling buses from Buffalo to Albany and trains from Chicago and hauling off to detention foreign looking characters without papers in their possession. Most of these victims were legitimate students . They were all travelling internally . The ‘border ‘ station in Rochester doubled in size.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/30/nyregion/30border.html?pagewanted=all
@petros
Makes me assume that the new polymer bills have a sniffable component added to their ‘dope’, so to speak.
*@Petros, yes border guards as you exit the US is new. Many other countries do have them and stamp your passports “out” when you leave the country as well as “in” when you enter.
I can remember that up until about 10 or 15 years ago Mexican immigration used to check you out when you left from a Mexican airport, but then they adopted the US practice of having the airlines collect the duplicate of your tourist card when you departed, and the stamping “out” of your passport was eliminated.
Throughout Central, South America and the Caribbean you still are stamped “out” by immigration when you leave. US immigration receives the details from the airlines electronically when departing by air from the US so if a name appears of someone on some sort of a list they may still detain them before they leave the country. And of course US immigration has full details on passengers traveling to the US by plane before it lands in the US. That is how they detained the Swiss bankers wanted for illegally helping US citizens evade taxes when they trasited in New York where they changed planes flying from Switzerland to Mexico.
When my wife and I traveled by train (on the Orient Express) back in the early 1980s from Munich to Budapest, the train stopped at the Austria-Hungary border for some time. First a Hungarian official came through offering to change foreign for Hungarian currency, so we bought some. Then came through two other officials who ask “do you have any Hungarian currencey?” If your answer was affriimative you were asked where did you obtain it? They then wanted to inspect your receipt for the currency you had just purchased a few minutes before and count it to make sure what you had was the same amount you had purchased.
Today there are some 30 countries of the world that have some sort of currency controls. Some are much more strict than others. Obtaining dollars, Euros, etc. on the black market and attempting to take them out of the country is, in some countries, a very serious criminal offense. I recall reading in a newspaper in Jamaica several years ago of a Canadian citizen who had attempted to depart Jamaica with several hundred more US dollars than he had declared when he entered. The dollars were confiscated and he was sentenced to prison. Such strict controls no longer exist in Jamaica, but they still do in some others.
@Roger, I’ve been to Bangui, CAR, several times. Each time I go through the exit procedure which includes declarations and passport verification, obligatory baggage search by customs, a hand baggage search by local security before the waiting area, and a third search baggage on the tarmac by Air France before entering the airplane (evidently they wish to avoid a repeat of the Entebbe incident). There are also routine passport checks when leaving European countries and many other countries.
But the border between the US and Canada has not been monitored like this ever. This is a bad sign. I know other countries do these kinds of checks. I just don’t think that the US is keeping very good company anymore.
*@Petros, indeed it is not a good sign. I can remember, and it wasn’t that far back, that “where were you born?” was all they asked you when crossing the US-Canadian border by car – either way. No papers, no passports, no photo IDs. Just that one verbal question.
In those days I did not have, nor had I ever had, a passport.
*The last time that I drove north to Canada, I only had a drivers license with me and don’t remember if I showed it. Probably not. But, that was only a bit over 10 years ago.
The last couple of times we have driven through France on the way to Spain there is a new trend. Where several years ago one had to snake through the 2 border outposts on the Swiss/French border or on the French/Spanish border, now Europe has Schengen. So officially all those border outposts are closed and you just fly right through them.
But before you even get to the border outpost you hit the the toll station. So after you pay our toll at the last toll stations on the Autoroute in France before the old customs offices you are confronted with the presence of dozens of customs officers, some with dogs, examining people in the cars. Then after the customs station you enter the Autovia and take your ticket. And what do you see when you have your ticket? Dozens of Spanish customs officers, some with dogs, examining the people in the cars.
But here’s the thing. The toll stations all have license plate reading cameras. Every time you stop at a station your license is read, and if you paid with a credit card they have both data sources. So the customs officers know who you are and your entire interpol file and if you are European they probably have your EU file in front of them. So the customs officers at the toll gate know who they are looking for and when they will be arriving.
So you can see how useful to the police state toll roads are. Expect more of them. And expect the government to force you to pay for GPS and other monitoring systems when you buy your next car, if the greens even allow that.
Spring 2012 crossing into the US from Canada – first time ever the question: How much cash are you carrying? It doesn’t take a sniff dog to know which way the wind stinks.
Section 6851 of the Internal Revenue Code authorizes the IRS to assess current taxes before a person leaves the US (for any reason, even a vacation). Because of this section, currently there is an obscure requirement that certain foreigners file a form called the sailing permit, certifying tax compliance, but this is not enforced by the transportation authorities and there is no penalty for not filing the form. However, the law authorizes this on any person, at the discretion of the IRS.
By the way, the IRS has modified its website.
*@usxcanada, being asked this question is roughly equivalent to the written declaration you are required to make on the Customs & Immigration form required of persons arriving by air. You must check the box if you are carrying $10,000 or more. If the answer is yes, then you will be handed the proper form to complete and sign before you are cleared for entry.
*@swisspinoy, a driver’s licence by itself it unlikely to be sufficient to allow you to enter Canada from the US today, and certainly it would not be sufficient to allow you to return to the US. Driver licenses generally do do not identify you nationality, among other things. A lot has changed in the past 10 years. I can remember when driver licenses didn’t even include a photograph, but that was about 40 years ago. Even then it was sufficient to get back and forth across the US – Canadian border.
Here’s what the State Department currently has to say on this subject. Read down a little further and you will also see what the US requires to come back across the border.
http://travel.state.gov/travel/cis_pa_tw/cis/cis_1082.html#entry_requirements
*@Petros – I have witnessed people trying to free even a little capital at huge discounts buying Stamp Collections, Old Books, Furniture, Old Jewellery, mailing money in the pages of newspapers – and have heard of people even buying ship loads of cement and other building materials to take to a new country to convert into houses there to then sell those for cash. People become desperate for freedom, fresh air and safety. The US has historically been a destination of choice for freedom seeking people – sadly it seems that those days may be over. The following is a cut and paste quote of a letter in a Jamaican newspaper today – there is much to identify with in this – including the reaction of small business owners that YES, I built this ! and you the Government are destroying it ! I have left the authors name in the letter quote – you decide if it should be removed
The truth of the Manley years
Thursday, August 30, 2012
Dear Editor,
I wish to congratulate Delano Seiveright on doing his part in knocking
down a great fallacy that is being foisted on the Jamaican people. These
people claim that Michael Manley was the most visionary and
transformational leader in Jamaica’s history. That is not true.
My father, a black man from humble beginnings, owned and operated a
small but profitable wholesale and a very small factory in Kingston
since the early 1960s. It is that wholesale and very small factory that
sent my four siblings and me to school, and maintained our house in
Meadowbrook. In 1972 Michael Manley captured the imagination of
countless Jamaicans, including my mother – a teacher – and my father,
who both voted for him in 1972.
Two to three years after Mr Manley took office, all hell broke loose.
They said “Socialism is love”, yet my father’s wholesale was constantly
raided by men claiming that it is “fi we time now” and that “people like
unnu a fight poor people”. My father, a philanthropist at heart,
resisted on two occasions and was subjected to physical and verbal
assault. The police were nonchalant and instead demanded that we give
more “free” supplies to the nearby police station.
I watched as my father’s business crumbled before our eyes and the
economy sank into despair and chaos under the government’s reckless
economic policies and actions. In 1977, after gunmen boasting “a fi we
time now” invaded our home and attempted to sexually assault my mother
and 14-year-old sister, my dad locked shop, sold the house and we all
migrated.
After visiting last month I was shocked to see the ramshackle state of
the area where my dad’s wholesale and small factory had been located. I
was also surprised at how Meadowbrook has lost its appeal. My sister,
who braved it and returned to Jamaica in the 1990s, was gobbled up by
extortion and Finsac. She has since re-migrated to Canada. My father
went on to build a successful business in Canada employing 12 people.
Jamaica was devastated by Michael Manley’s government and the facts
outlined by Mr Seiveright are there for all to see. The truth needs to
be told and repeated every day.
G Thomas
Toronto, Canada
thomasglwr@yahoo.com
*Roger, it’s starting to sound like all of the trouble my spouse had to go through just to go shopping in Germany a few years back, and I thought that that was insane.
Roger – Roughly equivalent. Sure, the “law.” The point was first time ever on a ground crossing. Perhaps indicative of new policy, new enforcement priorities? BTW, the question was How much? and NOT Is it over $10,000?
*@usxcanada, “how much?” is the question the immigration officer asks if you come in by plane and have checked the space indicating you are bringing in $10,000 or more. They usually ask this second question while reaching under their desk to pull out the currency declaration form for you to fill out and sign.
Someone has finally realized, it would appear, that there almost no enforcement if this law if the question is only ask of those entering the country at airports. The next action may well be to start asking air travelers leaving the country as well.
Right now I suspect that there is a lot more cash being transported out of the US than there is coming in, There a much better places to take your money these days.
@Petros
Very interesting stuff. In (I think) 1978 when I flew into the U.S. from Europe I was specifically asked if I had more than $10,000 in cash. I remember being amused by the question (believe my net worth was less than $10,000). But, in any case I do remember this.
But, here is what I think. There is no constitutional right to leave the United States – you know the land of the free – where as Ryan said last night – “the country where everything is free, but nobody is free.”
In 1982 Canada got its Charter of Rights. At that time, I remember finding it interesting, that S. 6 of the Canadian Charter included a constitutional right to leave the country.
You may recall Ron Paul commenting that a wall built with the intention of keeping people out could also be used to keep people in. People laughed. But, I think Ron Paul may get the last laugh.
This post is about money leaving the country. FATCA is another example of capital controls. Capital controls will make it harder and harder for people to leave. But, there will still be those who will be willing to lose their money to leave “Form Nation”. They will want their children to be free and will be nervous about the lack of freedom in the US.
For those people, I would not be surprised if the US slowly evolves into a country that does not allow its citizens to leave period.
The US is so out of touch with reality and with the rest of the world, that it is likely to dwindle into a country with a very low standard of living but a lot of military power. Kind of like one or two countries I can think of today.
*@nervousinvestor, I remember those days when Michael Manley became prime minister of Jamaica. I had just moved back to the US from Brazil to run a company in Miami that sold equipment to the Jamaica Telephone Company Ltd. When I arrived I discovered that we had huge accounts receivablen with that company from the days when the American company that owned the Jamaica Tel. was making massive investments in Jamaica. Manley quickly nationalized that company and paid for 100% it with IOUs.
I spent many days there trying to collect those accounts. The country had little in the way of hard currency and it was the squeaky hinge that got the grease. We eventually were paid, but it took time. By then all our sales to Jamaica were on a cash-in-advance basis.
Manley’s teacher and example was Fidel Castro. Behind the counter at the Cubana de Aviacion counter at the Kingston airport was a huge portrait-size photo of Michael Manley and Fidel giving each other a fraternal abrazo (hug). Cuba at that time had a huge embassy in Kingston. Cuba sent many advisors to provide assistance Manley in implanting socialism in Jamaica..
In response to his critics, Manley told them “There are 6 flights every day to Miami.” If you did not like the way he was governing, then you were encouraged to leave. But you could take nothing with you, other than the clothes on your back.
This currency issue is really big. A Brazilian couple that have a HUMUNGOUS system of churches in Brazil were caught with undeclared dollars in the US and jailed in the US over this.
http://www.religionnewsblog.com/17121/fbi-arrests-two-brazilian-bishops-in-miami
Ironically, the criminals bring money to the US and many honest people want to get it out. The Brazilian government is quite smart (and cheap) at the same time. They asked the US to make the arrest so the Brazilian government wouldn’t have to pay for it, or take the negative publicity in Brazil. Instead, the cost of maintaining them in jail gets put on the arrest-happy US and ultimately the US tax payer.