Banksters making the U.S. a tax shelter?

Just when you thought the banksters had done all they could to rig the game against people that bail them out, you hear another tale of industrial-strength greed.

This time, the scam is so ironic it’s almost absurd.

For almost a decade the U.S. government has been going around the world forcing governments to shut down tax haven status for U.S. money. Rich individuals and shrewd companies have been “offshoring” money into tax havens like the Bahamas or Panama or Switzerland for decades.

Governments in these countries would allow banks to protect the identities of the account holders and many accounts were set up as shell corporations to hide the true identity of the depositors.

Never mind the fact that huge companies like Apple, Shire, Google, Tyco and scores of others have been offshoring tens of billions in profits for years and the U.S. government says it’s helpless to do anything. It seems the might of U.S. only works when it comes to individuals, not powerful corporations.

I have heard horror stories about how far the U.S. will go to track down not just people looking to get their money of the U.S., but even people who tell people how to do it. It’s rare to find anyone in the U.S. who will tell you how to offshore assets these days because the feds have effectively shut them down under the auspices of abetting a criminal conspiracy to defraud the government, since moving money into tax havens is now considered illegal.

Never mind the fact that telling people how to do anything is usually protected by the 1st Amendment. You can tell people how to rob a bank; you can write an account of a bank heist; you just can’t rob a bank. But that isn’t the case with telling people how to get their money offshore.

But that was then.

Now, apparently, after shutting down all avenues for Americans to send their money out, the U.S .banksters are allowed to bring in foreign money and hide it in the U.S. Yes, the U.S. is becoming the world’s new tax haven.

The U.S. has refused to join all the other countries we cajoled into stricter disclosure guidelines and so now it’s the hottest country in the world for offshoring rich foreigners’ cash. And this happens just as the big banks are shuttering their trading operations and focusing on wealth management. Coincidence?

Is it a coincidence there are scores of Chinese billionaires and super millionaires that are trying to get money out of China? Or that as wealthy Europeans and Russians watch their currencies tank, and Middle Eastern oil barons are scrambling, a magical offshoring operation in none other than the good ol’ U.S. of A has materialized?

No it isn’t. And it’s quite likely that the U.S. banksters are simply the end point of the global institutional financial cabal, shuffling cash around the globe to use as leverage and keep the fixed game of global wealth fixed.

Of course all this capital from these whales (the insider term for super high net worth individuals) just doesn’t sit in bank accounts gathering 1.3 percent APR. The banks slide this over to their investment banking side and start leveraging that money on whatever the new hot game in town is.

Also, remember that even after the near total financial meltdown, the big banks still have ridiculously small reserve requirements — the percentage of monies they have to hold in case they have to pay out redemptions.

That means, the banksters have rebuilt a castle in the sky in a different part of the sky, again. And when it crashes to Earth, guess who the bag holders are going to be? You and me. The rich will get their money, the banksters will be bailed out and their system will chug along.

This is why putting at least some of your assets outside the system is crucial, especially now that you can’t get your money outside the U.S. Fiat currencies are fickle. Stocks are owned by institutions, not individual investors. Mutual funds are run by the big institutions.

Precious metals bullion especially now, or solid, metals-backed exchange-traded funds (ETFs) are the best way to get outside the banksters’ continual viscous cycle.