He is a also a prolific writer on topics ranging from second residency and citizenship, Golden Visas and portfolio diversification, to estate and retirement planning, asset protection, tax optimization and US Opportunity Zones.FILE - Afghan laborers work at a brick factory in Deh Sabz, on the outskirts of Kabul, Sept. Writing under the pen name Simon Black, he has also written extensively on business incorporation and tax residency establishment in Puerto Rico, and is a proponent of investing in gold and silver as a hedge against inflation. He also serves on numerous Boards of Directors, and previously served as Chairman of company listed on a major stock exchange. His other business ventures have included starting a boutique, private investment bank that boasts some of the highest levels of liquidity and solvency in the world, and investing in companies from Colombia to Uzbekistan. A few years ago, he acquired a prominent retail brand in Australia, purchasing the business from the former 1980s era rock star who founded it. Hickman founded a South America-based agriculture company that has become one of the leading producers in its industry. He is a graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point and served in the US Army as an intelligence officer during Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom. In addition, he’s started, invested in, or acquired businesses all over the world. Hickman is a lifelong entrepreneur and investor that’s traveled to more than 120 countries on all seven continents. His daily e-letter, Notes from the Field, draws on his life, business and travel experiences to help readers gain more freedom, more opportunity, and more prosperity.
He is an international investor, entrepreneur, and a free man. Simon Black, as James Hickman is more commonly known, is the Founder of Sovereign Man. I aim to demonstrate this to you in today’s video podcast episode. And simply put, the US government has reached a point of no return. Or they could choose to default on their obligations to every human being alive who holds US dollars… and engineer rampant inflation. They could also default on their obligations to their citizens-primarily to future beneficiaries of Social Security (who collectively own trillions of dollars of US debt). But this would create an epic currency crisis for the US dollar. They could default on the Federal Reserve, which owns trillions of dollars of US debt. But this would spark a global financial and banking crisis.
They could default on their creditors (other governments like China who loaned money to the US government). I’ve worked out a mathematical model which shows that, even with absurd assumptions (7%+ GDP growth for years at a time, low interest rates, etc.), it is simply not feasible for the US government to ‘grow’ its way out.ĭefault has become the only option. In other words, even though the actual tax rates themselves rise and fall, the government’s ‘slice’ of the economic pie is almost always the same-17%. have racked up such an enormous pile of debt that it has become almost impossible to pay it down.Ī lot of folks don’t realize that, since the end of World War II, the US government’s total tax revenue has been almost constant at roughly 17% of GDP. Over the century that followed, the US has gone from being the biggest creditor in the world to its biggest debtor.ĭecades of expanding government programs, waste, endless and costly wars, etc. They succeeded in 1913 when the Federal Reserve Act was passed and the 16th Amendment ratified, binding the country in the shackles of central banking and taxation of income. Over the subsequent decades there was a sustained push to finally establish the country’s central bank that will control money and credit, as well as institute a permanent income tax to feed the expanding aspirations of government. This was all an indication of things to come. They also detached the dollar from gold to help fund the war. In subsequent wars, notably the American Civil War, the Committee was quick to use its powers and introduced the union’s first income tax. It soon expanded its role from raising tariffs to having influence over taxation, banking, currency, and appropriations. Of course, because there’s nothing more permanent than a temporary government measure, the committee became a permanent one after just one year.
It was set up to address economic issues and the debt accrued by the US government after the War of 1812. Exactly 199 years ago, in 1815, a “temporary” committee was established in the US Senate called the Committee on Finance and Uniform National Currency.