Americans Giving Up Passports Jump

Americans renouncing U.S. citizenship surged sixfold in the second quarter from a year earlier as the government prepares to introduce tougher asset-disclosure rules.

Expatriates giving up their nationality at U.S. embassies climbed to 1,131 in the three months through June from 189 in the year-earlier period, according to Federal Register figures published today. That brought the first-half total to 1,810 compared with 235 for the whole of 2008.

The U.S., the only nation in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development that taxes citizens wherever they reside, is searching for tax cheats in offshore centers, including Switzerland, as the government tries to curb the budget deficit. Shunned by Swiss and German banks and facing tougher asset-disclosure rules under the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act, more of the estimated 6 million Americans living overseas are weighing the cost of holding a U.S. passport.

“With the looming deadline for Fatca, more and more U.S. citizens are becoming aware that they have U.S. tax reporting obligations,” said Matthew Ledvina, a U.S. tax lawyer at Anaford AG in Zurich. “Once aware, they decide to renounce their U.S. citizenship.”

Fatca requires foreign financial institutions to report to the Internal Revenue Service information about financial accounts held by U.S. taxpayers, or held by foreign entities in which U.S. taxpayers hold a substantial ownership interest. It was estimated to generate $8.7 billion over 10 years, according to the congressional Joint Committee on Taxation.
Delaying Implementation

The 2010 Fatca law requires banks to withhold 30 percent from “certain U.S.-connected payments” to some accounts of American clients who don’t disclose enough information to the IRS. While banks can sign agreements to report to the IRS individually, many are precluded from doing so by privacy laws in their jurisdictions.

The Treasury Department last month announced that the IRS will delay the start of Fatca by six months until July 1, 2014, to give foreign banks time to comply with the law. The extension of the act follows a previous one-year delay announced in 2011.

Financial institutions including Canada’s Toronto-Dominion Bank (TD) and Allianz SE of Germany have expressed concerns that Fatca is too complex.

The latest delay comes after the Swiss government agreed in February to simplifications that will help the country’s banks implement Fatca.
Penalty Threat

“The United States wishes to ensure that all income earned worldwide by U.S. taxpayers on accounts held abroad can be taxed by the United States,” the Swiss government said on April 10.

Since 2011, Americans, who disclose their non-U.S. bank accounts to the IRS, must file the more expansive 8938 form that asks for all foreign financial assets, including insurance contracts, loans and shareholdings in non-U.S. companies.

Failure to file the 8938 form can result in a fine of as much as $50,000. Clients can also be penalized half the amount in an undeclared foreign bank account under the Banks Secrecy Act of 1970.

The implementation of Fatca from July next year comes after UBS, Switzerland’s largest bank, paid a $780 million penalty in 2009 and handed over data on about 4,700 accounts to settle a tax-evasion dispute with the U.S. Whistle-blower Bradley Birkenfeld was sentenced to 40 months in a U.S. prison in 2009 after informing the government and Senate about his American clients at the Geneva branch of Zurich-based UBS AG. (UBSN)
Compliance Costs

The additional compliance costs for companies to ensure that Americans they hire are filing the correct U.S. tax returns and asset-declaration forms are at least $5,000 per person, said Ledvina.

For individuals, the costs are also rising. Getting a mortgage or acquiring life insurance is becoming almost impossible for American citizens living overseas, Ledvina said.

“With increased U.S. tax reporting, U.S. accounting costs alone are around $2,000 per year for a U.S. citizen residing abroad,” the tax lawyer said. “Adding factors, such as difficulty in finding a bank to accept a U.S. citizen as a client, it is difficult to justify keeping the U.S. citizenship for those who reside permanently abroad.”

Businessweek

Iran to Sign New Nuclear Power Plant Deal with Russia

TEHRAN, August 11 (RIA Novosti) – Iran intends to sign an agreement with Russia soon on the construction of a new nuclear power plant in the Islamic Republic, Iran’s semi-official Mehr news agency reported on Sunday, citing Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi.

“Iran has held consultations with the Russian side and soon an agreement of mutual understanding will be signed on the construction of a new nuclear power plant,” Mehr quoted Salehi as saying.

Iran’s foreign minister said the Islamic Republic needed nuclear power for electricity generation, and also for medicine.

Iran’s newly-elected President Hassan Rouhani said on Tuesday during his first press conference after his inauguration that the Islamic Republic would continue negotiations with Russia on nuclear power development in the country.

Rouhani said Iran needed to produce 20,000 MW of nuclear power and planned to build new nuclear power plants and continue cooperation in this sphere, in particular, with Russia.

Russian parliament speaker Sergei Naryshkin said on August 4 during his visit to Iran to attend Rouhani’s inauguration ceremony that Russia hoped for holding consultations with Iran on expanding cooperation in civilian nuclear power after the Islamic Republic’s first nuclear power plant at Bushehr was fully commissioned in September.

Western countries suspect Iran of using its nuclear program to develop atomic weapons capability, a claim Iran has consistently denied. Tehran claims it needs atomic technology for producing electricity, although it has some of the world's largest reserves of oil and gas.

Construction of Bushehr began in the 1970s, but has been plagued by delays. Russia signed a billion-dollar deal with Tehran to complete the plant in 1998.

Iran’s foreign minister said in February Tehran expected to start joint work with Russia on a second power unit at Iran’s Bushehr nuclear power plant.

“We hope to start building the second unit with our Russian colleagues,” he told journalists at a news conference.

Salehi said Russia was Tehran’s preferred partner in the construction of Iran’s second nuclear power plant, local media reported.

The Bushehr plant's launch in August 2010 prompted Israel and other nations to express fear that the reactor could help Iran create an atomic bomb. Tehran has denied the allegations, saying the facility was used for peaceful power generation only.

RIA Novosti

Brutal Belfast Back? Riot cops counter bricks with water cannon

Indonesia volcano eruption: Six dead

Six people have been killed in a volcanic eruption on a tiny island in Indonesia, officials have said.

Mount Rokatenda, on the island of Palue some 2,000km (1,250 miles) east of Jakarta, spewed ash and rocks 2km into the air.

Disaster officials said hot ash covered a nearby beach, leaving four adults and two children dead.

The volcano had been rumbling since late last year, forcing the evacuation of hundreds of people.

A 3km exclusion zone was set up after an eruption last October.

But Surono, a spokesman from Indonesia's volcanology agency, said many villagers had become accustomed to the volcanic activity and ignored the mandatory evacuation order.

Mr Surono said the latest eruption had begun at 04:27 on Saturday (20:27 GMT Friday) and lasted for nearly four hours.

He urged villagers to stay clear of the affected area, saying it was difficult to predict if there would be further eruptions.

Palue is about 4km wide and lies a short distance off the north coast of Flores, the main island in East Nusa Tenggara province.

The ACT Alliance humanitarian group reported in April that eruptions in Palue in October and again in March this year had forced hundreds of people from their villages, with significant losses of income in farming, trade and fishing.

Much of the Indonesian archipelago lies on the Pacific "ring of fire", an area prone to volcanic eruptions and earthquakes.

At least 350 people died and 250,000 were displaced when Mount Merapi in central Java erupted in 2010.

BBC

During The Best Period Of Economic Growth In U.S. History There Was No Income Tax And No Federal Reserve

How would America ever survive without the central planners in the Obama administration and at the Federal Reserve?  What in the world would we do if there was no income tax and no IRS?  Could the U.S. economy possibly keep from collapsing under such circumstances?  The mainstream media would have us believe that unless we have someone "to pull the levers" our economy would descend into utter chaos, but the truth is that the best period of economic growth in U.S. history occurred during a time when there was no income tax and no Federal Reserve.  Between the Civil War and 1913, the U.S. economy experienced absolutely explosive growth.  The free market system thrived and the rest of the world looked at us with envy.  The federal government was very limited in size, there was no income tax for most of that time and there was no central bank.  To many Americans, it would be absolutely unthinkable to have such a society today, but it actually worked very, very well.  Without the inventions and innovations that came out of that period, the world would be a far different place today.

It is amazing what can happen when the government just gets out of the way.  Check out all of the wonderful things that Wikipedia says happened for the U.S. economy during those years...

The rapid economic development following the Civil War laid the groundwork for the modern U.S. industrial economy. By 1890, the USA leaped ahead of Britain for first place in manufacturing output.

An explosion of new discoveries and inventions took place, a process called the "Second Industrial Revolution." Railroads greatly expanded the mileage and built stronger tracks and bridges that handled heavier cars and locomotives, carrying far more goods and people at lower rates. Refrigeration railroad cars came into use. The telephone, phonograph, typewriter and electric light were invented. By the dawn of the 20th century, cars had begun to replace horse-drawn carriages.

Parallel to these achievements was the development of the nation's industrial infrastructure. Coal was found in abundance in the Appalachian Mountains from Pennsylvania south to Kentucky. Oil was discovered in western Pennsylvania; it was mainly used for lubricants and for kerosene for lamps. Large iron ore mines opened in the Lake Superior region of the upper Midwest. Steel mills thrived in places where these coal and iron ore could be brought together to produce steel. Large copper and silver mines opened, followed by lead mines and cement factories.

In 1913 Henry Ford introduced the assembly line, a step in the process that became known as mass-production.

When hard working, industrious people are given freedom to pursue their dreams, great things tend to happen.  The truth is that we were all designed to create, to invent, to build, and to trade with one another.  We all have something that we can contribute to society, and when families are strong and the invisible hand of the free market is allowed to work, societies tend to prosper.

It is not a coincidence that the greatest period of economic growth in U.S. history was between the Civil War and 1913.  The following information comes from Wikipedia...

The Gilded Age saw the greatest period of economic growth in American history. After the short-lived panic of 1873, the economy recovered with the advent of hard money policies and industrialization. From 1869 to 1879, the US economy grew at a rate of 6.8% for real GDP and 4.5% for real GDP per capita, despite the panic of 1873.  The economy repeated this period of growth in the 1880s, in which the wealth of the nation grew at an annual rate of 3.8%, while the GDP was also doubled.

Wouldn't you like U.S. GDP to double over the course of a decade now?

So why don't we go back to a system like that?

In 1913, the Federal Reserve and a permanent national income tax were introduced.  Today, the unelected central planners at the Federal Reserve totally run our financial system and the U.S. tax code is about13 miles long.  The value of our currency has declined by more than 96 percent since 1913, and the size of our national debt has gotten more than 5000 times larger.

Meanwhile, control freak bureaucrats seemingly run everything.  Almost every business decision is heavily influenced either by taxes or by the millions of laws, rules and regulations that are sucking the life out of our economic system.

My favorite example of how suffocating red tape in America has become is the magician out in Missouri that was forced by the Obama administration to submit a 32 page "disaster plan" for the rabbit that he uses during his magic shows for kids.

It is no wonder why we don't have any economic growth.  The central planners in the federal government are killing our economy.

And the central planners over at the Federal Reserve are killing our financial system.  In school we are taught that the Fed was created to bring stability to our financial system, but the truth is that they have been responsible for financial bubble after financial bubble, and now Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke has created the largest bond bubble in the history of the world.  When that thing bursts, and it will, we are going to see financial carnage on an unprecedented scale.

Unfortunately, the truth is that the Federal Reserve never has been looking out for the interests of the American people.  It was created by the big banks and it has always worked very hard to benefit the big banks.  During the Fed era, the big banks have become the most powerful economic entities on the entire planet.  Our entire economy is now based on debt, and the big banks are at the very center of this debt spiral.  The following is an excerpt from a recent article by Paul B. Farrell...

Today’s world includes four Wall Street banks each with assets over $1 trillion, each more than Goldman. Plus eight other big global banks each have over $2 trillion total assets, including, among the 100 largest, Barclays, HSBC, Deutsche, ICB-China and Japan’s Mitsubishi.

Yes, this new world is changing fast. Back in 2008 the world’s financial banks were in ruins. Wall Street sunk into virtually bankruptcy. Goldman and its Wall Street too-big-to-fail co-conspirators had trashed the global economy, triggered a virtual depression, and Wall Street’s casinos lost over $10 trillion of Main Street retirement funds.

And as we saw back in 2008, the Federal Reserve is going to do whatever is necessary to prop up Wall Street.  Most Americans never even heard about this, but during the last financial crisis the Fedsecretly loaned 16 trillion dollars to the big banks.  Those loans were nearly interest-free and those banks knew that they could get basically as much nearly interest-free money as they wanted from the Fed.

So how much nearly interest-free money did the Fed loan to normal Americans?

Not a single penny.

That would be bad enough, but it is also important to remember that since 2008 the Fed has actually been paying banks NOT to lend money to the rest of us.

What is it going to take for the American people to start demanding that the Fed be abolished?  They are absolutely destroying our financial system.

Meanwhile, the central planners in the Obama administration have been doing their part as well.  During the second quarter of this year, the number of Americans working between 30 and 34 hours per week fell by146,500.  During that same time period, the number of Americans working between 25 and 29 hours rose by 119,000.

Why is this happening?

Well, the Obamacare employer mandate will apply to workers that work at least 30 hours each week, so employers are starting to cut back on the hours their employees are getting in order to comply with the law.

But this is just one example out of thousands, and most Americans already know that the U.S. economy has been crumbling for many years.

In fact, things have gotten so bad that even 53 percent of all Democrats believe that the American Dream is dead even though Barack Obama is residing in the White House.

But this is just the beginning.  Things are going to get much, much worse.  We are going down the same path that Greece has gone, and the unemployment rate in Greece has just hit a new all-time record high of 27.6 percent.

That is where the U.S. is headed eventually.  Decades of very foolish decisions are catching up with us.

The primary reason why all of this is happening is debt.  As a society, we simply have way, way, way too much debt.

The biggest offender, of course, is the federal government.  Since 1970, federal spending has grown nearly 12 times as rapidly as median household income has, and since the year 2000 the size of the U.S. national debt has grown by more than 11 trillion dollars.

When government debt gets too large, it has a profoundly negative effect on an economy.  The following is an excerpt from an outstanding article by Lacy H. Hunt, a Ph.D. economist...

*****

Here are the studies, starting with the one with the broadest implications:

1. "Government Size and Growth: A Survey and Interpretation of the Evidence," from Journal of Economic Surveys. Published in April 2011, Swedish economists Andreas Bergh and Magnus Henrekson (both of the Research Institute of Industrial Economics at Lund University) found a "significant negative correlation" between size of government and economic growth. Specifically, "an increase in government size by 10 percentage points is associated with a 0.5% to 1% lower annual growth rate."
2. "The Impact of High and Growing Government Debt on Economic Growth: An Empirical Investigation for the Euro Area," inEuropean Central Bank working paper, Number 1237, August 2010. Cristina Checherita and Philipp Rother found that a government-debt-to-GDP ratio above the threshold of 90-100% has a "deleterious" impact on long-term growth. Additionally, the impact of debt on growth is nonlinear – as the government debt rises to higher and higher levels, the adverse growth consequences accelerate.
3. The Real Effects of Debt, published by the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) in Basel, Switzerland in August 2011. Stephen G. Cecchetti, M. S.Mohanty, and Fabrizio Zampolli determined that "beyond a certain level, debt is bad for growth. For government debt, the number is about 85% of GDP."
4. "Public Debt Overhangs: Advanced-Economy Episodes Since 1800,"by Carmen M. Reinhart, Vincent R. Reinhart, Kenneth S. Rogoff, Journal of Economic Perspectives, Volume 26, Number 3, Summer 2012, pages 69-86. The authors identified 26 cases of "debt overhangs," which they define as public-debt-to-GDP levels exceeding 90% for at least five years. In spite of the many idiosyncratic differences in these situations, economic growth fell in all but three of the 26 cases. All of the instances, which lasted an average of 23 years, are included in the paper. They found that average annual growth is 1.2% lower for countries with a debt overhang than for countries without. The long duration of such episodes means that cumulative shortfall from the debt excess—i.e., several years in a row of subpar economic growth—is potentially massive.

*****

But it isn't just federal government debt that is the problem.  The rest of us have way too much debt as well.

If you can believe it, the ratio of private debt to GDP was 273.3% for the twelve months ending in the first quarter of 2013.

That is an astounding figure.

And as Hunt explained, having too much private debt is also very bad for an economy...

In Too Much Finance, published by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) in March 2011, Jean Louis Arcand, Enrico Berkes, and Ugo Panizza found a negative effect on output growth when credit to the private sector reaches 104-110% of GDP. The strongest adverse effects are for credit over 160% of GDP.

The second is the 2011 BIS study authored by Cecchetti, Mohanty, and Zampolli. They found that private debt levels become "cancerous" (in BIS economic advisor Cecchetti's own words) at 175% (90% for corporations and 85% for households)—just slightly more than the UNCTAD study.

When you add our private debt to GDP ratio of 273 percent to our federal debt to GDP ratio of 101 percent, you get a grand total of 384 percent.

This is how we have funded the false prosperity of the past couple of decades.  Essentially, we have been putting our good times on a credit card.

And as anyone that has ever tried to live on credit knows, the good times eventually run out.

But this is what the Federal Reserve was designed to do.  It was designed to get the U.S. government trapped in a debt spiral from which there would never be any escape.

It is not an accident that our national debt has gotten more than 5000 times larger than it was when the Fed was originally created.  This is what the bankers wanted the system to do.

They wanted a system that would extract wealth from all of us through taxes, transfer it to the government, and then transfer it to them through interest payments.

We never needed a central bank, we never needed the IRS and we never needed an income tax.  America would be doing just fine without any of them.

But instead, America chose to go down the path of collectivization and central planning, and now we are heading toward the biggest economic disaster in the history of mankind.

Economic Collapse

The False Prophets and Teachers of the Right

How can any conservative American be optimistic today when we look back on the last three and a half years? Americans - in general - in this land OUT RIGHT reject moral absolutes and sound social conservatism. This immoral attitude has made its in roads into the present conservative movement of today. It is only on this bedrock (the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God - conservative moral absolutes) that a healthy society can exist in this fallen world(Psalm 11:3, Prov. 14:34, Rom 1:18-32). Our Founding Fathers knew all too well what the horrific consequences would be when moral absolutes were despised and rejected by the American people. These men of sound wisdom and keen perception knew and warned that tyrannical despotism, oppression and lawlessness would abound and the "great experiment" would come to a tragic end. When America's restraining power on the tyrants, despots and lawlessness of the world is gone, what then? (SEE CHART) (Rev. 6-19)

Our Founding Fathers knew all too well what the horrific consequences would be when moral absolutes were despised and rejected by the American people.

My Friends, beware of the Rush Limbaugh types who seek to motivate and encourage true Americans by preaching a subtle godless optimistic vision of America’s future, while America is on the very brink of absolute fiscal and moral collapse. He told us that he would, "let us know when to panic" but sadly Rush and others are oblivious that the Day of the Lord is at hand! Thank God for these men and for their efforts for seeking to preserve America, but put NOT your trust in their vain words of false optimism about our future. What is tragic is that they themselves reject the reality at hand and believe that all things will continue to go on forever and work out for good(Psalm 118:8, 146:3-4, Isa. 2:22, Jer. 17:5). These false -unregenerated - prophets of optimism are nothing more than Lucifer's "angels of light" (1 Cor. 11:13-15) and are misleading thousands - if not millions - of Americans. They themselves see the Bible and God's saving grace only in a relative and pluralistic light. If these voices of conservatism truly believed the saving message of the Gospel of Jesus Christ (1 Cor. 15:2-4) they would turn their "golden microphones" and "airways" into pulpits of righteousness, proclaiming the reality of Day of the Lord and man's desperate need for the Savior(John 3:16-17 1 Cor. 2:2, 9:16, Gal. 6:14).

They themselves are oblivious that the Day of the Lord is at hand! Thank God for these men, but put NOT your trust in their vain words.
.

As "we as a nation" passes into oblivion and into global tribulation, may Almighty God and His Word be your total source for consolation and optimistic reality for today's crisis. Have FAITH in Almighty God America! He alone is able to deliver one from the poisons and corruption that dominate and infest this fallen world (Gal 1:4). My beloved, invest in ETERNITY, not in the few futile seconds of this vain life (Eccl 1:1-3). ETERNITY is where our sights should be set. ETERNITY is our future home (Isa. 65:17, 1 Cor. 2:9, Rev. 21,22:1-5). It is crucial today to be able to distinguish between these two perceptions.

If you personally know the Lord Jesus as your Lord and Savior, may you be redeeming these days; for they are indeed evil (Eph. 5:16).May we all - that know the Lord in spirit and truth - dedicate our lives whole heartedly to Him for His glory and honor (1 Cor. 10:31, Col 3:17, 1 Peter 4:11). May pointing people to a saving knowledge of the Saviorbe priority one! My beloved, keep focused and looking for the Savior's soon return… for the Kingdom of Heaven is truly at hand!

DJP I.F.

The Ignoran Fishermen Blog

Israel can spark US-Russia thermonuclear war: LaRouche

American political activist Lyndon LaRouche has warned that the continuation of Israeli behavior towards Syria, including the recent air strikes against the Arab country, could end in a US-Russia thermonuclear war.

His comments appeared in an article by Jeffrey Steinberg, which has been published in the latest issue of Executive Intelligence Review, a weekly news magazine founded by LaRouche himself.

“Lyndon LaRouche warned on Aug. 3 that ongoing Israeli actions, including the July 5 Israeli Air Force (IAF) bombing of a depot near Latakia, Syria which held Russian-made anti-ship cruise missiles, could trigger a wider war, drawing the United States into thermonuclear conflict with Russia,” the article starts.

Following the attack, American officials said the air strike had failed to destroy all the missiles. Steinberg said the leak proved that the US wanted to distance itself from any military measure against Russian targets in Syria to avoid further escalation of any future conflict with Moscow.

“According to U.S. intelligence sources contacted by EIR, the leaks are intended to make clear that the United States is not supporting the Israeli strikes against Russian targets against Syria. Such strikes could lead to an escalation that directly draws the United States into a head-on confrontation with Russia,” the piece read.

LaRouche, an eight times presidential candidate, said in 2004 that “ the ongoing drive to induce President George W. Bush to launch a war against Iraq, is a 1996 Israeli government policy that is being foisted on the President by a nest of Israeli agents inside the U.S. government.”



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