Making the Chicken Run, By Doug Casey

With the U.S. government’s ever-increasing stranglehold on Americans’ assets, smart investors are now taking their wealth abroad. Doug Casey tells you how to do it, and why you shouldn’t put it off any longer.

“Making the chicken run” is what Rhodesians used to say about neighbors who packed up and got out during the ‘60s and ‘70s, before the place became Zimbabwe. It was considered “unpatriotic” to leave Rhodesia. But it was genuinely idiotic not to.

I’ve written many times about the importance of internationalizing your assets, your mode of living, and your way of thinking. I suspect most readers have treated those articles as they might a travelogue to some distant and exotic land: interesting fodder for cocktail party chatter, but basically academic and of little immediate personal relevance.

I’m directing these comments towards the U.S., mainly because that’s where the problem is most acute, but they’re applicable to most countries.

Rolling into 2011, the U.S. is in real trouble. Not as bad as Rhodesia 40 years ago, and definitely a different kind of trouble, but plenty serious. For many years, it’s been obvious that the country was eventually going to hit the wall, and now the inevitable is rapidly becoming imminent.

What do I mean by that? There’s plenty of reason to be concerned about things financial and economic. But I personally believe we haven't been bearish enough on the eventual social and political fallout from the Greater Depression. Nothing is certain, but the odds are high that the U.S. is going into a time of troubles at least as bad as any experienced in any advanced country in the last century.

I hate saying things like that, if only because it sounds outrageous and inflammatory and can create a credibility gap. It invites arguments with people, and although I enjoy discussion, I dislike arguing.

It strikes most people as outrageous because the long-running post-WW2 boom has been punctuated only by brief recessions. After 65 years, why should it ever end? The thought of a nasty end certainly runs counter to the experience of almost everyone now alive – including myself – and our personal experience is what we tend to trust most. But it seems to me we're very close to a tipping point. Ice stays ice even while it’s being warmed – until the temperature goes over 32 F, where it changes very quickly into something very different. (more)