Last plane account--James Turk quoting Barton Biggs

[Atash Hagmahani]

http://www.kitco.com/ind/Turk_normal/jul232008.html

The ‘last plane account’ addressed these issues. The account was designed so that you had a monetary nest-egg legally structured in a financial safe haven outside the reach of the government where you lived. So even if you lost those assets in the country invaded by communists, with this nest-egg you and your family could live comfortably somewhere else, with the hope that someday you would eventually be able to return to your country of birth after the communists were ousted and traditional law and order were re-established.
I was reminded of all this recently when reading a new book by Barton Biggs entitled “Wealth, War & Wisdom”. For four decades, Biggs has been one of the top investment strategists on Wall Street, having spent most of that time with Morgan Stanley. As the book’s title suggests, much of the content is directly related to those matters we had in mind when putting together a last plane account for wealthy South East Asian businessman. As Biggs explains: “At least once in every century there has been an episode of great wealth destruction when the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse…have ridden rough-shod…How do you preserve wealth in times when the Four Horsemen are on the loose?”
 Biggs goes on to answer his own question: “Asset diversification helped. Real assets such as land, property, gold, or a business were somewhat better than stocks but far from perfect. A working farm protected both your wealth and your life. The other solution was having money outside the country in a safe haven.”

[Gooddog]

Hello Atash!  A newbie here.  Many thanks for your forum and looking forward to visiting your site when it's back online.  Very new to the whole subject of survival preparation and have so much to learn.  Feel rather overwhelmed and am hoping to get a kind of overview and guidance on how to get started from this community, so thanks to all for bearing with me.  Since we're on topic of last plane accounts, any suggestions for best locations?  What about western Canada (have some folks there)?

[Atash Hagmahani]

Pleased to meet you. 

I'm not too far south of the border.

Last-plane-out accounts are for if you ever had to flee Canada. In that case, where would you go?

Some of the best banking countries used to be in German-speaking countries of Europe outside of Germany (Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Austria...), but with the fall of the Iron Curtain and the rise of the EU, that is not necessarily true anymore, and in any case it is getting hard to get a European bank to talk to you for less than at least a few hundred thousand, although there is a bank in Denmark that is reasonable.

It's hard for us Americans because a lot of countries have treaties with the USA saying no accounts owned by American citizens. In general, the dragnet is pulling tight.

Asia is overall better capitalized than Europe, and for some decades now perhaps economically more free?