Is This How America Ends?

By Chris Hunter

You can hardly mention this without offending people these days. If you do, you risk being called “unpatriotic.”

This, of course, is nonsense. The idea of America is that people should have the right to shape their own lives...seek out opportunities...and go wherever they want.

I still believe in that America. That’s why I always encourage people to keep seeking out new places where you can live freer or better. I suspect it’s why you’re reading these Postcards—because you, too, are searching for that original America all over the world.

As a family wealth manager, it’s my job to help families protect and grow their savings so that they can be passed onto the next generation. Two threats concern me the most: inflation and higher taxes.

America now spends far more than it earns in tax revenue. To close this gap, Washington does two things: it borrows dollars and it prints them.

The scale of this effort is staggering.

The amount of U.S. government debt forced into the hands of the public has risen by $3.62 trillion in just over two years. That’s an increase of 61%.

Meanwhile, over the last four years, Ben Bernanke has managed to create out of thin air 60% of the entire monetary base of the country. (This is a term economists use to describe the amount of money available to the economy.)

This is bad news for the dollar. That’s because the more dollars the Federal Reserve creates, the less each dollar is worth. The dollar has already lost 95% of its buying power since the Fed was created in 1913. Given the unprecedented increase in dollar creation over the last four years I expect each one of today’s dollars to hold onto just half their current buying power by 2020.

Twined with this inflation threat is 100% certainty of higher taxes in the future. If you earn $62,068 or more you already pay four out of every five dollars collected by the IRS. At the other end of the scale, today roughly 50% of adult Americans don't pay any taxes...whatsoever. This shrinking tax base will force Washington to collect more of the tax take from those already shouldering most of the tax burden. Anything else would be political suicide.


The dramatic increase in federal spending, the record number of fresh dollars entering the system, and the shrinking tax base all mean that time is running out for savers and earners who still have their homes, their salaries, their savings, and their investments denominated in U.S. dollars.

My advice is simple: get out while you still can. Seek to diversify your savings into other currencies and overseas assets. Seek advice. And most important of all, don’t stop searching for new lands of opportunity and new Americas beyond your borders.