Social Issues – Page 3738 – The Burning Platform

‘I Love My Doctor’

Papa B sends us this critical medical update.

Q: Doctor, I’ve heard that cardiovascular exercise can prolong life. Is this true?
A: Heart only good for so many beats, and that it… Don’t waste on exercise. Everything wear out eventually. Speed up heart not make live longer; that like say you can extend life of car by driving faster. Want live longer? Take nap.

Q: Should I cut down on meat and eat more fruits and vegetables?
A: You must grasp logistical efficiencies. What does cow eat? Hay and corn. What are these? Vegetables. So, steak nothing more than efficient mechanism of delivering vegetables to system. Need grain? Eat chicken. Beef also good source of field grass (green leafy vegetable). And pork chop give 100% recommended daily allowance of vegetable products.

Q: Should I reduce my alcohol intake?
A: No, not at all. Wine made from fruit. Brandy is distilled wine. That means they take water out of fruity bit; get even more goodness that way. Beer also made out of grain. Bottoms up!

Q: How can I calculate my body/fat ratio?
A: If you have body and you have fat, ratio is one to one. If you have two bodies, ratio is two to one, etc.

Q: What are some of the advantages of participating in a regular exercise program?
A: Cannot think of single one, sorry. My philosophy: No Pain… GOOD!

Q: Aren’t fried foods bad for you?
A: YOU NOT LISTEN!!! Foods fried in vegetable oil. How getting more vegetables bad for you?

Q: Will sit-ups help prevent me from getting a little soft around the middle?
A: Definitely not! When you exercise muscle, it get bigger. You should only do sit-ups if want bigger stomach.

Q: Is chocolate bad for me?
A: You crazy? HELLO… Cocoa bean! Vegetable!!! Cocoa bean best feel-good food around!

Q: Is swimming good for your figure?
A: If swimming good for figure, explain whale.

Q: Is getting in-shape important for my lifestyle?
A: Hey! ‘Round’ is shape!

Well, I hope this has cleared up any misconceptions you may have had about food and diets.

and…

For those of you who watch what you eat, here’s the final word on nutrition and health. It’s a relief to know the truth after all those conflicting nutritional studies:

1. The Japanese eat very little fat
And suffer fewer heart attacks than Americans.

2. The Mexicans eat a lot of fat
And suffer fewer heart attacks than Americans.

3. The Chinese drink very little red wine
And suffer fewer heart attacks than Americans.

4. The Italians drink a lot of red wine
And suffer fewer heart attacks than Americans.

5. The Germans drink a lot of beers and eat lots of sausages and fats
And suffer fewer heart attacks than Americans.

Executive Summary

Eat and drink what you like. Speaking English is apparently what kills you.

Central Bankers: Inflation is God’s Work

Submitted by Doug French via the Ludwig von Mises Institute of Canada,

Inflation is always somebody else’s fault. Ludwig von Mises called out finger pointing central bankers and politicians decades ago in his book, Economic Policy. “The most important thing to remember is that inflation is not an act of God, that inflation is not a catastrophe of the elements or a disease that comes like the plague. Inflation is a policy.”

In the fall of 2007, Gideon Gono blamed his country’s inflation rate of 4,500 percent on “the differences that Zimbabwe has had with its former colonial master, the UK,” and added, “we are busy laying the foundations for a serious deceleration programme.” Deceleration? A year later inflation was 231 million percent.

Money printing didn’t have anything to do with it according to the central banker. Droughts began to be more frequent in the 2000’s and Gono believed ”there is a positive correlation between the drought and inflation.” Dry weather, he told New African magazine, has, “got a serious bearing on our inflation level.”

In Gono’s dilluded mind,inflation was about the weather, lack of support from other nations, and political sanctions. He had nothing to do with the hyperinflation in his country. “No other [central-bank] governor has had to deal with the kind of inflation levels that I deal with,” Gono told Newsweek. “[The people at] my bank [are] at the cutting edge of the country.”

These days in Argentina its not the weather and political sanctions causing prices to rise, its businesses engaging in commerce. President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner is urging her people to work “elbow-to-elbow” with her government to stop companies from looting the people with high prices. Two weeks ago the government devalued the peso by 20 percent but it is private businesses that are stealing from working people with price increases.

Posters of retail executives have been plastered around Buenos Aires. For instance, Wal-Mart Argentina’s president Horacio Barbeito has his mug on a poster with the caption, “Get to know them, these are the people who steal your salary.”

Kirchner’s cabinet chief Jorge Capitanich calls economists who point to government policies as inflation’s culprit “undercover agents.” He implies that these economists are the tools of business. “Argentines should know that independent, objective economists don’t exist,” Capitanich claims. “I want to say emphatically that when unscrupulous businessmen raise prices it has absolutely nothing to do with macroeconomic variables.”

In 2012 the president of Argentina’s central bank, Yale-educated Mercedes Marcó del Pont, said in an interview, “it is totally false to say that printing more money generates inflation, price increases are generated by other phenomena like supply and external sector’s behaviour.”

So while its central bank prints, the Kirchner government has enlisted the citizenry to work undercover in the fight against rising prices. A free smartphone application is encouraging Argentines to be citizen-cops while they shop.

The app is a bigger hit than “Candy Crush” and “Instagram.” President Kirchner wants “people to feel empowered when they shop.” And, they do. “You can go checking the prices,” marveled Analia Becherini, who learned of the app on Twitter. “You don’t even have to make any phone calls. If you want to file a complaint, you can do it online, in real time.”

“Argentina’s government blames escalating inflation on speculators and greedy businesses,” reports Paul Byrne for the Associated Press, “and has pressured leading supermarket chains to keep selling more than 80 key products at fixed prices.”

However, businesses aren’t eager to lose money selling goods. Fernando Aguirre told Chris Martenson that with price inflation running rampant, “Lots of stores don’t want to be selling stuff until they get updated prices. Suppliers holding on, waiting to see how things go, which is something that we are familiar with because that happened back in 2001 when everything went down as we know it did.”

In his Peak Prosperity podcast with Aguirre, Martenson makes the ironic point that when governments print excessive amounts of money, goods disappear from store shelves. In a hyper-inflation the demand for money drops to zero as people buy whatever they can get their hands on. Inflation destroys the calculus of profit and loss, destroying business, and undoing the division of labor.

Aguirre reinforced Martenson’s point. Describing shelves as “halfway empty,” in Argentina he said, “The government is always trying to muscle its way through these kind of problems, just trying to force companies to stock back products and such, but they just keep holding on. For example, gas has gone up 12% these last few days. And there is really nothing they can do about it. If they don’t increase prices, companies just are not willing to sell. It is a pretty tricky situation to be in.”

Tricky indeed. “It would be a serious blunder to neglect the fact that inflation also generates forces which tend toward capital consumption,” Mises wrote in Human Action. “One of its consequences is that it falsifies economic calculation and accounting. It produces the phenomenon of illusory or apparent profits.”

Inflation is also rampant at the other end of South America. Venezuela inflations is clocking in at 56 percent. Comparing the two countries, Leonardo Vera, a Caracas-based economist told the FT, “Argentina still has some ammunition to fight the current situation, while Venezuela is running out of bullets.”

Fast money growth has also led to shortages such as “newsprint to car parts and ceremonial wine to celebrate mass,” reports the FT.

Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro is using the government’s heavy hand to introduce a law capping company profits at 30 percent. Heavy prison sentences await anyone found hoarding, overcharging, or “destabilising the economy.” Hundreds of inspectors have been deployed to enforce the mandates.

The results will be predictable. “With every new control, the parallel, or black market, dollar will keep going up, and so will the price and scarcity of milk, oil, and toilet paper,” says Humberto García, an economist with the Central University of Venezuela.

Don’t expect the printing to stop any time soon. Central bankers believe they are doing God’s work. “To ensure that my people survive, I had to print money,” Gideon Gono told Newsweek. “I found myself doing extraordinary things that aren’t in the textbooks. Then the IMF asked the U.S. to please print money. The whole world is now practicing what they have been saying I should not. I decided that God had been on my side and had come to vindicate me.”

It seems disasters wrought by inflationary policies must be experienced again and again, as “Inflation is the true opium of the people,” Mises explained, “administered to them by anticapitalist governments.”

The practice of central banking is the same around the world. The only difference is in degree. Before he destroyed the Zimbabwean dollar Gono looked to America for inspiration. “Look at the bridges across the many rivers in New York and elsewhere,” Gono told New African, “and the other infrastructure in the country that were built with high budget deficits.”

The Zimbabwe, Argentina, and Venezuela inflations may seem to be something that happens to somebody else. But Mr. Aguirre makes a point when asked about 2001, when banks in Argentina, after a bank holiday, converted dollar accounts into the same number of pesos. A massive theft.

“Those banks that did that are the same banks that are found all over the world,” Aguirre says. “They are not like strange South American, Argentinean banks–they are the same banks. If they are willing to steal from people in one place, don’t be surprised if they are willing to do it in other places as well.”

A Way to Prove We’re All Born Libertarian

FREEMANSPERSPECTIVE

We’re all born knowing the truth, but by the time you’re four or five years old, they’ve beaten it out of you.

– Attributed to Bob Dylan

I think I’d be a bit more charitable than Mr. Dylan; I’d say that we’ve only had the truth partly beaten out of us by the age of five. I think truth endures in us, at least to a significant extent, up till puberty, after which it is beaten into submission over the next decade or so.

The Crazy Years

We all have experience with the tumultuous years that begin with puberty: First we are slapped with a rush of hormones. That triggers a reproductive imperative. That’s crazy-making enough, but then we find ourselves inside of a rigid, status-based system… a system that massively influences all of our potential mates.

That’s a recipe for the corruption of thought, and it does corrupt our thoughts.

Orson Welles was an unusually clear-thinking and experienced child… far more experienced than average. He spent his days (he was what we’d now call home schooled) reading the works of Shakespeare and all the existing Greek tragedies, repetitively.

As a man, Orson was once interviewed about his young days. The interviewer asked what he had thought of teenagers. Orson replied, “I thought they were absolutely insane.”

I think all of us can understand why.

Getting to the Truth

So, if we want to get a glimpse of human nature before it’s stressed and shaped during the crazy years, we should really go to pre-teens.

Granted, kids are not the pure saints they are sometimes imagined to be… and it is true that these kids are already sexualized and trained in status these days… but there remains, in most of them, some residue of honest thinking. They have not yet been dragged all the way into the conformist way of mind.

My hypothesis is that most of us are born as natural libertarians – having a built-in bias toward liberty.

And I have a clean way of testing this idea: Go to pre-teens, in a neutral setting, and ask them a very simple question:

Shouldn’t you be allowed to do anything you want, as long as you don’t hurt anyone?

My guess is that the results would show a large majority agreeing with the statement, and the younger the respondent, the higher the percentage.

A Challenge to You

I’d like to propose we actually run such an experiment. I’ll be pleased to coordinate and publish the data.

In order to ensure that the results are meaningful, I recommend the following:

Make sure you have a neutral setting. Don’t talk to the child about liberty, obedience, or anything along those lines before asking the question. Make sure that you are feeling neutral too. You should want to know the child’s opinion, sincerely.
Since children have notoriously short attention spans, ask the question only after you have calmed them and centered their attention. I suggest something like this:

Can I ask you a question? I want to know what you think about this.

If the child answers more than a simple ‘Yes’ or ‘No,’ write down precisely what they say. Then, if necessary, write down your interpretation of what the child said and why you interpreted their meaning that way.
After you write down the answer, feel free to continue the discussion with the child if fitting, but not if there are other study participants in the area. Keep them neutral.

As I say, I’ll be pleased to tabulate and publish the results if one or more of our readers want to run the experiment.

I think the results might be very interesting… and quite possibly very useful.

Paul Rosenberg

[Editor’s Note: Paul Rosenberg is the outside-the-Matrix author of FreemansPerspective.com, a site dedicated to economic freedom, personal independence and privacy. He is also the author of The Great Calendar, a report that breaks down our complex world into an easy-to-understand model. Click here to get your free copy.]

Outside the Box: World Money Analyst Update on Russia

By John Mauldin

In last week’s special Thursday edition of Outside the Box, World Money Analyst Managing Editor Kevin Brekke interviewed WMA contributor Ankur Shah on emerging markets, but they didn’t touch on one very important emerging market: Russia. So this week I have brought Kevin back to sound out the views of Alexei Medved, WMA’s Russia and CIS contributing editor.

And right off the top, Alexei tells us two significant and surprising things about the Russian market:

One should look at investing in Russia from at least two time perspectives: long term, meaning 10-plus years, and a medium time horizon of 1-3 years.

Long term, Russia is still the best-performing major stock market in the world for the period 2000–2013, when measured in US dollars against the major market indexes. It is well ahead of not only all developed markets, but also the markets in China, Brazil, and several other emerging markets that were and are much more a centre of attention by Western media and investors. This long-term outperformance was achieved despite the fact that 2013 was not a good year for Russian equities, with the RTS Index down 5% in 2013.

Medium term, the Russian market remains the most undervalued. The average P/E is about 4.5, significantly below other emerging markets and way below the multiple on shares in the developed markets.

Needless to say, there are challenges with investing in Russia, too; and Alexei and Kevin cover them thoroughly. If you have wondered about Russia – or for that matter the markets of emerging and developed countries anywhere else in the world – you really should tune in to World Money Analyst.

John Mauldin, Editor
Outside the Box[email protected]

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World Money Analyst Update on Russia

World Money Analyst: I am very pleased to speak with Alexei Medved. Alexei is the Russia and CIS contributing editor at World Money Analyst, and I caught him at his office in London. Thank you for joining us today.

Alexei Medved: My pleasure, thank you for inviting me.

WMA: As you and I have discussed before, Russia remains a little-understood market for many Western investors. Can you talk a little about the investment backdrop for Russia?

Alexei: One should look at investing in Russia from at least two time perspectives: long term, meaning 10-plus years, and a medium time horizon of 1-3 years.

Medium term, the Russian market remains the most undervalued. The average P/E is about 4.5, significantly below other emerging markets and way below the multiple on shares in the developed markets.

WMA: How has the Russian market held up so far this year, with emerging markets under pressure?

Alexei: Since the start of this year, the Russian market has underperformed other markets, down 8% in US dollar terms. This, to a large extent, could be explained by a noticeable decline of the ruble against the US dollar (-5.5%).

As you know, so far this year many emerging markets and emerging market currencies have been punished significantly, as Western institutional investors became worried about macroeconomic pressures in some of the emerging economies, like Turkey and Argentina. These countries have problems that are real and serious: too much external debt, a trade deficit, a budget deficit, declining foreign currency reserves, etc. So, it is understandable why foreign investors withdrew a lot of money from these markets recently.

What is hard to understand is why they also withdrew significant amounts of money from the Russian market. In my view, it is primarily because most investors continue to view emerging markets as a single class of investments. So, when they withdraw money they do it across the board, in all emerging markets. This is generally not the best approach. In contrast, investors do not approach developed markets as a single class, but differentiate between the countries.

WMA: Using your examples of Turkey and Argentina, how does Russia compare in terms of the macro picture?

Alexei: The macroeconomic position of Russia is vastly different from that of Argentina or Turkey. For starters, Russia has a positive trade balance and a balanced budget, unlike these and many other emerging and developed countries. Russia also has a very low debt load, with the ratio of external government debt-to-GDP around 10%, much lower then the roughly 95% in the US and even higher in some European countries. Further, the unemployment rate in Russia is around 5.5%, meaning the country is essentially running at full employment.

The unrefined “sell everything that’s emerging” approach apparently in play by Western institutional investors has led to the Russian market being unjustifiably punished. The good news is that the punishment has created even better investment opportunities for investors who can avoid “heard mentality.” There are solid, profitable Russian companies that are trading today at very low valuations.

WMA: One of your areas of expertise is the use of short-dated, US-dollar-denominated Eurobonds to capture higher yield and manage risk. Can you explain this strategy a little for our readers?

Alexei: Of course. I think Russia and the CIS also present a good opportunity for fixed income investors. Given my serious worries about a possibility of rising inflation and yields in developed markets, we recommend investing only in relatively short-term bonds (under 4 years). Our [Alexei’s independent business] weighted portfolio maturity is now under 2 years. One can either invest in Russian sovereign debt or the safest corporate bonds and receive somewhat higher yields than in comparable developed-economy bonds. Investing in bonds that do not have an investment grade rating from one of the major rating agencies is another option.

Based on our local knowledge, we particularly like some high-yield bonds where we have a decent understanding of the company and believe that the bonds will be repaid, despite fairly low ratings from the credit agencies. This way, we invest in bonds that offer 10%-12% yields.

WMA: Switching to issues of politics and governance, many observers are concerned about issues of corruption in Russia, making it difficult for an investor to navigate the market. Has the current government embraced reforms on this?

Alexei: Obviously, one has to be very careful when considering investing in Russian equities or bonds. For investors that lack knowledge about the country, I do not recommend they attempt a do-it-yourself approach to selecting Russian shares. A better approach is to either invest through an index fund or to seek share selection advice from people who specialize in the Russian market on a day-to-day basis. This is in spite of the fact that over the last decade, Russia to some extent became much more investable.

Back to your question, corporate governance has generally improved, although perhaps not as much as some investors would like. The government is taking steps in this direction, yet a lot remains to be done. As Russia recently became a full member of the World Trade Organization (WTO), and its market is opening up to external competition, Russian companies will have to become more efficient to compete, and thus more profitable for investors.

Many investors have yet to wake up to the reality that Russia is a serious global player that’s here to stay. This opens up even more opportunities for investors.

WMA: The January issue of World Money Analyst highlighted the importance of taking a longer view on markets and investments, something that you and I agree on. You’ve made some great recommendations at WMA, and recently advised to take profits on two stocks that were held for a year or longer. Can you briefly go over these trades?

Alexei: Yes, as I said earlier, one has to look at these opportunities on a medium- to long-term investment timeline and not attempt to trade these markets, as one’s investments can get unjustifiably punished, as is happening now. We have been active in the Russian market for over 20 years and certainly maintain such an approach when we look at investments to recommend to our clients. Once the investment is made, we monitor it on a constant basis, as one cannot just “salt it away.” Once the shares reach our target price, we sell them and move on to the next opportunity.

In the January 2014 issue of WMA, I recommended taking profits on two positions. The first was the shares of Russian airline Aeroflot, recommended in the January 2013 issue. By January 2014, its shares had moved up nicely on the back of stellar company operating results. We advised to sell the shares and realized an 84% gain, including the dividend, in 12 months.

The second was the shares of AFK Sistema, a large-cap (US$18 billion) company that restructured itself from a conglomerate into essentially a private equity fund. I recommended its GDRs in the July 2012 issue. By January 2014 the shares had moved up significantly, and I advised to sell in that month’s issue of WMA. We pocketed a total return of 63% in 18 months.

These returns are particularly remarkable against a negative 5.6% return of the

Russian RTS Index in 2013. While we still like both of these shares, their significant appreciation had reached our price targets, so it was time to cash in some chips. And seeing that these shares are now trading lower, we got out at the right time and preserved the investors’ profits.

WMA: We can’t talk about Russia and not mention the ruble. Investing in certain currencies – like the Canadian dollar and Norwegian krone – has been in vogue for several years on the premise that these are “resource currencies” supported by the natural resource wealth of the issuing country. With Russia’s vast mineral and commodity wealth, should we consider the ruble a commodity currency?

Alexei: Given that Russia is a large producer of oil, gas, and some other commodities, to some extent the ruble should be seen as a commodity currency, perhaps even a petrocurrency. So, if one believes that the oil price is likely to decline significantly and stay low for years to come, one should not buy Russia. However, if one believes that the oil price trend is flat to up in the medium and long term, Russia will do well macroeconomically.

WMA: Next to the emerging markets, another big issue is developments in Ukraine. You have covered Ukraine for World Money Analyst subscribers. The country seems to be caught in a conflict about alliances: to enter into a closer economic alignment with Moscow, or shift to stronger ties with the EU. What are your thoughts on this and the investment implications for Ukraine?

Alexei: It is very sad that the situation in Ukraine has deteriorated as far as it has. Some lives have been lost. Ukraine is torn between the current government that is leaning towards the Customs Union with Russia, and a large proportion of the population, perhaps a majority, which would support a closer cooperation with the EU.

Ukrainians are also fed up with perceived government corruption and diminishing civil liberties in the country. In December, Russia provided a US$15 billion rescue package to Ukraine and immediately disbursed US$3 billion. It remains to be seen which way the current situation will be resolved.

However, there are some corporate bonds in Ukraine that should be relatively immune to this political turmoil. One of the companies we like in Ukraine is MHP, the largest chicken meat producer in Europe. The company is fairly insulated against possible further depreciation of the local currency, as it sells 37% of its products abroad. After the recent sell-off in Ukrainian bonds, one can buy the Eurobond of MHP priced in US$ with a maturity in April 2015 and a yield-to-maturity of 10.6%. Such a high yield on short-dated paper is very hard to find elsewhere.

WMA: Any final thoughts for investors about the opportunities in Russia?

Alexei: The latest sell-off of Russian shares represents an opportunity to buy quality companies at discount prices. Today, we can see compelling value in world-class companies with assets not just in Russia but globally (including the USA), good corporate governance, and nice dividends. In short, I agree with Warren Buffet: “Buy when others are fearful.”

WMA: Alexei, thank you for sharing your valuable insights into the dynamic Russian market.

Alexei: You are welcome. My pleasure.

Learn more about World Money Analyst here.

The article Outside the Box: World Money Analyst Update on Russia was originally published at mauldineconomics.com.

Doug Casey: “There Is a Rogue Elephant in Your House”

by Doug Casey

One time when I was in Burma (now Myanmar), I spent a couple of days riding around the forest by elephant back. Elephants are a fine thing to have in the forest but, believe it or not, you have one living in your house with you. And you should do something about it now, before your house is wrecked and you and your family get stomped in the process.

Any amount of financial success won’t mean much if you get stepped on by the elephant in the room. The damage you routinely suffer from the elephant—not to mention the lingering threat that he’ll go completely berserk someday—dwarfs the importance of the best investment decision you’ll ever make. So, I’m going to invite your attention to a problem of overriding importance: How can you protect yourself and your wealth from the elephant?

The elephant in the room is, of course, the government.

The elephant is your permanent roommate, and it has a permanently big appetite. In the name of “income tax,” it regularly eats 40% or so of everything you earn. You may not like it, but by now you’ve probably learned to live with it.

After you’ve lived out your income-tax paying years, the elephant will attend your funeral—not to console the mourners or to recount your good deeds, but to collect estate tax. In the name of the “estate tax,” the government will take up to 40% of what you leave for the next generation and perhaps more of what you leave for your grandchildren.

It’s not the kind of roommate you’d advertise for. In fact, if you add things up, government probably is the most expensive disaster you’ll ever suffer. Almost every year, you lose more to it in taxes than you lose on your worst investments. And unless you’re a champion crime victim, you’ll lose less to a lifetime’s worth of burglars, bandits, muggers, and con men than your estate will lose to the tax collector… if you don’t do something about it.

Most successful people respond to the elephant by trying harder—working harder, working smarter, and earning enough to live well on what the elephant doesn’t eat. They’re like the farmer who plants enough to have a good harvest even after the bugs have taken their share. This is a workable solution, up to a point. But it won’t work at all if the elephant decides to take everything.

The idea of losing everything is literally unthinkable for many people. It is so far outside the range of their experience that all they can do with the idea is to reject it as not worth considering. Unfortunately, this also means rejecting all the opportunities for protection—just as many Titanic passengers shunned the early invitations to a lifeboat.

But the danger of a total wealth wipeout doesn’t go away. Some people do in fact lose everything to the elephant. In a few cases, it happens through seizures. A government agency points to an individual, calls him a bad name (drug trafficker, money launderer, polluter, racketeer, or tax evader), and takes everything the target owns. The target may not even have enough money left to hire a lawyer to help recover a portion of what he’s lost.

More commonly, it’s a lawsuit that takes everything a person has. The judge hears a story. The judge likes the story. The judge orders the defendant to give the plaintiff everything the defendant owns. Then the plaintiff wonders why a seat in the lifeboat seemed so uncongenial.

Perfect Protection

The best protection you can have from the elephant is not to own anything. What you don’t own can’t be taken from you by a tax collector, by a government agency, by a results-oriented judge, or by anyone else. You don’t want to be poor, obviously. But there’s a strategy that lets you have it both ways—the safety of not owning anything and the benefits of being wealthy. You can have it both ways by transferring your assets into an institution in another country that will return them to you (or family members) only when you want them back.

That’s the essence of an international trust. It puts just enough distance between you and your assets that the assets can’t be taken from you. But it makes those assets available to you when you want them. An international trust needs to be designed in just the right way. It mustn’t leave you with any rights that a local court or government agency might try to take away from you; and it mustn’t leave you with any powers you could be forced to use against your wishes. On the other hand, the trust must give you emphatic assurance that the trustee will never lose sight of your real objectives—otherwise you’re not going to use it.

Here’s an outline of how an international trust protects you from the elephant:

You are the grantor of the trust—the person who transfers legal title to selected assets to the trustee.

The trustee is a bank or trust company in a country with no income or estate taxes and a legal system that won’t tolerate a US-style litigation explosion. The trustee takes legal responsibility for the safekeeping of trust property and applying it for your purposes.

You and everyone else you care to include are the beneficiaries—the persons who are eligible to receive cash distributions or other benefits from the trust. You can include family members (including descendants who haven’t been born yet), or anyone else.

You are the protector of the trust. As protector, you have the legal power to monitor the trustee’s performance and the power to replace it with another institution if needed. You also have the power to name your successor as protector—so that the trust will continue to have a protector even after your lifetime.

The relationship among the participants is spelled out in a written trust agreement. Two provisions are essential to getting maximum protection. First, the trust should be irrevocable. If it isn’t, then anyone can undo your trust simply by forcing you to revoke it.

Second, the trust should be discretionary. “Discretionary” means that no one beneficiary owns a particular share of the trust. Instead, each beneficiary receives what the trustee, in its discretion, decides to give the beneficiary. With a discretionary trust, no beneficiary owns anything he can be forced to assign to a judgment creditor or tax collector. And a discretionary trust makes it impossible for any tax collector to attribute the trust’s income to a beneficiary.

These two key features—irrevocable and discretionary—are both powerful and cautionary. They are powerful in that they put up a wall around your assets that the elephant can’t knock down. The elephant can’t reach trust assets directly, because they’re held by an institution offshore, where US courts and government agencies have no jurisdiction or power to enforce a judgment. And it can’t reach them through you because you don’t have the power to get them back without the consent of the trustee. You can do or sign whatever you’re ordered to and still be confident that your wealth is protected.

But that same power is a source of caution. How can you be confident that the trustee will use the discretionary authority you’ve given it in the right way? How can you be confident that the trustee will send you a check when you need it? You get that confidence by being the protector.

The trust agreement should give you, the protector, the power to replace the trustee with another institution of your liking—in other words, you should have the power to fire the trustee.

Two other features should be included to ensure that the trustee uses its discretionary authority correctly. First, the trustee should be obligated to consider all the advice it gets from the protector. Second, the trustee should be absolved of liability for decisions it makes based on the protector’s advice. Together with the power to fire the trustee, these provisions give the protector all the influence he needs.

Using an international trust for lawsuit protection and tax savings doesn’t interfere with your freedom to make investment decisions. If you want, the trustee can open a brokerage account for your trust anywhere in the world and appoint you as the trading advisor. You continue to give the buy and sell orders. Or you can ask the trustee to hire a particular investment manager for your trust. Or you can keep complete management control by using a limited partnership. You transfer the real estate, business, or investments you want to protect to a limited partnership and then transfer the limited partnership interest to the trust. As general partner, you would still make the day-to-day investment and management decisions, but the value of the assets is protected by the trust.

The biggest, simplest benefit of an international trust is lawsuit protection. You can’t be forced to hand your assets over to the winner of a lawsuit (or to any other creditor), because you no longer own them. The trustee is the legal owner. Anyone who hopes to reach those assets must bear the expense and bad odds of legal action in another country. Provided you’ve selected the right country for your trust and assuming that you were solvent when you funded it, his prospects are extremely dim.

Plaintiffs’ lawyers know how difficult it is to break into a properly established international trust. As a result, having your assets protected by an international trust means that litigation against you never gets started or gets settled on terms that are extremely favorable for you.

Income tax savings for yourself aren’t automatic. They depend on how your trust investments are structured. This is a complex topic, but the summary is short: Merely transferring assets to an international trust won’t achieve any income tax savings in your lifetime.

For future generations, the income tax consequences of an international trust are far more dramatic. The trust will have no ties to the US tax system. It can be used to accumulate and compound investment returns free of current income tax. Future generations will face no tax on the profits until they spend them. Even then much of what they take from the trust can come to them free of income tax. An international trust allows you to pursue any type of estate plan you want (or none at all). You can do all the conventional things you’re likely to hear about if you visit an estate planner, and also do some other things that wouldn’t be possible without going international. For example, with an international trust, you can get property out of your estate and still be eligible to receive the money back for your own support if you later find that you need it. This frees you to act aggressively to reduce your taxable estate without the fear of planning your self into the poorhouse.

The biggest estate-planning advantage is finality. The wealth you leave in an international trust disconnects from the US tax system. It will never be included in the taxable estate of any future generation. For your family, estate tax comes to an end. The elephant will have to dine elsewhere.

Previously, getting the protection of an international trust demanded so much effort and expense that almost no one did it. But now an international trust is cheap and easy to use.

What has opened up the world of international trusts is Terry Coxon’s International Trust Guidebook. This guidebook takes all the mystery out of the topic. The material is laid out in such a clear and direct fashion it will quickly make you feel like a minor expert.

It’s thoroughly footnoted with tax law and court case references, the kind of supporting details that your lawyer or accountant would insist upon. Plus professional commentary is provided by noted tax and asset protection attorney Robert B. Martin, Jr.

Mr. Martin writes from the real-world perspective of 43 years of legal experience. He’s the author of dozens of published articles on tax and other legal topics and has been the point man in hundreds of legal battles.

It’s like having your own asset protection lawyer right by your side and can save you thousands in legal fees in setting up an international trust.

Several members of my family are taking action using international trust. If you’re inclined, I urge you to do so now, not later. The US government could one day arbitrarily make it impossible to form an international trust.

If you’re interested in using an international trust to protect your wealth from the elephant in the room, you can find out more about the International Trust Guidebook by clicking here.