This week I am attending an investment conference in Zurich called Fonds 2010.  I spent the day walking through the exhibitor area speaking to Swiss private banks, investment firm managers, hedge fund managers, and most any other type of investment professional you can think of.

I approached one unnamed banker and asked if his company accepted US clients.  There were four of them standing in the area when I asked the question, and after asking, three of them scattered as if I dropped a grenade in the middle of them.  The remaining guy apparently was the low guy on the totem pole so he stayed to chat a bit. 

He told me that if I walked into his bank with a briefcase full of 100 dollar bills, he would have to ask me to leave.  He said it was just too burdensome to accept a US client.  They just weren’t interested.  He said the amount of money I would need to deposit and the fees they would have to charge, would be so high, it would offset any possible benefit.  The Swiss don’t want  your money.  And this is new under the Obama administration.

This was a common theme today.  I found investment advisors and bankers throughout the day that turned quite cold when they realized I was American.  I spoke to one very nice woman who worked for another unnamed Swiss bank who asked me to talk softer once she found out I was American.  She told me it her bank wasn’t interested in US clients no matter what the deposit amount would be.

I did however, find 2 banks willing to accept US clients.  I spoke with one of them at length today and have another meeting again tomorrow with them to discuss more details.  I have a meeting with the other arranged for later in this week.  Hopefully I can find a solution for clients interested in legal banking relationships in Switzerland.  I will update you again later this week.

For those of you serious about asset protection, you should seriously be considering a banking relationship outside of the US.  Maybe Switzerland is right for you, maybe not.  There are other countries where this is still possible, but I find it increasingly difficult to find banks willing to accept US clients. 

I am not suggesting tax evasion or hiding money, but keeping a portion of your wealth, legally, in a non-US bank makes it virtually impossible for  your account to be reached by creditors pursuing unscrupulous lawsuits.  And it gives you investing opportunities you may otherwise not have access to.

In the future, we may be restricted from wire transfers, cash transactions, owned foreign businesses, or many other controls policymakers can conjure up.  There is already discussion about any transfer of funds over $1,000,000 requiring approval from the US Treasury Department.  What if they decide to block your transfer of funds? 

A more serious threat to impending currency controls comes not from the domestic side, but from abroad.  If foreigners see more and more currency restrictions in the US, it reduces the incentive for investing.  If that happens, we will see a dramatic fall in the value of the US dollar.  This will be devasting to our economy.

The time to act is now.  Take precautions to protect your wealth.  Asset protection is not a strategy for only the super wealthy.  There are still opportunities to open foreign bank accounts.  Many banks outside of the US are much better capitalized and much safer than US banks and are deposits are protected by their governemnt’s central banking system.  There are investment opportunities outside of the US that most Americans are unaware of.  There are opportunities to take advantage of this as well. 

You can also own gold and real estate without any necessity for US reporting – at least for now.  Buying gold and holding it in a safe deposit box outside of the US or buying real estate can be a great option for many people.  In 1933 President Roosevelt confiscated all gold held by US citizens and devalued the dollar 60% in only a few short months.  Think it won’t happen again?

There has been some talk lately about future currency controls in the US.  What we don’t realize is that we already have currency controls.  Have you ever flown outside of the US and had to fill out that form asking you to declare any currency over $10,000?  Do you know why they want to know this?

It is a means of controlling the outflow of hard currency outside of the US.  The government is trying to prevent you from taking a suitcase with $100,000 to your bank in Panama or Switzerland.  They don’t want a flight of capital from our domestic economy.  This is a form of currency controls.

In 2008, a law was enacted that forces all US citizens to pay estate tax and 10 years of income taxes upon expatriation.  For those of you that don’t know, expatriation is when you give up your citizenship and leave the country.  The purpose of this legislation was to stop wealthy citizens from leaving the US with their money in the midst of an economic crisis.  Yet another current form of currency controls.

What our policymakers don’t realize is that by enforcing currency controls like this, it has the opposite affect of the desired legislated purpose.  The purpose is to keep hard currency in the country, but smart entrepreneurs and investors know how to protect their assets.  They know how to move money and they look at early stages of currency controls as a warning sign of more serious, future currency controls.