where the world is going to be changing very, very rapidly over this next decade.
And I don't think it's going to be particularly pleasant.
Europe is on the slippery slope. There's no question about that in my mind.
What does it mean to you if she were to win?
I'd say it's, uh, maybe game over.
Do you feel in some way responsible for the rise of Malay?
We're with Doug Casey. We're going to talk about what's happening in Argentina,
the best value places to live in the world,
what's happening with gold, and who is going to be running the United States for years to come.
We're here at Nomad Capitalist Live. It's our big four-day event.
Hope you'll join us next time here in Kuala Lumpur. Mr. Casey, always a pleasure.
Likewise. Thank you.
You are here with us in Kuala Lumpur.
I've said I think it's one of the best value cities in the world.
You get a certain amount of luxuries. You get an affordable price.
Weather's nice. Taxes are reasonable.
Your point is, is Buenos Aires is on that level.
Yeah. The natives are friendly here, which is very nice.
But, uh, I've been to 155 countries. I've lived in actually more than 10
at this point. And, um, I knew that, uh, I didn't want to live in the U.S. anymore,
even though I was fortunate enough to have been born there at the best time in history.
It's like winning the lottery, having been born in the U.S. mid 20th century.
But, uh, the trend has been down now for decades and it's accelerating. So,
where to go? And of all the places that I've been, uh, frankly, I thought Argentina was number one,
although I live as much in Uruguay as I do in Argentina, actually probably more.
I have a, I have a reasonable sized farm there and it's very pleasant.
So, Buenos Aires, more affordable than Kuala Lumpur? Higher standard?
Well, I have not checked out the prices of real estate here in Kuala Lumpur.
Very cheap.
Very cheap. I don't doubt that. But they're extremely cheap in Buenos Aires.
I'll give you an example. In B.A., I bought an apartment in 2007.
It's a big apartment. It's a two-story penthouse, 5,000 square feet
in the Recaleta, the best part of town. I paid $950,000 for it.
All right. It's my, what, it's equivalent on the upper east side of New York,
which would be the equivalent of the Recaleta. It would have cost $20 million.
So, in other words, it was a 95% discount.
It's about $2,000 a meter is a global standard.
Something like that. Yeah.
At 470 some meters. Yeah.
Yeah.
That's pretty affordable.
Very affordable.
For the standard.
So, that was the good news and I thought I was getting a bargain and I was.
But today, it's still an illiquid market getting much better now in Buenos Aires
and in Argentina generally, but I could probably only get a million and a half for it now,
which is to say significantly less than depreciation of the dollar over the last
how many, 15 years.
Did I read correctly an interview with you decades ago
where you said, don't own the real estate you live in?
Well, the problem with owning real estate is that the real estate winds up owning you,
really. And people forget maintenance costs can be high, taxes are unprojectable,
and you're illiquid in the meantime.
So, his maintenance cost in Buenos Aires high?
No, it's actually quite low.
My bills are pretty low.
I mean, that upper inside penthouse, I could run my entire places for a lot less than that one penthouse.
Well, in New York, I don't know what the condo fees and that would attack taxes.
Gotta be crazy.
Crazy. But in BA, I think the total costs, barring extraordinary events like
fixing the roof on the building, because it's an old French style building and
maintenance has to be done. I don't think it costs more than a couple of thousand dollars per
year, which is true.
Same for me here, four grade, a little smaller, but four grand.
So, you actually have a place here?
Yeah. You got the eight security guys all the time, which is a very common thing in Asia.
So, how many of those countries that you've been to no longer exist?
Well, of course, my favorite country that no longer exists is Rhodesia.
I went there during the war, and it was a fine adventure, and it wasn't an adventure,
but at that time it really was. Everything from landing at the airport in Salisbury,
which is now called Harari, you had to pull down the window shades because they were afraid of
rockets being launched at the landing planes and so forth.
I mean, it was like that all over Rhodesia.
Anyway, when I went to Rhodesia, as I always do when I go to a new country,
and it was new to me then, I always call up the real estate agents and the lawyers
because there are centers of information, centers of power, money, good people to get to know.
There, I also got in touch with a local publisher because my first book, The International
Man, had just come out, and I thought this would be a perfect country for a book that tells you
how to make the most of your personal freedom and financial opportunity around the world.
Because in Rhodesia at that time, there were 250,000 Europeans and about
3 million Native Africans. Now there's about maybe, maybe 5,000 Europeans and about
13, 14 million Native Africans because people have been making what they call the chicken run.
In any event, interviewed a couple publishers, got along well with one of them,
and my book became the largest selling book in the history of Rhodesia.
Never to be dethroned now.
A record never to be broken, right. But I think that over the next couple of decades,
a lot of countries that currently exist will be broken up through secession.
Really?
No question about it. In fact, most of the countries in the world
aren't real countries at all. For instance, in South America, where I spend most of the year,
I think Brazil will turn into two or three countries in the future.
And what would cause that? What's the spark?
Demographics and culture. You go to southern Brazil,
São Paulo and actually south of Rio, and it's very European.
But you go to the north, it's almost African. And the two places don't mix.
I mean, they say that Brazil has the best racial mixing pot in the world.
And it's probably true. But still, it doesn't mix that well.
So you're saying Florianopolis, for example,
a place a lot of foreigners would like to go. They feel that safer.
There's good health care, different than Fortaleza, for example,
where they're pushing, hey, that's the cheap part to invest in now.
No question. The beaches are better up around Fortaleza.
Would you invest in that northern part?
It's cheaper. But I think you're better off.
We're paying sometimes.
It is.
São Paulo doesn't seem that crazy, by the way, the prices.
We're talking about that here at the event.
I found that the prices there seemed more reasonable than I expected
for a city of that magnitude.
Not as cheap as Argentina, but Argentina is the bargain basement in South America.
I think I'm accurate in saying that because things change all the time.
But there are a bunch of other countries that could break up.
I mean, Chile could break up into two countries with the far south,
actually turning into an Indian republic, because they still have problems.
In fact, this is true through a number of countries in Latin America.
The native Indians are still resentful of the conquistadores
and want to get rid of them.
I mean, Bolivia, for instance, should break up into at least two or three countries
and it probably will.
True of Chile, Ecuador, same problems.
How often does a secession movement work, though?
I mean, the last 15 years, we've seen one?
Yeah. Well, you had in Indonesia, East Timor broke off from the rest of...
It was in 1990.
Something like that.
And of course, Indonesia is artificially constructed.
It's actually the Japanese Empire,
where they actually created an artificial language,
so they could all communicate with each other.
But I don't think Indonesia is going to last either as one country.
But what happens, but you're quite correct,
whenever a central government is in control, they want to stay in control.
They don't want to see secession movements.
They don't give away one scrap of land.
Not a bit.
Although maybe the last one this happened with was Sudan, which broke up.
That's Sudan.
Exactly.
So, it should happen in the Congo.
That's another one where there's another war going on.
People don't realize that over the last 20 years,
about nobody knows.
Five, six million people have been killed in the Congo.
We've talked about Indonesia as this,
and it is rising in the rankings of the world's economies.
And I always say, oh, look, it just crossed some European country
that is totally irrelevant, but about there,
because, hey, European countries were just to the top 10, top 20.
Do you think that in your scenario of a breakup of some of these countries,
that's going to impact it?
Or is it just the part with the serious wealth just continues to be the player?
Yeah.
Well, Europe is on the slippery slope.
There's no question about that in my mind.
For instance, people forget that Italy only became Italy as a country.
155.
Something like that.
Yeah, it was a whole bunch of little dukedoms and principalities.
Same thing for Germany, which only became Germany in like 1870,
or thereabouts under Bismarck.
Spain, the Basque region, Catalonia should break off from it.
They shut that down.
I think it's pretty much over at this point, don't you, in Catalonia?
Well, I hope not.
From my point of view, or the point of view I think of any freedom lover,
we'd like to see as many countries in the world as possible,
all friendly, easy to travel between.
We had a mutual friend who said if only there were 8 billion countries in the world,
we'd be perfect.
Well, he may have stolen that question.
I think people steal a lot of them from me,
because I'm hearing something else about the lawyer.
Get a phone book and call the lawyer.
Exactly.
Anyway, the world is going to be changing very, very rapidly over this next decade.
I don't think it's going to be particularly pleasant or convenient,
which is another advantage, incidentally, to living here in Southeast Asia,
which is a little bit out of the line of fire between East and West.
But especially, I think Argentina and Uruguay are very much out of the line of fire.
I think a lot of people in a place like the United States,
where we're from originally, say, oh, well, we think China's a threat.
And so therefore, the entire Southeast and East Asian region must be off limits.
What do you say to that?
All these countries are very different from each other.
They really are.
I mean, talk about racism, which has been made into an artificially big deal in the US.
People in these Asian countries are racist towards each other.
Even if Guilou, the Chinese word for a foreigner,
can't tell the difference between them looking at them, they can.
I'm not a fan of racism, but it's endemic all over the world.
In fact, I think the most racist continent is probably Africa.
What, how can it be?
They're all black people.
Well, because of the tribes.
Because of the tribes, right?
But what happened to Rwanda?
Perfect example, 500,000 people, or so nobody knows,
hacked to death with machetes.
But it's gone back to being stable now.
So these things are, they seem to blow up out of nowhere.
So you're okay with Southeast Asia,
you think it'll be all right?
If I wasn't living in mostly in Argentina and Uruguay,
which are very similar to each other,
I might have wound up in Thailand,
which is in many ways the most mellow country to live in in the world.
Not to, you'll never become a Thai citizen.
You'll never become.
One of them.
It just doesn't work that way.
But a great place to live.
Even in parts of Eastern Europe, if you're a citizen,
you're not really, okay, we're happy to have you.
But where are you really from?
More of curiosity, perhaps.
Well, you know, that's a good point.
Where are you really from?
Because one of the monikers that you popularized,
and it's excellent, is go where you.
Don't worry, you're treated best.
And that's really wise, it really makes sense.
What about the breakup of the United States?
We've heard people here at the event talking about that.
Is that to be vulcanized?
Frankly, a young Chicano in Los Angeles has about zero in common
with an old white female retiree in Massachusetts.
And at some point, he's going to become very resentful
about paying for her social security.
So, yeah, I think the U.S. could break up.
Because over the last, what, has it only been 15 or 20 years
the U.S. has divided itself into red people and blue people.
And it's amazing that people that have woke, blue thoughts
running, memes running through their mind,
they can't talk to the red people.
We're just, you know, the heartland,
middle of your traditional values at all.
In fact, they've come to hate each other.
This has been crystallized with Donald Trump running for president.
And oddly enough, against Kamala.
And I'm not sure how she pronounces her name correctly.
She had her step-daughters giving people
at the Democratic Convention, you might recall,
lectures on the correct pronunciation of her name.
But actually, neither of them are correct.
It should be pronounced Kamala.
Which means in Spanish, how bad?
How bad?
How bad.
So maybe the U.S., since it's increasingly Spanish speaking,
will adopt that particular Spanish cognate pronunciation
of her name.
What does it mean to you if she were to win?
I'd say it's maybe game over for the U.S.
Because they say that every four years.
I know they do.
It's the most important election.
I've, you've been around a lot longer.
But since the 90s, I've been hearing it.
Yeah.
And in a way, it's correct.
Because these, as the United States has become
increasingly politicized, and it has,
every election is more important than the one before it.
Because one thing that people forget about
is that from, let's say a bit over 100 years ago,
just before World War I, which was an amazing returning
point in the U.S., as you know, in 1913,
that was the year when the income tax was initialized in the U.S.
Temporarily.
Temporarily, of course.
And very small.
Very small.
Trivial back in those days.
You can handle, was it 1% or 3%?
I think it was 1 and 3%.
Starting at a very high number, like 10 or $20,000,
which is like a quarter of a million or whatever.
And the other thing, of course, was the inception of the Federal Reserve,
which is one of the major influences
towards destroying the country in any event.
Back in those days, did it really make much difference
who was the president?
Well, no, because the government was not an overwinning feature.
Most people didn't care that the government was there
to support itself strictly on excise taxes and import duties.
But today, it digs into every part of the U.S.
takes, who knows, you can't really trust the government's figures,
not much more than you can those of Argentina anyway.
That's that common trope is, oh, well, you know,
you're going to trust China, and then China somehow becomes
the standard for, you can't trust any other country
except ours. Our statistics are correct.
Right. I know. We're always the good guys.
It's like that song from the 60s.
Now even the Germans have got on their side.
So, of course, the United States has always been
the good guy historically.
But I'm afraid as the government in Washington
has turned into an entity unto itself,
finding foreign wars, pointless foreign wars,
dangerous foreign wars everywhere,
for no good reason, it's become the greatest danger
to your personal freedom and your personal finances.
It's not the Chinese government I worry about.
It's not the Iranian government I worry about.
They've never done any wrong to me,
but the U.S. government is a clear and present danger.
But if you watch the media, the legacy brand countries,
you're going to think, hey, I'm in the U.S.,
and I agree with Doug Casey,
but look at what's happening over there in Europe.
They're pretty regulatory also.
Worse. Worse. Sure.
But in those 155 minus a couple of countries,
are there plenty of them that it is a lot more hands-off,
whether in theory or practice?
No, there's not plenty of them.
There are some. There's a few.
I mean, Switzerland, if you have a lot of money,
is a place to consider living,
but the Swiss are very particular about who was granted a residence permit.
And there are a few other enclaves in Europe,
like Andorra, which most people don't even know is a country,
but it's a little bit isolated.
But generally speaking, I would forget about Europe, frankly.
And if we actually have World War III and it goes nuclear,
I hate to say it, but it's possible at this point.
And Europe's not going to be the best place to be.
I don't think there's any place in Africa,
which I think is a good place for a young man still
to try to make his fortune.
Mauritius.
Yeah, kind of borderline Africa.
But you're right.
Where would I go if I wanted to stick my foot in the water in Africa?
I think the first country that I would visit would be Namibia.
Low population, giant geographic area,
more than just a patina of Europeanization.
I'd say Namibia.
Botswana.
Botswana, probably the most prosperous country in Africa,
probably.
Yeah, another possibility.
But I like obscure places where if you're a
white European or North American where you're unusual,
because I like to go places where I don't like,
I mean, a level playing field is a nice ideal.
But when I'm playing the game, I like to be on the high ground.
I like an on-level playing field where I have more money,
more expertise, more knowledge, more experience,
more connections than the locals do.
That means it's a good arbitrage, good for them,
because I can bring something valuable to the party,
and good for me, because I can bring something to the party.
So you're saying if you're young,
would you consider going to some country and living there
and building your business from there?
Business, I'm not so sure about that.
But looking for opportunities to once again take advantage
of an arbitrage, something that we don't know what it is,
but you might find it in that country where that you can
export it or bring in imports.
But day-to-day business dealing with the public.
Seems tough.
Unless you really know your way around.
I agree with you.
Let me go back to the U.S., though,
because you said, okay, Kamala wins.
You think it's all over.
Yeah, she's a doctor in error, hardcore Marxist,
by family background.
In addition to the fact, she's actually of low intelligence.
She's, I think she's actually stupid and thoughtless
and easily influenced.
And she has, all of her ideas are really bad ideas, so.
Here's a devil's advocate point.
And we talked about this three years ago,
where people have said it would be the right wing, perhaps,
that makes taxes, other in life, harder specifically for expats,
because perhaps under the America First wing,
hey, this country is so great.
If you want to live in Namibia, how dare you?
We're going to make it harder.
And didn't Trump do that?
Now, you can say maybe your answer,
Peter St. Hahn said it yesterday, was,
hey, I'll take one for the team.
It's the right thing for the country.
But it seemed a little bit unfair to me
if you don't want to live in your country
that the right wing could do the same thing.
Oh, I agree.
They're actually, in some ways,
more dangerous than the left wing.
Hard as that is to believe.
Do you really think Hillary would have screwed around
with expat taxes?
Like her or not?
I don't like it.
She would have been the status quo.
She's a dangerous criminal personality.
Sure.
But most of these people that operate
within the Washington Beltway are.
You're getting no, I mean, you never,
you could think it or you never get away entirely
from the U.S.
But if you're living in Namibia,
you got a lot less Hillary Clinton in your life.
Well, that's right.
Or Kamala.
It makes it very hard for them to monitor you personally
to go through your bank records and out of sight,
out of mind.
There's something to be said for that.
But if you want to do it, if you want to internationalize,
it's the 11th hour.
In fact, it's the 11th hour and 50th minute
because one thing that people have to remember
is that the government never controls itself,
but it does control its subjects
who are called citizens for some reason.
And one of the ways they'll do this
is going to be with foreign exchange controls,
which make it very hard and inconvenient and costly
to move your money out of the country.
So if you're fairly well to do American,
now is the time to get your money out of the country
and establish a second residence, preferably
with a second citizenship, someplace else.
Does the 11 hour, because here's, I think,
what some folks would say.
If my guy wins, whomever that may be,
now it's no longer 11 hours and 50 minutes.
Now we're rolling it back to 11 hours
and I have some time.
I'm buying myself time.
Okay, that's true.
If Trump wins, he's not going to be as bad as Kamala
because at least, I'm not a fan of Trump,
incidentally, all I'm sure is a fun guy
to have a beer with, unlike Kamala.
He doesn't drink, remember?
Oh, I guess that's right and he doesn't smoke either.
So, yeah, I guess all we could do is talk
and I suspect that if you're with the Donald,
he's going to do almost all of the talking.
But the good thing about Trump
is that he's a cultural traditionalist.
Regardless of what stupid ideas he has about economics
and he has plenty of dumb ideas about economics,
notwithstanding the fact that he's a businessman,
which is good and Kamala is not.
But the thing is Donald does not want to overturn
the basic essence, the basic nature of America.
So in that, it's the only way he's a real conservative
but it's a very important way.
And that's why I think, that's why I hope that he wins
and maybe it'll give us a four-year respite in some ways
but the problem is that DC, and I lived in DC for 20 years.
In a watergate, no.
Not in the watergate, I mostly lived in Georgetown.
I went to, idiotically, I went to Georgetown University
and then stayed in Washington for the next 20 years after that.
But the problem is that the people that control the government now
are all Jacobins.
They're the same personality types that
ran the French Revolution in 1789.
Same way of thinking, same philosophy, same thoughts.
And they're pretty entrenched.
They've entrenched themselves further with people they've hired
and are now protected by civil service.
And if Kamala wins, they'll stay in office.
In fact, I think she is going to win.
Both because the average American is easily influenced.
I mean, Taylor Swift supports her.
And of course, all the Swifties say, she knows more than I do.
It was always that way, though, no?
Always that way, right.
But now, in the United States, academia is totally conquered
by the cultural Marxist.
It was not that way when I went to college,
maybe not even when you went to college.
And I don't recommend people go to college today.
Incidentally, I'll just toss that out there.
So they go overseas, perhaps?
I wouldn't recommend going to college at all.
I really wouldn't.
I think that, in fact, I'm in the process of writing another book
as to what exactly should a young person do
in that important four years when most people go to college
and tie an albatross of a lot of debt around their necks.
Much more important things to learn and not be corrupted,
which is almost certain to happen.
Listening behind your desk to all kinds of idiots talking.
And almost all college professors at this point
are hardcore leftists.
The entertainment industry totally captured by leftists
insinuating wrong ideas.
U.S. corporations, international corporations,
totally captured.
They're all heads of corporations.
They're all members of the WEF, World Economic Forum,
so that it's tough.
When the bad guys have control of the apparatus of the state,
it's hard to evict them, even if they have to cheat.
You said years ago, you go to Argentina,
you're on your farm, they kind of leave you alone.
Do you think that's still true?
Yes, it is true.
I think it's true, because if you're a foreigner living there,
you're not important.
You're not a native language speaker.
I mean, I can get by OK in Spanish.
You get by OK with moderate Spanish?
That's right.
I mean, I can still get by with moderate French.
I used to speak reasonably good French,
but I don't have an opportunity to speak it very often.
I can even, like most people, get by in German
because the first 500 words of English are all cognates to German.
But you're not going to go to political rallies and influence them.
Why would you go, if you have all the places to go,
why would you choose the place where you're going to be pissed off?
Well, because you don't pay tax.
Look, living in Argentina, I don't pay taxes to Argentina
because I don't live there more than six months per year.
So I'm a well-to-do foreigner who contributes to the economy,
employs people, spends money.
It doesn't make any trouble, quite frankly.
I'm not in a position to make any trouble down there.
Same thing in Uruguay, actually.
What's more tax-friendly in Uruguay?
It is more tax-friendly.
That's true.
And they're both really pleasant places to live.
And as far as speaking Spanish is concerned,
it's important when you're dealing with the waiters and restaurants
and the taxi drivers and this type of thing.
But actually, and this is one of the reasons
why I haven't perfected my Spanish,
is because most of the people
that you will associate with as an American expat