Ray Lopez

I live in Greece. I travel a lot. I sometimes handle large sums of money. No I don't launder money or deal in drugs. But if you do want to launder money, a legal way is (for US citizens) to declare it to the US Treasury, then buy real estate overseas. Once you have real estate overseas, effectively your money is "lost" to the US government, because as of today there is no "international" registry for real estate (that could change in the future of course). As to how much your real estate is worth for estate purposes (should it come to that)--just rely on your foreign real estate assessor--and it's doubtful the IRS will challenge your foreign real estate assessor, if the assessor makes a fair estimate ...More (by contrast, if enough money is at stake in the USA, I bet the IRS would hire their own assessor and challenge your assessment; that would be harder to do if the real estate is overseas). Just my two cents--I'm not an expert in this area either. Consult your attorney if you are serious about this topic. A fairly informative but somewhat spam-like site on international investing is: The Sovereign Society.

http://tinyurl.com/n7rwjy/ - top of page graphic shows bank default swap risk did not peak until early *2009*, not 08, so TARP was bad. Dec 18, 2010