[International Man] Weekends and holidays are the perfect time to catch people off guard...
Like a street thug committing a mugging, capital controls blindside most people—otherwise, they wouldn’t be effective.
The government declares a surprise bank holiday and shuts all the banks—mere hours after they denied they were even thinking about such actions.
They impose capital controls to stop citizens from taking their money out of the country.
Cash-sniffing dogs, which make drug-sniffing dogs look friendly, show up at airports and border crossings.
At this point, your savings are like a lobster in a trap. It’s not hard to see what comes next...
Once a desperate government has your money within its reach, it’ll find a way to take as much of it as possible.
Don’t be surprised if your local currency suffers a massive devaluation, bank deposits are suddenly worth a fraction of what they were just yesterday, or the government imposes an emergency tax.
Whatever the method or pretext, the outcome is always the same: a wealth transfer from you to the government.
This familiar story has played out in many countries in recent years. The pattern is clear and should surprise no one the next time it happens.
It’s all but certain governments in financial trouble will turn to capital controls as a desperate, misguided solution—with devastating consequences for ordinary people.
Argentina, Lebanon, Venezuela, Iceland, Greece, Cyprus, Turkey, Russia, Ukraine, China, India, South Korea, and governments in countless other countries have recently imposed capital.
The lesson from these examples is capital controls can happen anywhere and anytime.
Although it seems unthinkable to most, there is an excellent chance capital controls are coming to the US—they’ve happened before and could happen again soon.
Remember, in 1933, through Executive Order 6102, President Roosevelt forced Americans to exchange their gold for US dollars under penalty of 10 years in prison and a $10,000 fine (or more than $242,000 in today’s debased confetti). 
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