It is a bit paranoid, but then again, you've never been in a country that locks down money transfers, right? You still believe you can emigrate anywhere.

It's currently unlikely, but I suspect the U.S. could implement that much faster than you think if it keeps going downhill. It already implemented a ban on holding gold in the past, for example ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_6102 in place until 1974 ). It's not the scenario I envision, but thinking "The U.S. would never do that!" is naive.

By the way, I believe the original post had a reasonable suggestion... you could live like a king for your lifetime in, say, Uruguay or Costa Rica with 5 million (and those are reasonably safe countries). Yes, emigrating is a quite hard decision, but it is a possibility.