Comment by sgjohnson | Hacker News Reader

Comment by sgjohnson | Hacker News Reader

Trudeau's bank account freeze is the reason why the next time I'll be in the United States, I'll open a US bank account and transfer some savings there. (I'm a European, and not a US person). I've heard that US banks are extremely friendly to non-residents (at least the ones who know to deal with them and hand out a W8-BEN form to fill)

Then my money will be safe. Unless I piss off the United States Federal Government that is. But I don't plan on doing anything that would put me on OFAC list, so I should be fine.

The US is actually a tax haven for non-residents. They have made every country in the world (that matters, anyway) to comply with FATCA and OECD CRS, yet they themselves don't do OECD CRS.

Inflation is likely to remain high for a while, and perhaps for good so the value of your USD will go down. Rents and stuff rose 20% or so in the US which ought to be indicative of the real rate of inflation. Euro seems to fare better so far but the ECB printed even more euros than the US printed dollars so I'm minimizing my own euro exposure.

Virtually 100% of my assets are USD denominated anyway, I keep very little savings, everything that I don't spend goes straightly to the stock portfolio.

So inflation and FX isn't really a concern for me, it's just a fact of life. If you're keeping a decent investment portfolio in Europe, it's almost certainly mostly in USD.

As a non US-resident with a US bank account, I think you are vastly underestimating how difficult it is to actually achieve this.

You are also required to disclose any such US accounts to your european financial institutions that you work with.

I've got a friend who just walked into a Wells Fargo branch, and basically all he had to do was to fill out a W8-BEN form. No SSN, no ITIN. His passport number was apparently a perfectly fine substitute.

This was some years ago though, but assuming not much has changed, I don't think it'd be too difficult.

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