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Comment by josteink | Hacker News Reader

If this is the US's response to people relocating outside US borders for their business because of asinine US privacy and copyright-laws, I don't think it will play out to their advantage in the end.

The one lesson learned here from everyone involved is: Whatever you do, do not involve US companies in your business.

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Almost all Non-US banks have already learnt this lesson during the last years.

Try to get an account with a non-US bank or use a non-US financial service company if you're an US citizen / green card holder (or have been that until recently) - they will tell you "no thanks".

I've some time ago even seen Terms of Services on financial web sites that asked US citizens to leave because of the overstretched liabilities the US is one-sidedly trying to enforce outside their jurisdiction.

It depends on the size of your account, as to whether they say "no thanks" or not.

The bigger, the worse. More liability.

Not true. There isn't a major international bank that will turn away American billionaires. Large accounts are extremely lucrative, and far easier to manage because you can keep active watch on the account activities.

Far better to have one billion dollar account, than 1,000 million dollar accounts.

they will most certainly turn them away - they nevertheless might not turn away their offshore vehicles but this soon might be changing as well.

Apparently not. Our billionaires continue to offshore their cash to countries like Switzerland.

And the fact that our companies continue to do exactly the same thing, also proves this out. There's no major international bank that won't take on lucrative accounts with our mega corporations.

What you're talking about is wishful thinking at this point.

Effectively 'hiding' money offshore though opaque company ownership structures is possible when you have jurisdictions where even asking who owns the company could result in jail-time (see 5.1b of the Caymans confidential relationship law [1]). When you don't know who owns what, it becomes difficult to selectively 'turn people away'.

[1] http://www.cayman.gov.ky/pls/portal30/docs/FOLDER/SITE83/GAZ...

That's a really really far cry from what you said in grand-grand-parent. From "there isn't a major international bank that will turn away American billionaires" to a numbered account in Switzerland, a country that's fairly unique in their bank secrecy legislation and tradition.

> do not involve US companies in your business.

Actually, there is a whiff of a trade dispute brewing between Australia and US about this.

> "the US has accused the Australian government of misleading its agencies about the Patriot Act’s scope, and warned that its [cloud service providers] should not be barred from competing for the work."

http://www.canberratimes.com.au/national/public-service/trad...

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