Transcript of the above video: 

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing FATCA, documentation associated with banking. I did a number of videos this week on all of this stuff that is going out to foreigners with regards to banking documentation and one of them is FATCA. I didn't really put too fine a point on this in prior videos but what is FATCA?

Okay, under the Obama Administration, there was promulgated law called the Foreign Account Transparency and Compliance Act - I think initially they wanted to call it FATCAT because they were coming after all of us fat cats overseas that are hiding all our money and blah blah. I'm here to tell you I'm not a fat cat expat, okay? Like I make money, we have a payroll, we have cash flow, I take home a salary but no, just by dint of living outside the United States it doesn't mean that you're some wealthy oligarch who's hiding all your money from the American Government which first of all I don't see where the American Government avails itself of any jurisdiction over me outside of the United States to begin with because their jurisdiction ends with the borders of the United States as far as I'm concerned. That being said, this is the sort of overreach that we are currently having to practically deal with in the circumstances that we are in right now. 

Basically FATCA demanded that foreign banks that wish to do business with American Banks - so that is every Bank on the planet - because as of the time of this video, Swift is effectively, the SWIFT system is the nexus of all banking or banking transactions occurring around the world and the United States of America effectively controls that and Swift it is my understanding, processes all of that stuff through I believe the New York FED. I think it ultimately, even International Bank wires go through America at some point. And they use this to basically leverage, sort of lean on if you will, foreign governments to disclose the bank account information of Americans in their jurisdiction. That's right, FATCA pertains to Americans. If you're not an American citizen, FATCA really has nothing to do with you. 

Now meanwhile, OECD is trying to sort of come in here to Thailand which the shadow of them is like the shadow of the super star destroyer in Star Wars coming over you, this OECD, this ominous shadow of the OECD coming in here and telling everybody they have got to do all of this disclosure. The thing that really hacks me off about the whole thing is this “Common Reporting Standard”, CRS or whatever it is they're calling it, under this Thai Banking information is then going to be disclosed to foreigners. That's my big problem in all of this, bigger than almost anything is when did Thais sign off on having all their banking privacy given over and disclosed over to foreign banking interests. When did we all sign up for that?  I must have missed that memo. 

But that being said, back to FATCA specifically, yes, that is something that pertains to Americans. For example, when I've had to open bank accounts in the past, I've got to fill out documentation associated with FATCA. Why exactly they have mailed this out to a bunch of people who presumably it doesn't even apply to is beyond me. That being said, we will certainly keep people updated on this channel as the situation evolves.