America’s millionaire population declined last year for the first time since the financial crisis, according to a new report.

The population of U.S. millionaire households (households with investible assets of $1 million or more) fell to 5,134,000 from 5,263,000 in 2011, according to The Boston Consulting Group’s Global Wealth study.

Total private wealth in North America fell by 0.9 percent, to $38 trillion.

The ultra-rich were the largest losers in dollar terms. Households in North America with investible assets of more than $100 million saw their wealth decline 2.4 percent. Their population declined slightly to 2,928 from 2,989.

The main reason for all this wealth loss? Stocks.

With the wealthy today increasingly dependent on stocks for wealth, last year’s stalled stock market shrunk the population of millionaires and nicked the fortunes of existing millionaires. According to BCG, the amount of wealth held in equities declined 3.6 percent last year.

Globally, the picture looked a little brighter. Virtually all of the growth in global millionaires came from emerging markets last year. While the United States lost nearly 130,000 millionaires, the rest of the world added 175,000 millionaires. There are now 12.6 million millionaire households globally, according to BCG.

The country with the highest “millionaire density” – proportion of population who are millionaires – was Singapore. More than 17 percent of Singapore’s households are millionaires.

While 2011 saw declines in U.S. millionaires, the future looks brighter, BCG said. They expect wealth held by millionaires globally to grow at around six percent a year in Asia-Pacific. “We are in a two-speed world,” said the report. “All of the growth is being driven by developing markets.”

Senators Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Robert Casey (D-Pa.) called a press conference two weeks ago to announce the introduction of the Ex-PATRIOT Act. The letters stand for “Expatriation Prevention by Abolishing Tax-Related Incentives for Offshore Tenancy.” I’ll bet somebody spent hours coming up with that one.

The measure would also bar individuals like Saverin from ever re-entering the United States.

Schumer couldn’t help sounding a little spiteful when he declared: “Saverin has turned his back on the country that welcomed him and kept him safe, educated him and helped him become a billionaire. This is a great American success story gone horribly wrong.”

Clearly, Schumer would have changed “fleeing” in the headline above to “fleecing.”

For the record, let it be noted that Saverin paid every penny of taxes the Internal Revenue Service said he owed before he left our shores to become a citizen of Singapore. But that’s not enough for the greedy Senators. Their measure would impose a 30 percent capital gains tax on all of the assets of any American who dared to renounce his citizenship. It was predicted that Saverin’s Facebook shares would be worth about $3.5 billion after the initial public offering; that would have been a $1 billion bite.

Singapore, by contrast, has no capital gains tax; so it would appear that Saverin had a hefty financial incentive to make the move.

Nevertheless, the new Facebook billionaire issued a statement denying that he was leaving the U.S. to avoid paying taxes.

“I have paid and will continue to pay any taxes due on everything I earned while a U.S. citizen,” he said. He added that he was “very grateful to the U.S.” for the advantages he enjoyed since 1992, when he moved to the United States from Brazil. His decision to renounce his U.S. citizenship, he declared, “was based solely on my interest in working and living in Singapore.” Sure thing, Eduardo.

When I first heard this story, I couldn’t help but compare the threats and accusations against Saverin to the treatment another American billionaire received when he decided to relinquish his U.S. citizenship.

John Templeton was an investor and mutual fund pioneer who renounced his U.S. citizenship in the 1960s and moved to the Bahamas. The move saved him an estimated $100 million in taxes when he subsequently sold his interest in Templeton Growth Fund, an investment firm he started in 1954.

But rather than threats of being drawn and quartered, Templeton was honored and feted. He was granted both Bahamian and British citizenship. In fact, he was subsequently knighted by Queen Elizabeth in recognition of his many charitable activities. At the time of his death, it is estimated that Sir John had given away more than $1 billion. His numerous gifts included establishing the Templeton College at the University of Oxford. He left the bulk of his fortune to the John Templeton Foundation, which manages the Templeton Prize for Progress toward Research or Discoveries about Spiritual Realities.

Templeton clearly believed he was a better steward of his wealth than our government would be since he took such a drastic step to reduce his tax bite, including what his estate would have to pay upon his death. But doesn’t every American who reduces his tax bill by making charitable contributions do the same  thing? By the way, this must even include Barack and Michelle Obama, who have made substantial gifts to charity. If they thought the government could spend the money better, why not just pay it in taxes?

It turns out that an increasing number of Americans have decided to head for other shores. While the numbers are still a tiny fraction of our population, the trend is unmistakable: According to official figures, a mere 235 Americans gave up their nationality in 2008. Three years later, the number was more than seven times higher: 1,780 disgruntled Americans did so in 2011.

But that’s a pittance compared to the number of expats who have moved out of the United States without surrendering their citizenship. An estimated 6 million citizens live outside our borders. While that does not absolve them from paying taxes here, they do enjoy some substantial advantages — including, in many cases, a substantially lower cost of living.

You won’t be surprised to learn which countries head the list. Hong Kong is in first place, with Singapore right behind. Trailing those two Asian countries are Australia, New Zealand, Switzerland, Canada and Chile. Sad to say, the United States has slipped to 10th place on the list. Frankly, I was a little surprised we haven’t dropped further.

Interest Rates.

So, how can we determine what best to set the interest rates?

Laissez-faire. 

—Shared by Elle.

The leader of the government regularly sits down with his senior generals and spies and advisers and reviews a list of the people they want him to authorize their agents to kill. They do this every Tuesday morning when the leader is in town. The leader once condemned any practice even close to this, but now relishes the killing because he has convinced himself that it is a sane and sterile way to keep his country safe and himself in power. The leader, who is running for re-election, even invited his campaign manager to join the group that decides whom to kill.

This is not from a work of fiction, and it is not describing a series of events in the Kremlin or Beijing or Pyongyang. It is a fair summary of a 6,000-word investigative report in The New York Times earlier this week about the White House of Barack Obama. Two Times journalists, Jo Becker and Scott Shane, painstakingly and chillingly reported that the former lecturer in constitutional law and liberal senator who railed against torture and Gitmo now weekly reviews a secret kill list, personally decides who should be killed and then dispatches killers all over the world — and some of his killers have killed Americans.

We have known for some time that President Obama is waging a private war. By that I mean he is using the CIA on his own — and not the military after congressional authorization — to fire drones at thousands of persons in foreign lands, usually while they are riding in a car or a truck. He has done this both with the consent and over the objection of the governments of the countries in which he has killed. He doesn’t want to talk about this, but he doesn’t deny it. How chilling is it that David Axelrod — the president’s campaign manager — has periodically seen the secret kill list? Might this be to keep the killings politically correct?

Can the president legally do this? In a word: No.

The president cannot lawfully order the killing of anyone, except according to the Constitution and federal law. Under the Constitution, he can only order killing using the military when the U.S. has been attacked, or when an attack is so imminent and certain that delay would cost innocent American lives, or in pursuit of a congressional declaration of war. Under federal law, he can only order killing using civilians when a person has been sentenced lawfully to death by a federal court and the jury verdict and the death sentence have been upheld on appeal. If he uses the military to kill, federal law requires public reports of its use to Congress and congressional approval after 180 days.

The U.S. has not declared war since World War II. If the president knows that an attack on our shores is imminent, he’d be hard-pressed to argue convincingly that a guy in a truck in a desert 10,000 miles from here — no matter his intentions — poses a threat to the U.S. so imminent and certain that he needs to be killed on the spot in order to save the lives of Americans who would surely die during the time it would take to declare war on the country that harbors him, or during the time it would take to arrest him. Under no circumstances may he use civilian agents for non-judicial killing. Surely, CIA agents can use deadly force to protect themselves, but they may not use it offensively. Federal laws against murder apply to the president and to all federal agents and personnel, wherever they go on the planet.

Since 9/11, the United States government has set up national security systems that function not under the Constitution, not under the Geneva Conventions, not under the rule of law, not under the rules of war, not under federal law, but under a new secret system crafted by the Bush administration and personally directed by Obama, the same Obama who condemned these rules as senator and then extended them as president. In the name of fighting demons in pick-up trucks and wars that Congress has never declared, the government shreds our rights, taps our cellphones, reads our emails, kills innocents abroad, strip searches 87-year-old grandmothers in wheelchairs and 3-year-old babies in their mothers’ arms, and offers secrecy when the law requires accountability.

This is really happening.

—Shared by Elle.

Prior to the 1980s financial deregulation we had controlled banking. Banks’ conduct was guided by the central bank. Within this type of environment bank’s profit margins were nearly predetermined (the Fed imposed interest-rate ceilings and controlled short-term interest rates); hence the “life” of the banks was quite easy, although boring.

The introduction of financial deregulation and the dismantling of theGlass-Steagall Act changed all that. The deregulated environment resulted in fierce competition between banks. The previously fixed margins were severely curtailed. This in turn called for an increase in volumes of lending in order to maintain the level of profits.

In the present central-banking framework this increase culminated in an explosion in the creation of credit out of thin air — a massive explosion in the money supply. (In the deregulated environment, banks’ ability to amplify the Fed’s pumping has enormously increased.)

Rather than promoting an efficient allocation of real savings, the current so-called deregulated monetary system has been promoting the channeling of money out of thin air across the economy. From this it follows that, in the framework of the present monetary system, in order to reduce a further weakening of the real wealth-generation processes, it is necessary to introduce tighter controls on banks. Murray Rothbardwrote,

Many free-market advocates wonder: why is it that I am a champion of free markets, privatization, and deregulation everywhere else, but not in the banking system? The answer should now be clear: Banking is not a legitimate industry, providing legitimate service, so long as it continues to be a system of fractional-reserve banking: that is, the fraudulent making of contracts that it is impossible to honor. (Making Economic Sense, p. 279)

Bear in mind that we don’t suggest here suppressing the free market but suppressing banks’ ability to generate credit out of thin air. Please note that the present banking system has nothing to do with a true free-market economy.

It must be reiterated here however that more controls within the framework of central banking can only slow down the pace of the erosion of real wealth formation. It cannot prevent the erosion. (Remember that the Fed continues to pump money to navigate the economy.) More controls will suppress banks’ ability to significantly amplify the Fed’s pumping, so in this sense it is preferable to a so-called deregulated banking sector.

According to some commentators, the huge $2 billion loss by JPMorgan Chase, caused by the risky bets placed using the bank’s money, raises the need to implement the Volcker rule — more controls on banks’ activities. Critics of the Volcker rule are of the view that it will only make things much worse by stifling the efficient allocation of scarce real resources. Our analysis holds that as long as we have a central bank, in order to minimize the damage its policies inflict, it makes sense to impose tighter controls on banks. It is the central bank that enables banks to practice fractional-reserve banking, thereby polluting the economy with money out of thin air. A better alternative is of course to have genuine free banking without the central bank.