The World is Financially Exiting America (and You Should, Too)

Hi! How’s everyone? Gather ‘round, today we’re going to get a little serious.

The disappearances have started. On the streets, in metro stations, around the country. People whisked away to…where? Gulags? No warrants, no due process. The stuff of the Soviet Union.

Meanwhile, figures like NYT columnist David Brooks call for “national uprisings.” The very sorts who dismissed American collapse as a fable spun by “alarmists” not so long ago.

Is America is a dictatorship now? If it isn’t, the merest hint of a thread is all that separates it from one.

By the way, apologies for the silence. I’ve been doing sessions with so many of you that I ended up exhausted, but also because along the way, I began to understand that I needed to launch a new project. Since I can’t spend time with as many of you as I need to help every day, in it’ll be a model portfolio, everyone will be able to subscribe to it, I’ll update it regularly. It’ll be up soon, I’ll explain more then, but today we’re going to discuss the Big Question behind it, that the whole world is asking. 

The time has now come for all of us to begin making our Exit from America. I’ll shorten this to AX, or American Exit, in this little essay. That doesn’t mean pack your bags, and run for the hills. It’s a guiding concept that I suggest you use to make decisions about your life and those of your loved ones right now.

In the weak sense we’ll talk about here, exit is about money. I’m going to teach you about the economics of exit, or what happens to money when societies begin to collapse, like America is now. And I’m going to explain to you what to do about it, by way of teaching you why…

Exiting America is now the Biggest Problem in the World, because it’s a problem with no good solution.

Understanding the Concept of American Exit, or What Happens to Money When Institutions Fail

Don’t think in terms of black or white. I’m not just saying “leave the country!” Far from it. Rather, I want to teach you how to think about situations like this, those of social collapse.

We’re going to distinguish between types of exit, and kinds of exit.

There are two types of exit we’re going to discuss, physical and financial.

And two forms of exit we’ll talk about, soft and hard.

Why the World’s Money is Leaving America

For most people, exit won’t be physical, aka, packing your bags and leaving the country. That’s understandable. Whether you’re older, or you have relatives who depend on you, or because it’s just not feasible for many reasons.

But at the very least, all of us should now be making the decision to financially exit.

I think many people have come to the understanding lately that their money is no longer safe in America. What’s not often understood is that this is a type of exit, too. A financial exit.

Now. I’ve been working around the clock, to the point of exhaustion, doing sessions with many of you, and like I said, I’ll be launching a new project, as I’ve explained to some of you, in which there’ll be a model portfolio, to help guide your financial decisions, in this bewildering moment. I say that because the problem before all of us now is becoming disturbingly clear, and all of us means the world, as we’ll dig into.

Financial exit means just what it sounds like. Your money isn’t safe in America anymore.

How could it be? You see, Wall St types have pretended for the last decade or so that there’d be no price to be paid to political mayhem and social collapse. How could that ever be true?

You see, rights are rights. They are rights for people, that’s true, but they’re also rights for capital.

Laws are laws. They’re laws for people, thats true, but they’re also laws for capital.

And so when basic institutions like rights and the rule of law no longer function—as they clearly don’t in America anymore—nothing is safe. 

Not just nobody.

But nothing. Not people, but also not capital.

And so when we see breakdowns in basic institutions like we see in America today, the result is capital flight. That’s a technical term for capital fleeing situations and context where it’s no longer safe.

The Wall St types were wrong. Of course there was going to be a price for social collapse and political mayhem. They imagined, not understanding history, that if people weren’t safe, who cared—capital would be fine! That’s not how reality works. When institutions don’t function anymore, nothing is safe, neither people nor capital. 

Those shadowy figures just disappearing people from metro stations and sidewalks? That’s not just some kind of abstract moral concern. The world sees its money able to be disappeared just like that too.

That is why rivers of money are now pouring out of America.

That is why its capital markets are all falling in tandem—stock market, bond market, the dollar, a situation not just unusual in economic history, but a telltale sign that a society’s institutions no longer function.

The world is making the decision to financially exit America.

It has to.

Its money is no longer safe in capital markets where a handful of crackpots can tariff it, expropriate it, tank it, crash it, maybe even seize it. 

So what about yours?

Why Everyone Has to Make the Decision to Financially Exit America Now

Everyone must now make the decision to financially exit America or not.

Some will choose to, and some will choose not to.

I think if I have taught you well, then you should already understand the correct decision to make.

Which is it? 

Let’s reason it through together.

If the world is now beginning to understand that it’s money is no longer safe in America, as its economy devolves to something more like a protection racket, extortion scheme, or con game, then what happens next?

The real crashes haven’t even begun yet.

As the world’s money really begins to pour out of America, what has happened so far will look like a mere trickle. Just a warm-up to the main event.

At some point, a threshold will be crossed, and that will be when the real crashes happen. The big ones. When the world says, we’ve had enough of this lunacy, we’re yanking this much from the stock market, that much from the bond market, this much from the dollar. Bang, bang, bang.

So far none of that has really happened, on a serious scale. It’s been at a toy scale. Not trillions. Not even hundreds of billions. Just mere billions. We are dancing at the edge of an abyss. As those capital flows become real ones, serious ones, at large, global scales—that’s when the real crashes will happen.

And if you haven’t financially exited America by then, what will happen to your money?

It will crash and burn. It’ll go up in smoke. Poof, gone. Just like that. You will be swept under by this tide.

This is what is known as Macro Risk, and I’ll explain all that in my model portfolio. You’ll be able to subscribe to it, it’ll be affordable for everyone, and I’ll use it to teach you about these things. It’s reached the point where it needs to be done, because I can’t teach enough of you fast enough through sessions alone, and I don’t want to see anyone get burned. 

Many of you have told me how much I’ve protected you so far, and for that, I’m deeply grateful. That’s why I do this, after all. 

The next step is not to get burned by what's to come shortly, which is the world’s money fleeing America at large scales, in Giant Leaps, not baby steps. If you’re not ahead of that? Like many Americans, too many, you will probably lose a very great deal of your life savings.

So the decision to financially exit is here now.

As in, you must make it now. You must choose, and inaction is a choice, too. You can stay in, or you can walk out. I’ve described for you in unsparing detail what I think will happen to those who stay in. 

Understanding Macro Risk

I don’t see a scenario in which the world’s capital doesn’t flee America. Can you? Do you think anything at this point could entice it to stay and try to risk what Trump and his friends might do next? Let’s say I offered you a 100% return. No, multiply that. Let’s say it was 500%.

Would that entice you to take the risk of your capital being tariffed, taxed, crashed and burned, manipulated, and maybe, at the end of the day, seized?

Maybe it’ll entice MAGA fanatics. But the world? And it’s most sophisticated and largest investors? Don’t kid yourself.

At this point, there is no amount of money that can be dangled before them to induce them to take this level and kind of risk. This isn’t the risk of losing a few percentage points. It’s the risk that all this goes much, much further, and there’s no way to stop it, either, because of course, no institutions function anymore, so who’s going to stop Trump anyways, if he wants to take the world’s money?

Don’t kid yourself when I say that the world’s most sophisticated investors are having exactly these thoughts, and pressing “sell” as fast as they can at exactly this moment when the markets open tomorrow, the day after that, three months from now, and a year from now. 

So. You must make the decision now to financially exit. Or not.

Which will you choose?

Illiquidity and Distress, or Soft and Hard Exit

The way I’ve put this so far, you’ll have gotten the impression that this was a binary choice. “Exit” or “no exit.” All or nothing.

That’s not quite true. Sure, there can be such a thing as a hard exit, which is this sort of absolute position.

But for all of us, that’s going to be tough. Even for the average person, unwinding everything and getting it out? Just doing that will take weeks, if not months, and I’m not even talking about illiquid assets like homes, but “liquid” ones, like cash, stocks, bonds, retirement savings, and so on.

And that should be a warning in itself. Suddenly, all that stuff’s not so liquid anymore, is it, when you try to actually to get it out. That’s a form of hidden risk that was never factored into the system, and right now, it’s costing a lot of people a lot of money. How much do you think people have lost just because their financial advisors won’t get them out of the way of this trainwreck fast enough? The number, in the end, will be staggering, because Wall St’s still telling you “everything will be OK.” It’s making a fool of you this way. Don’t let it.

Illiquidity is the first sign of distress. Take it for what it means. When it’s suddenly hard to get your money out? That’s when you know you need to.

That’s sort of the hidden lesson of hard exit. It’s much, much harder than it appears to be. Not just for you. But even for the world’s largest institutions and investors. They have Wall St accounts, too. What do you think’s happening to them?

The same brain-dead bullshit they’re feeding you. Sorry, the algorithm won’t let me. Sorry, dude, I’m golfing today. Whoops, I couldn’t find the code for that particular item, “sell all my assets right now.” They’re having this problem too, which is why we’re not seeing markets slide further and faster, and I know that because just like I talk to you guys, I talk to them, too, and it’s striking how similar the situations really are.

Think about it. If you were Wall St, would you want to send anyone’s money in the direction of Exiting America? Hell, no. Every time you hit sell, you’d be order-executing yourself right out of a job, a bonus, and a paycheck, because less money in the system, less fat to feed on for you. So they’re not doing it for a reason, a cynical one, a self-serving one, and in the end, an utterly destructive one, because it’ll only make the crashes harder and bigger, in the end, because they’ll be an institution nobody sane or wise trusts anymore, either, just like the current US government.

So a hard exit is hard. No pun intended. 

Many of us will have to settle for a soft exit. 

That simply means: getting out what we can get out.

Most Americans didn’t understand it until the last month or so, but they’ve been wearing financial handcuffs. Maybe they were even gold-plated ones. But handcuffs are handcuffs. What good’s a 401K that you can’t…get your damned money out of…fast enough…to a functioning country? What’s the point of a financial advisor if they never return your calls, or at least not until after the market’s melted down? 

The American financial system puts handcuffs on people. It is a pair of handcuffs. When you really need access to your money, in this simplest but most profound way—get me the hell out—that’s when you discover: not only is it incredibly hard to do, maybe you can’t do it at all. Not to all your money, anyways.

And so many will have to settle for a soft exit, which, like I said, means getting out what you can.

Understand that that’s worth settling for. It’s better to get out what you can than try to get everything out, only to find, too late, that it can’t be done. 

Exiting America is The World’s Biggest Problem Right Now, or the Exit Principle

Let’s call that the Exit Principle. It’s important, It goes like this.

Focus on getting out what you can right now.

And understand it in a sophisticated way. Everyone in the world right now is facing exactly the same problem, which is Exiting America. Some people, physically, sure, Americans who don’t want to be stuck in an authoritarian dystopia. But everyone else, financially, because literally every single person on the planet is invested in some or way another in dollars, T-bills, and American stocks, even if their pension funds or unions or governments do it for them.

Nobody is unique in this regard. 

This is—literally—the World’s Biggest Problem Right Now.

And sooner or later, everyone’s going to have to come to the same understanding. Get out what you can right now, instead of trying to get everything out. Because there’s a tradeoff here, between time and liquidity. Wait too long? And everything will get burned down. Better to exit now, to what extent you can.

It’s even OK to take it step by step. This much, then that much, then this much again. That’s how much of the world’s largest pools of capital will have to handle it. And it’s alright for you to take that approach too.

Let’s think about it like this. If you’re losing let’s say 1-2% a day, which most are, when you combine the losses in stocks, bonds, and the dollar, then of course, you’d better get it out. And if it takes a while, that rate of bleeding’s not great, but it’s bearable, if you get it out at a decent enough speed, and by the end of a few weeks, the matters’ done. 

But the alternative is what’s not bearable. You don’t take small steps, focus on getting the whole thing out, and that takes months, and those months drag on and on. By then, it’s become a year. And a year of losing 1-2% a day? Which has become 3-5% a day? Bang. Then you’re done.

That’s the World’s Biggest Problem Right Now, put a little more bit technically and evocatively.

The Macroeconomic Bank Run at the End of Capitalism, or The Problem Nobody Can Solve Now

And it’s everyone’s problem, including yours, and I’ve tried to give you a simple way to think about it. In technical terms, we call this an “exit problem,” or a “queueing problem.” And you already know how it ends. If we all think the bank is going to run out of money, what do we do? 

We run to the ATM. And what happens next?

I’m not saying there’ll be banks runs. I’m asking you to think even bigger than that. I’m saying America’s the bank, and the world’s trying to pretend it’s not running towards it, about to bang on the door, and ask for all its money back, so there it is, sort of idly sauntering along, whistling. But nobody’s fooled. Everyone else is doing the same thing, and so far, nobody’s broken into a run yet.

But when they do? Lights out.

Welcome back to 1929.

This is the path we’re on. That’s why it’s the World’s Biggest Problem Right Now.

So how do you solve it? You don’t. 

You get ahead of it. 

You get out what you can, while you can, and remain calm as you can about it, too, because panic isn’t going to help. 

You get ahead of it, and you keep getting ahead of it, because you understand what I just taught you: there is no solution to this problem.

The only solution is a run, and that’s not a solution at all, it’s a catastrophe.

You don’t want to be in the crosshairs of that catastrophe.

I want to teach you all this while there’s time. Please take a moment to reflect on it all. This is some of what I’ve been trying to teach many of you in sessions. You’re most welcome to share these essays, by the way, or what you learned in sessions, with your friends, family, etc. I care about you guys and I don’t want to see you get burned. 

As always, reach out if you need help or guidance. (If the diary’s booked up to infinity, but you need an urgent session, just email me, and I usually try to find time.)

Lots of love,

Umair (and Snowy!)