Investing in third world countries
I strongly recommend you to invest in either stocks or bonds. Both markets have very strict regulations, and usually follow international standards of governance. Plus, they are closely supervised by local governments, since they look to serve the interests of capital holders in order to attract foreign investment. Real estate investment is not all risky, but regulations tend to be very localized. There are federal, state/county laws and byelaws, the last usually being the most significant in terms of costs (city taxes) and zoning. So if they ever change, that could ruin your investment. Keeping up with them would be hard work, because of language, legal and distance issues (visiting notary's office to sign papers, for example). Another thing to consider is, specially on rural distant areas, the risk of forgers taking your land. In poorer countries you could also face the problem of land invasion, both urban and rural. Solution for that depends on a harsh (fast) or socially populist (slow) local government. Small businesses are out of question for you, frankly. The list of risks (cash stealing, accounting misleading, etc.) is such that you will lose money. Even if you ran the business in your hometown it would not be easy right? "Basically, unless you are an investment professional, you should not be investing in a venture in a developing country shown to you by someone else. The only time you should be investing in a developing country is if a ""lightbulb"" goes off in your head and you say to yourself, ""With my engineering background, I can develop this machine/process/concept that will work better in this country than anywhere else in the world."" And then run it yourself. (That's what Michael Dell, a computer repairman, did for ""made to order"" computers in the United States, and ""the rest is history."") E.g. if you want to invest in ""real estate"" in a developing country, you might design a ""modular home"" out of local materials, tailored to local tastes, and selling for less than local equivalents, based on a formula that you know better than anyone else in the world. And then team up with a local who can sell it for you. Whatever you do, don't ""invest"" and revisit it in 10-15 years. It will be gone."
I don't feel a thing, my livelihood is hurting from the type of greed displayed by the asshole I was replying too. You don't have to give a fuck, this country doesn't have to get better, inequality can drive us to third world standards, it's fine. I'm sure you're going to be voting to re-elect Trump. Don't bother replying to me. "Are most big US based financial institutions and banks in such a close relationship with USCIS (United States Citizenship And Immigration Services) so they can easily request the information about market traders? Yes. They must be in order to enforce the laws required by the sanctions. What online broker would you suggest that probably won't focus on that dual citizenship matter? ""Dual"" citizenship isn't actually relevant here. Nearly anyone in the world can invest in US banks except for those few countries that the US has imposed sanctions against. Since you are a citizen of one of those countries, you are ineligible to participate. The fact that you are also a US citizen isn't relevant in this case. I believe the reasoning behind this is that the US doesn't encourage dual citizenship: The U.S. Government does not encourage dual nationality. While recognizing the existence of dual nationality and permitting Americans to have other nationalities, the U.S. Government also recognizes the problems which it may cause. Claims of other countries upon U.S. dual-nationals often place them in situations where their obligations to one country are in conflict with the laws of the other. In addition, their dual nationality may hamper efforts of the U.S. Government to provide consular protection to them when they are abroad, especially when they are in the country of their second nationality. If I had to guess, I'd say the thinking there is that if you (and enough other people that are citizens of that country) want to participate in something in the US that sanctions forbid, you (collectively) could try to persuade that country's government to change its actions so that the sanctions are lifted. Alternatively, you could renounce your citizenship in the other country. Either of those actions would help further the cause that the US perceives to be correct. What it basically boils down to is that even though you are a US citizen, your rights can be limited due to having another citizenship in a country that is not favorable in the current political climate. Thus there are pros and cons to having dual citizenship." "I always find comments like this to be funny rather than offensive. Because people like this guy love to use America as the standard for white greatness, but they will completely ignore any third world country in Europe because then suddenly ""it's different.""" My point was that we have the safest debt for **right now**. I agree that we can still afford to spend money to fix the economy. The problem is that the spending we have been doing so far isn't doing a whole lot considering what we are investing. We have spent trillions and our GDP growth rate is two thirds what it was over the last 70 years. If we were still at the beginning of the recovery that could be acceptable. But it's been three and a half years now. We are going to need to start getting some bang for our buck to turn this around.  If we are still doing the same thing two years from now, investors may not have faith in the safety of the United States anymore. They will realize we have taken on 30 years of deficits and then taken trillions more to save the economy. If we are still stagnant, the world will start to question how great our economy really is and whether we even deserve the world reserve currency.  So yes I agree that we currently have the safest debt in the world and can try to save our economy through deficit spending. I did off on a tangent, but I think it was a necessary point. We need to make sure that the deficit spending we do from here on in actually creates real value for the economy and gets real GDP growth.   The reason I am sick of the argument is that many people seem to have this idea that the U.S. will always have the reserve currency and the world will always consider it to be the safest debt. We can keep going this way for now, but if we don't back up that claim then sooner or later they won't buy it anymore. I agree with the government spending but we need to spend in areas that are going to generate real GDP growth rather than randomly building projects and hoping for the best.  edit:so in other words, I think I agree with you. I just want to make sure people understand how perilous things can get in the future and we don't all buy into a sense of entitlement that we can spend whatever we want forever. "In this environment, I don't think that it is advisable to buy a broad emerging market fund.  Why? ""Emerging market"" is too broad... Look at the top 10 holdings of the fund... You're exposed to Russia & Brazil (oil driven), Chinese and Latin American banks and Asian electronics manufacturing. Those are sectors that don't correlate, in economies that are unstable -- a recipie for trouble unless you think that the global economy is heading way up. I would recommend focusing on the sectors that you are interested in (ie oil, electronics, etc) via a low cost vehicle like an index ETF or invest using a actively managed emerging markets fund with a strategy that you understand.  Don't invest a dime unless you understand what you are getting into. An index fund is just sorting companies by market cap. But... What does market cap mean when you are buying a Chinese bank?" You mean in response to OP? Investors should buy physical gold and silver, and wait out the storm. The US Bond market is negative when you factor in inflation, that's a bubble that's going to burst eventually. Riding the gold horse will keep you high and dry.  But if you mean in response to Fearan? I would say that the way to reduce income inequality is to stop all the market distortions and malinvestment due to regulations. The countries with the most income disparity are the ones with the most regulations. Investing in the early 70s would have been fine, trying to pile on the boat after the fact (late 70s, early 80s), those people would lose.    The fluctuations then had largely to do with the collapse of the USSR.  Parallels could certainly be drawn to modern times, but the main thing is that if you invested early, you could ride out the worst of storms without having to worry about a company or a currency becoming worthless overnight. In the United States investing towards donation is a great idea because you can donate appreciated securities directly rather than donating cash.  Notice how much this can benefit you: So you get to both (a) donate untaxed money and then (b) deduct that unrealized money from your income total on your tax return. With the above in mind, a good strategy for investing towards this type of donation would be to pick securities that are likely to increase in market value but not likely to produce any other sort of income.  So bonds (which produce lots of interest income), or stocks with dividends, or equity mutual funds (which distribute dividends as capital gains) would all be suboptimal for this purpose. Of course, an even better strategy would be to establish a widely diversified investment portfolio without thought to future donations.  Then, once a year (or whenever), evaluate all your investments and find some where the market value has increased.  Then donate some of those shares.  No special advance planning necessary. Note that your tax consequences could be more complicated depending on your exact situation.  Read the section about Capital Gain Property in IRS Pub. 26 for all the details.  There may be special limits on the amount you can deduct.  Also, donations of short term capital gains are treated much less favorably, so make sure you donate only long term capital gain property.