IDEAS
1. Gold
2. Money Orders (Post Office, etc)
3. Cashier's Checks (Major banks, etc)
4. Traveler's Checks (Amex, etc)
5. Cash
6. Digital Bearer Bonds+
Gems are iffy, as very few can verify colored gems & the diamond market is so controlled. Jewelry is aso suspect, IMHO.
SECURING PORTABLE WEALTH
Here's a toughie. If it is portable & you have it on you, you are one frisking by a gov't official away from losing it all*. Gold would be easy to find, as would large amounts of cash. Your only hope is secreting MO/CC/TC in a place where they would have ot pretty much destroy your clothing to find.
If I wanted to secure such portable wealth, I think I might be inclined to have just enough on hand to get me to where I would have a larger amount. For example, if I lived in NOLA, I might keep most in a relative's safe deposit box in Chicago (or pay the relative to maintain the SDB in THEIR name).
FYI
Bearer Bonds
- "Under the Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act of
1982 (TEFRA), any interest payments made on *new* issues
of domestic bearer bonds are not deductible as an
ordinary and necessary business expense so none have been
issued since then. At the same time, the Feds
administratively stopped issuing treasury securities in
bearer form. Old issues of government and corporate debt
in bearer form still exist and will exist and trade for
30 or more years after 1982. Additionally, US residents
can legally buy foreign bearer securities." [Duncan
Frissell, 1994-08-10]
* Corruption & opportunity during a disaster, asset siezure for carrying more cash than a narc thnks you ought to carry, etc.
+ Digital Bearer Bonds
http://www.mactech.com/articles/mactech/Vol.13/13.11/WhatisCryptographyGoodFor/http://www.philodox.com/http://www.firstmonday.dk/issues/issue2/markets/#dbbDigital bearer certificates are another trust instrument which provides strong anonymity. Robert Hettinga has argued that digital bearer certificates may return the method of securities exchange to its relatively anonymous state when a bond could be transferred between parties [60]. Before 1970, bonds were anonymous bearer instruments. Every bond certificate had a number of detachable coupons which could be sent in to the issuer for redemption. This meant that the bond could be exchanged anonymously and out of sight of various government agencies such as the United States Internal Revenue Service [61]. However, after legislation requiring that such transactions be reported and a 1983 SEC ruling, many bond holders do not even receive a certificate. All payments and transactions are conducted (and reported) electronically. They are called book-entry bonds and are easily traceable.
Hettinga argued that the low cost and hierarchical structure of the communications networks on which trading services occurs makes it easy for government to regulate these securities. Regulation will be all but impossible with the even cheaper and distributed nature of Internet style communications:
"So, with a digital bearer bond, you would have in effect a bundle of digital certificates. One would be for the principal and would be good for the repayment of that principal on the date the bond was called or the redemption date, however the bond offering is written. The other certificates would represent coupons, one for each interest period for the life of the bond.
These digital certificates, in combination [with] increasingly geodesic networks enabled by exponentially falling microprocessor prices and strong cryptography, theoretically allow secure, point-to-point trading of any security of any amount with instantaneous clearing and cash settlement [62]."