You need to have a local broker/bank to deal in US dollars and in US stocks. While it's easy enough in the UK or Canada, it is really challenging to do for a random individual in most countries in the world.
Not true, I can walk into most banks here in South Africa and open an account that allows me to trade on foreign stock exchanges. Minimum deposits are in the order of USD5k, and
require only local ID to open.
Doing this anonymously would be much harder, but that's not what you were suggesting.
