The Death of Money: The Coming Collapse of the International Monetary System

by James Rickards Narrated by Sean Pratt

Overview

The international monetary system has collapsed three times in the past hundred years, in 1914, 1939, and 1971. Each collapse was followed by a period of tumult: War, civil unrest, or significant damage to the stability of the global economy. Now James Rickards, the acclaimed author of Currency Wars, shows why another collapse is rapidly approaching — and why this time, nothing less than the institution of money itself is at risk.

The American dollar has been the global reserve currency since the end of the Second World War. If the dollar fails, the entire international monetary system will fail with it. No other currency has the deep, liquid pools of assets needed to do the job.

Optimists have always said, in essence, that there's nothing to worry about¿that confidence in the dollar will never truly be shaken, no matter how high our national debt or how dysfunctional our government. But in the last few years, the risks have become too big to ignore. While Washington is gridlocked and unable to make progress on our long-term problems, our biggest economic competitors¿China, Russia, and the oil producing nations of the Middle East¿are doing everything possible to end U.S. monetary hegemony. The potential results: Financial warfare. Deflation. Hyperinflation. Market collapse. Chaos.

Rickards offers a bracing analysis of these and other threats to the dollar. The fundamental problem is that money and wealth have become more and more detached. Money is transitory and ephemeral, and it may soon be worthless if central bankers and politicians continue on their current path. But true wealth is permanent and tangible, and it has real value worldwide.

The author shows how everyday citizens who save and invest have become guinea pigs in the central bankers' laboratory. The world's major financial players¿national governments, big banks, multilateral institutions¿will always muddle through by patching together new rules of the game. The real victims of the next crisis will be small investors who assumed that what worked for decades will keep working.

Fortunately, it's not too late to prepare for the coming death of money. Rickards explains the power of converting unreliable money into real wealth: gold, land, fine art, and other long-term stores of value. As he writes: ¿The coming collapse of the dollar and the international monetary system is entirely foreseeable... Only nations and individuals who make provision today will survive the maelstrom to come.¿

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

"A fast-paced and apocalyptic look at the financial future, taking in financiers' greed, central banks' incompetence and impending Armageddon for the dollar...Rickards may be right that 'the system is going wobbly.'"
—The Financial Times

"The Death of Money makes a valuable contribution to our economic discourse."
—Forbes

"James Rickards' The Death of Money is ... making it a veritable golden age for smart books on the current state of the global economy." 
—Politico

“A terrifically interesting and useful book . . . fascinating.”
—KENNETH W. DAM, former deputy secretary of the Treasury and adviser to three presidents

“The Death of Money contains very big, provocative ideas clearly explained and delivered in an evenhanded tone that steers away from the sensational proclamation yet successfully undercuts conventional market wisdom. Rickards’s insight enables him to connect the dots in a way that few others can. A worthy successor to Currency Wars.”
—JOHN HATHAWAY, portfolio manager, Tocqueville Gold Fund

“The Death of Money is an engrossing account of the massive stresses accumulating in the global financial system, especially since the 2008 financial crisis. Jim Rickards is a natural teacher. Any serious student of financial crises and their root causes needs to read this book.”
—JOHN H. MAKIN, PH.D., resident scholar, American Enterprise Institute; former chief economist, Caxton Associates

“A crucial primer for investors and consumers for what lies immediately ahead for the United States and a world that remains entirely dependent upon the dollar. The Death of Money is an important new book for those who worry about the future of our country.”
—R. CHRISTOPHER WHALEN, noted bank analyst; author of Inflated

“Rickards’s analysis of the inflation-deflation paradox, dangerous adversaries to the dollar, and the Fed’s strategy is insightful. Following his bestseller Currency Wars, this book is even better. A great book makes you think differently about the world—and this one does just that.”
—DON YOUNG, twenty-five-time Institutional Investor All-Star Analyst; former board member, Financial Accounting Standards Board

Kirkus Reviews

2014-03-18
Behind Door No. 1 is inflation. Behind Door No. 2 is deflation. Neither is pretty—however, assures financial counselor and intelligence adviser Rickards (Currency Wars: The Making of the Next Global Crisis, 2011), one or the other lies in our path. The thought that the world's economic systems are doomed to collapse anytime soon might be dismissed as the stuff of the tinfoil-hat crowd. Quickly entering into the realm not of paranoia but of fiscal wonkiness, Rickards examines the many ways this might come about—through financial cyberterrorism, for instance, or simply the unwieldiness of banks too big to fail but that surely will. "Large banks are not necessary to global finance," he writes, and particularly dangerous to the health of the world economy is their flourishing trade in derivatives, which "serve practically no purpose save to enrich bankers through opaque pricing and to deceive investors through off-the-balance-sheet accounting." On the matter of off-the-sheet calculations, Rickards notes that the common excuse—that times may be tough but at least we don't have inflation—is a smoke screen: Allowing for "alternative methods" of accounting, real inflation is probably 9 percent annually, gauged by the prices of milk, bread and other inelastic goods. Rickards rides an old hobbyhorse of fiscal conservatives, namely, the tragedy of our abandonment of the gold standard (under Richard Nixon, of all presidents) and the desirability of readopting it—and real gold at that, and not its derivatives. Though the collapse he foretells will induce chaos, he assures his readers that it is not necessarily inevitable, though avoiding it is unlikely. As he writes in a rare moment of drama, "as the dollar's 9/11 moment approaches, the system is blinking red." A mostly accessible survey of the financial scene. Readers take note: Buy gold, land and art—and hunker down.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940171531867
Publisher:	Ascent Audio
Publication date:	03/01/2017

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