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

by James Rickards

Overview

The next financial collapse will resemble nothing in history. . . . Deciding upon the best course to follow will require comprehending a minefield of risks, while poised at a crossroads, pondering the death of the dollar.

The U.S. dollar has been the global reserve currency since the end of World War II. If the dollar fails, the entire international monetary system will fail with it. But optimists have always said, in essence, that confidence in the dollar will never truly be shaken, no matter how high our national debt or how dysfunctional our government.

In the last few years, however, the risks have become too big to ignore. While Washington is gridlocked, our biggest rivals—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.

James Rickards, the acclaimed author of Currency Wars, shows why money itself is now at risk and what we can all do to protect ourselves. He explains the power of converting unreliable investments into real wealth: gold, land, fine art, and other long-term stores of value.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781101637241
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	04/08/2014
Sold by:	Penguin Group
Format:	eBook
Pages:	384
Sales rank:	255,798
File size:	3 MB
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

James Rickards is the author of the acclaimed national bestseller Currency Wars, which has been translated around the world. He is a portfolio manager at West Shore Group and an adviser on international economics and financial threats to the Department of Defense and the U.S. intelligence community. He lives in Connecticut.

Table of Contents

Preface to the Paperback Edition xiii

Introduction 1

Part 1 Money and Geopolitics 15

Chapter 1 Prophesy 17

Chapter 2 The War God's Face 42

Part 2 Money and Markets 65

Chapter 3 The Ruin of Markets 67

Chapter 4 China's New Financial Warlords 89

Chapter 5 The New German Reich 112

Chapter 6 BELLs, BRICS, and Beyond 138

Part 3 Money and Wealth 163

Chapter 7 Debt, Deficits, and the Dollar 165

Chapter 8 Central Bank of the World 190

Chapter 9 Gold Redux 215

Chapter 10 Crossroads 243

Chapter 11 Maelstrom 265

Conclusion 289

Afterword 303

Acknowledgments 305

Notes 307

Selected Sources 325

Index 343

What People are Saying About This

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

Editorial Reviews

"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

From the Publisher

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.

Kirkus Reviews