Currency wars are one of the most destructive and feared outcomes in international economics. At best, they result in countries stealing growth from their trading partners. At worst, they degenerate into inflation, recession and real violence.
In this fifth anniversary edition, James Rickards concludes that currency wars are as problematic now as they were in 1971 when President Nixon took the dollar off the gold standard. Headlines about the debasement of the dollar, bailouts in Europe and Chinese and currency manipulation are all indicators that we're entering an even more dangerous phase.
In this post-Trump, post-Brexit world of political uncertainty, James Rickards, New York Times bestseller and Strategic Adviser to the US intelligence community, argues that this is more than just a concern for economists and investors. The world is facing growing threats to its national security - from clandestine gold purchases by China to the hidden agendas of sovereign wealth funds. Left unchecked, the next currency war could end with massive casualties on all sides.
James Rickards is the Editor of Strategic Intelligence a financial newsletter. He is The New York Times bestselling author of The New Great Depression (2020), Aftermath (2019), The Road to Ruin (2016), The New Case for Gold (2016), The Death of Money (2014), and Currency Wars (2011) from Penguin Random House. He is an investment advisor, lawyer, inventor, and economist, and has held senior positions at Citibank, Long-Term Capital Management, and Caxton Associates. In 1998, he was the principal negotiator of the rescue of LTCM sponsored by the Federal Reserve. His clients include institutional investors and government directorates. He is an op-ed contributor to the Financial Times, Evening Standard, The Telegraph, New York Times, and Washington Post, and has been interviewed by BBC, CNN, NPR, CSPAN, CNBC, Bloomberg, Fox, and The Wall Street Journal. Mr. Rickards is a guest lecturer in globalization and finance at The Johns Hopkins University, Georgetown University, Trinity College Dublin, The Kellogg School at Northwestern, the U.S. Army War College and the School of Advanced International Studies. He has presented papers on risk at Singularity University, the Applied Physics Laboratory, and the Los Alamos National Laboratory. He is an advisor on capital markets to the U.S. intelligence community, and the Office of the Secretary of Defense, and is on the Advisory Board of the FDD Center on Economic and Financial Power in Washington DC. Mr. Rickards holds an LL.M. (Taxation) from the NYU School of Law; a J.D. from the University of Pennsylvania Law School; an M.A. in international economics from SAIS, and a B.A. (with honors) from Johns Hopkins. He lives in New Hampshire.
