Topic: Jim Rickards' New Book "The Death of Money", Review - page 2. (Read 14014 times)

I have heard about this book the death of money and appreciate the time you took to write a review about it
Saved me some reading myself which I can put towards other books
(Kind of want a book thread)
An interesting Book I read recently is The Prize by Daniel Yergin which goes into oil politics and economics so would recommend that to others looking for a good read

Yes, that was one of the most interesting parts of the book.

The problem with this theory is, it assumes all the countries really have the amount of gold they claim to have, and this, in my book, is definitely not the case. There are a lot of indicators pointing in the other direction, I can't believe for a second Western countries have the gold they claim to have.

I've finished the book, thought it was another good read. Some was a bit rehashed from Currency Wars, but overall good stuff.

Interesting part on the implementation of SDR's.

Rickards view is that the major nations are colluding to allow China to purchase enough gold to give them all a relative equal balance in gold reserves. When this occurs, the move away from top weighting to the US dollar will begin. He writes that the move towards SDR's, higher weighting for the Yuan and less for the USD has been acknowledged by the US Fed & Treasury. This goes part the way to explaining gold market swings and its decline in recent times.

Further, this is only the plan and works only if things remain smooth. Plenty of scope for increases in inflation, deflation and some kind of panic / collapse to bring this transition on in a hurry. The plan is, and always has been, for inflation, but whether it can be controlled without society rebelling (wiping out savings) or deflation winning the battle first is the $64k question.

I think that Rickards has generally been a sober kind of commentator. Quite measured and not prone to some of the more far out scenario predictions. In DoM however, I think he is very bearish, saying that there is no way this will end well and all signs point to some kind of chaos. He even brings up the oft cited SWAT / tanks / bullets etc being amassed by US counties /states as a harbinger of what is to come.

I hope you mean the book and not my quote, ha ha!

Where do you live? What do you think about the economy of your country?

This part in particular is pretty ridiculous I think.

I haven't read that one.

So read currency wars instead?

From my interpretation of the book, inflation is 'working' via negative real interest rates, eg, interest rates on savings are at 0.5% and inflation is at 1.5%, therefore savers are losing 1%.

also from my reading, the QE induced inflation is being exported to other countries as are pressured to lower their currencies against the dollar thereby, as say with japan, making energy imports more expensive. Other examples given were Brazil, Iran.

Please lets not go down the 'put up data or else' route; im paraphrasing the book.

True, no worries. Thanks for the good discussion.



Where is the QE-caused inflation, or really inflation at all? If you don't believe official stats then use MIT Billion Price Index, or something else. Unless you try to come up with somewhat technical excuses, it's just not there. Please provide data.

Im just going past halfway of the book. So far, another good read. I was probably more gripped by currency wars as much of the content was new to me back then.

But anyway, I really liked the few pages discussing negative rates. The true bastardry comes in the harmless sounding terms 'QE' and Op Twist and all these other easy to digest soundbite names; at heart they are deliberate policies designed to sipher your money via inflation.

This is actually quite sickening. While destroying savers and the wealth of the regular joe was previously done by bank laws on deposit rates, it now just does it a little more subtly.

And therein lies a damn good reason to be in bitcoin.

We could write thousands of pages of discussion about this, but I try not to spend my time like this, sorry. I was already a bit pissed at myself for making that last post so long.

You are of another opinion, and that's cool. Your last link was interesting, hadn't seen that one before.

Google translation from Chinese:
When Bitcoin currency can replace the soft sister ah!



Indeed, my friend...!

You are talking like a total academic there...

My opinion is only considered radical in the real world, but on this board, I think a lot of posters would agree.

Nothing against academics who have actually worked in economy. What I was talking about are the pure academics, who prove again and again they can just draw pretty graphs on a blackboard and tell you about theory beautifully, but they can't manage anything in reality.

Examples:

We have had 5,5 years of unprecedented money creation and ridiculously low interest rates. The US money supply is many times as high as a couple of years ago (just google "US money supply" images for graphs), yet the economy is tanking (it is, don't believe what the mainstream media is telling you). But the FED keeps on doing what they are doing. What would you have said 7 years ago if someone told you interest rates would be kept near 0 for many years (many more to come) and the money supply quadrupled or whatever? You would have declared them insane.

That's where we are living now, in an insane economic reality.

So I think it's fair to say that something isn't optimal here and Ben isn't the genius Time Magazine made him look like when they gave him their "Person of the Year" cover...

Yellen admitted herself she had no clue about the bursting bubble of 2007/2008 and didn't see it coming.

Unfortunately, the right people will never be in the right position there, because they are not in the sheltered realm of politics, but out there in the real world. And also, it can be a very unpleasant thing to face the truth sometimes...

If I was president, I would make Peter Schiff or somebody like him Fed chairman, ha ha!

Another example: I was discussing inflation with so many friends who had studied economy, and they all seemed to believe the official inflation numbers. They had learned about this stuff for years, but couldn't even keep their eyes open for price changes at the supermarket. One good friend of mine, a clever guy, said he would ask his professor about this. A couple of weeks later we talked again and of course he told me his professor had assured him the official numbers are correct.

I don't even want to get into what happened when I told my friends about the massive gold price suppression (which is a proven fact), ha ha...

I have seen it again and again... those are just a couple of examples.

You seem pretty new to this way of thinking, you can check out websites like zerohedge.com, if you are interested. You get a lot of info there the mass media would never tell you...

Yup, that's what I meant, the distinction between pure academics and people who have worked in economy.

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Thanks for the answer, I think your approach actually makes some sense. I still think the macroeconomy can be managed somewhat well for a complex adaptive system, but like you said, who knows. That being said, I think it's very prone to mismanagement. If you don't know what's what, you are probably going to make things a lot worse. On that front, I think Bernanke is brilliant, and think formal education (in a university setting, in a professional setting, etc.) is all but necessary (with maybe the occasional exception).

I believe simple concepts can explain complex ideas so we probably differ there.   Theres not many households finances that could describe a country but there are points which relate
'simplicity is the ultimate sophistication' I think has been said a few times and I'd go with that over any modern political stance

My own take on macroeconomy or any larger picture that seems too unwieldy to even consider is to look at positive feedback and negative feedback scenarios.  I think natural effects outweigh anyone even a financial genius, even a superpower could get swamped by something entirely natural so Im looking at those systems that amplify especially via feedback.

  I do think QE fits into that and probably a few other things in effect now.  Can a strength also be a weakness, simple questions are applicable and I dont have a Phd but I will not defer to the FED on this
 Rickards often gives good examples and info on this theme and it makes sense to me

I suppose he would have a good point on that front, but I still think that ultimately universities and corporations are very competitive and very decentralized, so it would require a global front to unify economists and get them on the same page for n amount of time. n being forever, in this case.

I guess I would shutup when somebody could tell me what running a business (microeconomy) has to do with stabilizing the global economy (macroeconomy). The problem, in my mind, is this hugely flawed idea that "countries work like households." Would you at least agree that this is probably where we're ultimately differing?