Currency Wars V The Coming Rain

People's ability to think is often paralyzed in the face of overwhelming information and a myriad of opinions. Critical data is drowned out by noise data, important details are confused by minutiae, deeper pathologies are confused by superficial pathologies, core reasoning is tied up in trivial logic, analysis loses its bearings and judgment goes astray. Ultimately, the illusion displaces the truth. This is particularly true in the economic sphere. Five years after the end of the financial crisis in 2008, views on the future course of the world economy are still divided. Has the U.S. quantitative easing been effective or not? Is the global currency overshoot a blessing or a curse? Are financial markets becoming safer, or more dangerous? Has the economic recovery been steady or short-lived? In short, is the world gradually moving away from the last recession, or is it accelerating its slide to the next crisis? All the activities that mankind has ever engaged in have always revolved around two most basic tasks, one of which is the creation of wealth and the other is the distribution of wealth, from which all other activities are derived. Whether creating wealth or distributing it, human greed has been the source of their ultimate energy since the beginning. The "good in greed" drives technological advances that save energy, reduce time, reduce intensity, and increase pleasure, resulting in a continuous increase in productivity and more prosperous wealth creation. However, the insatiable greed of greed can inspire trickery, speculation, fraud, quick gains and extravagance, which in turn stifle productivity progress, lead to a distorted distribution of wealth and reduce the economic vitality of society.

In 1971, President Nixon imposed national price controls and took the United States off the gold standard, an extreme measure intended to end an ongoing currency war that had destroyed faith in the U.S. dollar. Today we are engaged in a new currency war, and this time the consequences will be far worse than those that confronted Nixon. Currency wars are one of the most destructive and feared outcomes in international economics. At best, they offer the sorry spectacle of countries' stealing growth from their trading partners. At worst, they degenerate into sequential bouts of inflation, recession, retaliation, and sometimes actual violence. Left unchecked, the next currency war could lead to a crisis worse than the panic of 2008. Currency wars have happened before-twice in the last century alone-and they always end badly. Time and again, paper currencies have collapsed, assets have been frozen, gold has been confiscated, and capital controls have been imposed. And the next crash is overdue. Recent headlines about the debasement of the dollar, bailouts in Greece and Ireland, and Chinese currency manipulation are all indicators of the growing conflict. As James Rickards argues in Currency Wars, this is more than just a concern for economists and investors. The United States is facing serious threats to its national security, from clandestine gold purchases by China to the hidden agendas of sovereign wealth funds. Greater than any single threat is the very real danger of the collapse of the dollar itself. Baffling to many observers is the rank failure of economists to foresee or prevent the economic catastrophes of recent years. Not only have their theories failed to prevent calamity, they are making the currency wars worse. The U. S. Federal Reserve has engaged in the greatest gamble in the history of finance, a sustained effort to stimulate the economy by printing money on a trillion-dollar scale. Its solutions present hidden new dangers while resolving none of the current dilemmas. While the outcome of the new currency war is not yet certain, some version of the worst-case scenario is almost inevitable if U.S. and world economic leaders fail to learn from the mistakes of their predecessors. Rickards untangles the web of failed paradigms, wishful thinking, and arrogance driving current public policy and points the way toward a more informed and effective course of action.

Currency, which has been overlooked by historians, is precisely the key to unlocking many historical puzzles, the compass to discern the maze of today's reality, and the telescope to discover the road to the future. In the course of studying the financial history of Europe, America, China and Japan, I have a growing feeling that finance is the "fourth dimensional frontier" that a sovereign country must defend. The concept of the frontiers of sovereign states does not only include the three-dimensional physical space constituted by the land, sea and air frontiers (including space), but in the future it needs to include a new dimension: finance. The importance of the financial high frontier will become increasingly important in the coming era of cloudy international currency wars. From the path of financial evolution in Europe and the United States, it can be clearly found that the currency standard, central banks, financial networks, trading markets, financial institutions and clearing centers together constitute the system architecture of financial high frontier. The main purpose of this system is to ensure efficient and secure resource mobilization for currency pairs. From the source of the central bank to create money, to the customer terminal that eventually accepts money; from the dense network of money flow, to the clearing center of funds remittance; from the trading market of financial instruments, to the rating system of credit assessment; from the soft regulation of the financial legal system, to the construction of rigid financial infrastructure; from the huge financial institutions, to efficient industry associations; from complex financial products, to simple investment instruments, the financial high frontier protects the monetary blood from the heart of the central bank, to the financial capillaries and even the whole body economic cells, and eventually back to the central bank's circulation system.

Money, by its very nature, is a claim to wealth, and people hold money, the equivalent of a receipt for holding wealth. What is wealth? What form of wealth is used to issue money as collateral determines the nature of the currency. The most widely accepted form of wealth is currency. Wealth, but also currency, is the fruit of human labour. The commodity property of the commons is, in essence, the property of labour. Over the 5,000 years of human civilization, more than 2,000 commodities have taken on the role of currency, and the market has evolved to phase out other currencies, eventually choosing gold and silver as the ultimate representatives of wealth. No matter what region, no matter what civilization, no matter what religion, gold and silver formed the currency as the most widely accepted form of wealth. The gold and silver at this time is both the claim to wealth and the wealth itself. Even though people have gradually forgotten the gold behind the paper money receipts in the long process of being brainwashed, gold, after all, restricts the over-issuance of receipts, because when there are too many receipts, sooner or later people will be interested in the gold that these receipts can claim. Bankers, as the rule makers of the money game, did not like gold as collateral for paper money, either because it was not enough to satisfy the inflation of paper money desires, or because it did not generate interest income. The idea that bankers would prefer to replace gold with an asset that would never run out and would be viable is a tempting one, and after 1971, the demonetization of gold was in fact an unequal treaty unilaterally imposed on others by the rule-makers of the money game. Thus, we were introduced to an entirely new form of money: sovereign credit money.

This book uses systemic thinking and applies it to the study of financial crises. It systematically presents how the systemic yoyo model, its thinking logic, and its methodology can be employed as a common playground and intuition to the study of money, international finance, and economic reforms. This book establishes theoretical backings for why some of the most employed interferences of the market and empirical experiences actually work. It has become urgent for economists and policy makers to understand how international speculative capital affects the economic security of various nations. By looking at the issues of monetary movement around the world, this book shows that there are clearly visible patterns behind the flows of capital, and that there are a uniform language and logic of reasoning that can be powerfully employed in the studies of international finance As shown in this book, many of the conclusions drawn on the basis of these visible patterns, language, and logic of thinking can be practically applied to produce tangible economic benefits. Currency Wars: Offense and Defense through Systemic Thinking is divided into six parts. The first part addresses issues related to systemic modeling of economic entities and processes and explains how a few policy changes can adjust the performance of the extremely complex economy. Part II of the book investigates the problem of how instabilities lead to opportunities for currency attacks, the positive and negative effects of foreign capital, and how international capital flows can cause disturbances of various degrees on a nation’s economic security. Part III examines how a currency war is initiated, why currency conflicts and wars are inevitable, and a specific way of how currency attacks can take place. In Part IV, the book shows how one nation can potential defend itself by manipulating exchange rate of its currency, how the nation under siege can protect itself against financial attacks by using strategies based on the technique of feedback, and develops a more general approach of self-defense. Part V focuses on issues related to the cleanup of the disastrous aftermath of currency attacks through using policies and reforms. Finally the book concludes in Part VI as it analyzes specific real-life cases and addresses the ultimate problem of whether or not currency wars can be avoided all together.

Donald Trump's top trade adviser Peter Navarro accused Germany of profiting from a 'grossly undervalued' currency. At the same time the President said countries such as Japan and China are responsible for 'global freeloading' due to their weak currencies. Today, currency wars are raging across global markets, entering an even more dangerous phase, but they are nothing new. In this 5 year anniversary edition, James Rickards, two-time New York Times bestseller and Strategic Adviser to the US intelligence community, explores how currency wars are just as problematic now as they were in 1971 when President Nixon took the dollar off the gold standard. 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 actual violence. Rickards analyses the 2008 US financial crash, the debasement of the dollar, the European debt crisis, bailouts in Greece and Ireland and Chinese exchange rate manipulation, as a series of attacks and counter-attacks and ultimately as indications of growing global currency conflict. But, the author concludes, in currency wars, as in real wars, there are never any winners and without systematic reform, it could end with massive casualties on all sides. In this special five year edition, featuring analysis of the 'Age of Trump' and encounters with Ben Bernanke, Tim Geithner and General Hayden, Rickards points the way towards a more effective course of action one that could stabilise the global economy and broker peace and prosperity for all.

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Sample Book Insights: #1 It was a secret war game, with real money at stake, to test the efficacy of the financial markets in responding to the next financial crisis. The participants would take on different roles to test how their country would respond to a crisis. #2 Financial games are being played around the world to test the efficacy of the financial markets in responding to the next financial crisis. #3 Financial games are being played around the world to test the efficacy of the financial markets in responding to the next financial crisis. #4 Financial games are being played around the world to test the efficacy of the financial markets in responding to the next financial crisis. Sovereign wealth funds are investment pools established by governments to invest their excess reserves, many with assets in the hundred-billion-dollar range or higher.

The structure of any human society is a typical pyramidal one, with a critical minority of people gradually moving up through the social structure due to their own intelligence and diligence, and in some cases through violence and fraud. When they have sufficient financial power and influence, they will in turn consolidate and expand their vested interests by changing the rules of the game and creating a ruling elite with interlocking interests. If the power pyramid structure of Eastern societies is based on regimes, the Western pyramid of domination is a chain of very hidden debts that hold the various strata of society firmly together. In Western societies, creditors have dominant power and debtors are in a dominated position, and the main function of the state apparatus is to protect and reinforce the reliability of this chain. In the West, whoever is the biggest creditor is the ultimate lawmaker of the game, and central banks, controlled by international bankers since the 19th century, are undoubtedly the biggest creditors of society as a whole, with the rest of society, including governments, being their debtors. From this perspective, the West today is actually a financial powerhouse controlling government decisions. This book will comprehensively describe the formation, development, exclusion, conflict, alliance and checks and balances of the major financial power groups in Europe and the United States over a period of 300 years, systematically analyze the operation and decision-making mechanism of the dominant forces behind the scenes in the world today, and for the first time unveil the mystery of the "international banking family club" that rules the world.