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

The follow-up to global bestseller Currency Wars reveals the impending collapse of the current monetary system and how you can survive it.

The international monetary system is more important that any national economy. This complex system of currencies, reserves, trade balances and other payments is the foundation on which national economies evolve and compete—and it’s already collapsed three times in the past hundred years. Each time, it was revived by major economic powers on a new basis, the latest on the dollar. But we’re on the verge of another collapse and the dollar won’t save us this time.

The Death of Money looks at the belief system called money and how it girds the global political system while being stretched thin by the abuses of banks and governments. Individual members of the system are faced with combinations of unpayable debts, anemic growth, insolvent banks and asset bubbles that will grow worse and ultimately collapse in the absence of new large-scale wealth creation. No major player not the U.S., China nor Europe is able to throw a lifeline to the rest.

How can currencies collapse yet wealth can remain? What happens when the willingness of people to take money erodes and then disappears? Rickards counsels that only when money and wealth are reconciled on a firm foundation (in his view, on gold) will the international monetary system rediscover its lost ability to serve the ends of trade and innovation.

James Rickards is a counselor, investment banker, and risk manager with over thirty years’ experience in capital markets. He advises the Department of Defense, the U.S. intelligence community, and major hedge funds on global finance, and served as a facilitator of the first ever financial war games conducted by the Pentagon. His previous book, Currency Wars, was a Wall Street Journal bestseller.