James Rickards author photo
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James Rickards

James Rickards is an American lawyer, economist, investment banker, and author who writes on global finance, currency crises, national security, and gold. He is best known for books including Currency Wars, The Death of Money, and Aftermath, and for shaping investor discussion through widely read newsletters, media commentary, and policy-related analysis.

Biography & Author's Journey

James Rickards built his public identity from a career that moved through law, finance, and national-security advisory work before settling into authorship. Educated at Johns Hopkins, the School of Advanced International Studies, the University of Pennsylvania Law School, and NYU School of Law, he entered capital markets with a blend of legal and macroeconomic training that later became central to his writing. He held senior positions at Citibank, Caxton Associates, and Long-Term Capital Management, and one of the defining turning points of his career came in 1998, when he served as principal negotiator in the Federal Reserve–sponsored rescue of LTCM. He later advised the U.S. intelligence community and the Department of Defense on global finance, helped facilitate the Pentagon’s first financial war games, and testified before the House in 2009 on the failures of conventional financial-risk models. ((https://www.jamesrickardsproject.com/about/))

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Quotes

quote
Markets are not efficient. Future prices are not independent of the past. Risk is not normally distributed
-The Risks of Financial Modeling: VaR and the Economic Meltdown
quote
The result is a war on savings
-Retirement (In)security
quote
The greatest currency manipulator in the world is the United States
-Currency Wars: The Making of the Next Global Crisis
quote
The preconditions are, too much debt and not enough growth
-Transcript: Jim Rickards on Currency Wars
quote
The future is here today
-End Game for the Global Economy

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Community Voices

"James Rickards gifts us once again with his clarity of prose, depth of experience and sound analysis"

Nomi Prins

"James Rickards convincingly argues that the greatest danger is not that AI malfunctions, but that it will function precisely as intended"

Financial Times

"We can't trust the Federal Reserve to do the honest work that Jim Rickards has done in writing this book"

David A. Stockman

"Rickards has gone and done it again"

Wealth Briefing Asia

"Rickards provides a wonderful antidote to some of the insanity too often evident around the study of monetary questions"

Forbes

"Rickards's intelligent reasoning soon convinced me that we have more to fear than fear itself"

Bloomberg Businessweek

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