Book

Currency Wars

The Making of the Next Global Crisis

James Rickards

Portfolio, 2011

Read offline

Amazon Kindle

We currently cannot offer you an audio version of this summary.

Editorial Rating

Qualities

Innovative

Recommendation

Financial counselor, investment banker and risk manager James Rickards believes that every dollar, euro and yuan tells a story, and their stories could have an unhappy ending. His work for the US government as a consultant on world finance gives him an unparalleled view into the imminent threats financial terrorism poses to the US dollar and to global capital markets. Rickards uses dramatic prose, historical references and geopolitics to create an instructive, but sometimes plodding and even overheated, tale about currencies, gold and the international foreign exchange markets. Rickards follows the money and draws a clear link between cash and conflict. getAbstract says readers who travel with him are in for an intriguing ride.

Summary

New Battlefields

The United States’ military power rests on advanced technology, complex battle systems, clandestine espionage and other tools. But the US now faces new threats from “rival nations and transnational actors such as jihadists.” These perils include chemical, biological and Internet-based attack systems, and “in the most unexpected twist of all, financial weapons,” varying from possible fiscal aggressions to computer manipulations to potential counterfeiting schemes designed to undermine the economic foundations of US and global capital markets. The threat of financial attacks prompted the Pentagon to develop a war game to simulate a global economic battle and to analyze how a financial war could threaten the US. The players included Wall Street professionals, international policy experts, Department of Defense staffers and military brass. The group met in late 2009 in a secluded research laboratory near Washington, DC, to plot the first official financial war game in US history.

The participants divided into competing teams and scripted region-specific goals and political moves. Using notes and outlines, role players scrimmaged over currency, gold and...

About the Author

James Rickards advises government agencies on global finance. He is also the senior managing director at Tangent Capital Partners, a New York City-based merchant bank.

Comment on this summary or Diskussion beginnen

Sign in to share your opinion
M. I. 9 years ago

I really liked this book. Had a good analysis of currency wars and why they happen and reasons that they can last years (even decades). Also appreciate the history of China (Chapter 4 in the book).
Ð. Ð. 9 years ago

You can be translated into Russian ?
- 9 years ago
  
  Уважаемый читатель,
  
  Нами запланировано издание изложения этой книги на русском языке.
  
  Русская редакция getAbstract
W. L. 1 decade ago

It'd be quite a stretch to say it's "war". US dollar, yen, Euro, Yuan are more in need of each other than against each other. Gold is too inflexible to oil the modern economic machine and to get rid of US dollar's leadership another currency has to be strong enough to be the alternative. After all, a country's currency is backed by its military power. Fed can feel free to print money, as long as no other country can challenge the US from air, land, sea, and space.