I [Koos Jansen] had the privilege to meet with Jim Rickards, while he was in The Netherlands for one day, to do an interview about his new book The Death of Money. Accompanied by friend (and author of the book The Big Reset) Willem Middelkoop we met at the hotel were Jim was staying and for one and a half hours we fired questions at him. Below you can read the highlights of the conversation:
March 12, 2014
Koos Jansen: Do you think there will be a collapse in the worldwide monetary system, including chaos, social unrest and bank failures because all policy makers will do too little too late?
Jim Rickards: My new book, The Death of Money, is about the demise of the dollar. A world wide monetary collapse and the collapse of the dollar are the same thing. The dollar is the keystone of the system today, if the world loses confidence in the dollar the whole system collapses. Could there be disruptions, social unrest and other problems before the monetary system collapses? I think we’re seeing them already, in the Ukraine, in the Crimea and the Chinese navy sending vessels to these islands they are in disputes with near Japan. US monetary policy was also a contributing factor to protests in the Arab Spring’s early stages. We’re seeing signs happening already and that will continue.
I do expect that policy makers will continue to pursue the wrong policies, they won’t make the structural adjustments that are needed; unemployment remains high, growth remains weak and deflation continues to have us in its grip. These are all things that will lead to social instability, income and wealth inequality and we could see a lot of stresses before the collapse of the monetary system.
Central banks and governments have made it clear that the big banks can’t fail. That’s what they stated, all these too big to fail banks will not be allowed to fail. Now what are the consequences once they’ve said that? It invites reckless, parasitic and exploitative behaviour on behalf of the bankers. This allows them to grow too large which destabilizes the system. I don’t think we’ll see big bank failures along the way, but big banks will fail as part of the collapse. It’s the policy of too big to fail that leads to the dysfunction of the system that will lead to the collapse.
Koos Jansen: Will the coming collapse of the monetary system be more severe than any prior one?
Jim Rickards: The point I’m making in the book is that the international monetary system has collapsed three times in the last one hundred year. In 1914, 1939 and 1971. So it does happen, it’s not that unusual. When it happens is not the end of the world. What it means is that the major trading powers, the financial powers, come together and reset the system. There is actually a name for this, it’s “the rules of the game”. That’s not a phrase I made up, it goes back one hundred years. So the major powers will rewrite the rules of the game, but here’s the problem. The last crisis we had the Fed reliquify the world. There were tens of trillions of dollars in swap lines with the ECB, they guaranteed all the bank deposits in the US and they guaranteed all the money market funds in the US. It did prevent things from getting worse, but the problem is the Fed raised their own balance from $800 billion to $4 trillion after the liquidity crisis. We had a liquidity crisis in late 2008, but we haven’t had one in the last five years. So now what happens if we have a liquidity crisis tomorrow? They’ve got no more dry powder; they can’t go to $12 trillion.
The next crisis will be bigger than the last one, and it will be bigger than the Fed because they already trashed their own balance sheet. Then the only balance sheet left is the IMF’s.
Koos Jansen: How will the power be distributed in Asia after the monetary reset?
Jim Rickards: It will be based on gold.
Willem Middelkoop: I know wealthy Americans taking measures like getting a second passport and moving their money offshore. Do you see this happening in your surroundings?
Jim Rickards: Yes, I see it all the time. There are billionaires who build vaults in their own houses because they don’t trust Brinks.
Willem Middelkoop: What does that tell you?
Jim Rickards: It tells me that they see what I see, in some ways, but not willing to talk about it. They’re ready for the collapse but want to milk the system in the meantime.
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For Rickards’ CV see here. The whole interview can be read here.