James Rickards: In Today’s World, Everyone’s a Potential Casualty of Financial Warfare

Following the killing of Soleimani on Iraqi soil, Iraq threatened to expel all U.S. troops from Iraq. Trump answered in two parts.

He said U.S. troops would not leave until Iraq repaid the U.S. for building bases and other infrastructure in Iraq. Trump also warned that Iraq’s access to its account at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York could be terminated.

That would make it impossible for Iraq to purchase and sell oil in dollars. It could also cause Iraq to lose access to about $3 billion currently held in that account.

Iraq has heard the U.S. threats loud and clear. As of now, U.S. troops are still in Iraq and not planning to leave anytime soon.

The fact that Iraqi policy could be conditioned without a shot being fired shows the raw power of financial warfare.

The trouble is private businesses and investors can get caught in the crossfire of financial warfare.

According to one survey, last year saw a 42% increase in cyberattacks on private companies around the world (attributable to foreign governments).

About 20% of businesses reported daily attacks, many in the banking and financial services sectors. Only 6% of businesses in the survey claimed they weren’t targeted by a cyberattack in 2019.

You as an investor trying to mind your own business or build wealth or expand your portfolio may get caught in the crossfire of a financial war. So you have to take that into account in your portfolio allocations and risk management.

In today’s world, everyone’s a potential casualty of financial warfare.

- Source, James Rickards via The Daily Reckoning

Jim Rickards: Don’t Mess With the United States Financially

I’ve been documenting financial warfare in my articles for years, but it still doesn’t get the mainstream attention it deserves.

Because as you’ll see below, it can directly impact your wealth.

Financial warfare tools include account seizures and freezes, expulsion from global payment systems, secondary fines and penalties on banks that do business with targeted entities, embargoes, tariffs and many other impositions.

These tools are amplified by the unique role of the U.S. dollar, which is the currency behind 60% of global reserves, 80% of global payments and almost 100% of transactions in oil.

The U.S. controls the banks and payments systems that process dollar transactions. This leaves the U.S. well positioned to impose dollar-related sanctions.

Much has been made of the recent killing of Iranian terrorist mastermind Qasem Soleimani. Many say it was an act of war. But guess what, folks?

We’ve been in a full-scale war with Iran for two years now. It’s just that most people don’t realize it.

It’s not a kinetic war with troops, missiles and ships (except Iran’s use of terrorist bombs and the U.S.’ use of drones). And it’s severely damaged the Iranian economy, which has led to protests against the regime.

From the U.S. side, it’s a financial war. People need to stop thinking about financial sanctions as an extension of trade policy, for example.

This is warfare. It’s just a different form of warfare.

It’s critical to understand that financial war is not a sideshow. It may actually be the main event in today’s deeply connected and computerized world.

North Korea is also the current target of a U.S. “maximum pressure” campaign, where harsh sanctions are applied to a wide range of banks, companies and individuals.

As with Iran, sanctions have been instrumental in destabilizing the regime and bringing North Korea to the bargaining table to discuss its nuclear weapons programs.

Now, Iraq is the latest country to feel the sting of U.S. dollar sanctions...

- Source, Jim Rickards via The Daily Reckoning

New Gold Standard? Chaos

Don't expect the US to expect it...

OVER the past century, monetary systems change about every 30 to 40 years on average, says Jim Rickards, writing in The Daily Reckoning.

Before 1914, the global monetary system was based on the classical gold standard.

Then in 1945, a new monetary system emerged at Bretton Woods. I was at Bretton Woods this past summer to commemorate its 75th anniversary.

Under that system, the Dollar became the global reserve currency, linked to gold at $35 per ounce. In 1971 Nixon ended the direct convertibility of the Dollar to gold. For the first time, the monetary system had no gold backing.

Today, the existing monetary system is nearly 50 years old, so the world is long overdue for a change. Gold should once again play a leading role.

I've written and spoken publicly for years about the prospects for a new gold standard. My analysis is straightforward.

International monetary figures have a choice. They can reintroduce gold into the monetary system either on a strict or loose basis (such as a "reference price" in monetary policy decision making).

This can be done as the result of a new monetary conference, a la Bretton Woods. It could be organized by some convening power, probably the US working with China.

Or they can ignore the problem, let a debt crisis materialize (that will play out in interest rates and foreign-exchange markets) and watch gold soar to $14,000 per ounce or higher, not because they wanted it to but because the system is out of control.

I've also said that the former course (a conference) is more desirable, but the latter course (chaos) is more likely. A monetary conference would be far preferable. Why not avoid the train wreck rather than clear up the wreckage? But will probably be ignored until it's too late. Either way, the price of gold soars.

The same force that made the Dollar the world's reserve currency is working to dethrone it. It was at Bretton Woods that the Dollar was officially designated the world's leading reserve currency – a position that it still holds today.

Under the Bretton Woods system, all major currencies were pegged to the Dollar at a fixed exchange rate. The Dollar itself was pegged to gold at the rate of $35 per ounce. Indirectly, the other currencies had a fixed gold value because of their peg to the Dollar.

Other currencies could devalue against the Dollar, and therefore against gold, if they received permission from the International Monetary Fund (IMF). However, the Dollar could not devalue, at least in theory. It was the keystone of the entire system – intended to be permanently anchored to gold.

From 1950-1970 the Bretton Woods system worked fairly well. Trading partners of the US who earned Dollars could cash those Dollars into the US Treasury and be paid in gold at the fixed rate.

Trading partners of the US who earned Dollars could cash those Dollars into the US Treasury and be paid in gold at the fixed rate.

In 1950, the US had about 20,000 tons of gold. By 1970, that amount had been reduced to about 9,000 tons. The 11,000-ton decline went to US trading partners, primarily Germany, France and Italy, who earned Dollars and cashed them in for gold.

The UK Pound Sterling had previously held the dominant reserve currency role starting in 1816, following the end of the Napoleonic Wars and the official adoption of the gold standard by the UK Many observers assume the 1944 Bretton Woods conference was the moment the US Dollar replaced Sterling as the world's leading reserve currency.

In fact, that replacement of Sterling by the Dollar as the world's leading reserve currency was a process that took 30 years, from 1914 to 1944.

In fact, the period from 1919-1939 was really one in which the world had two major reserve currencies – Dollars and Sterling – operating side by side.

Finally, in 1939, England suspended gold shipments in order to fight the Second World War and the role of Sterling as a reliable store of value was greatly diminished. The 1944 Bretton Woods conference was merely recognition of a process of Dollar reserve dominance that had started in 1914.

The significance of the process by which the Dollar replaced Sterling over a 30-year period has huge implications for you today. Slippage in the Dollar's role as the leading global reserve currency is not necessarily something that would happen overnight, but is more likely to be a slow, steady process.

Signs of this are already visible. In 2000, Dollar assets were about 70% of global reserves. Today, the comparable figure is about 62%. If this trend continues, one could easily see the Dollar fall below 50% in the not-too-distant future.

It is equally obvious that a major creditor nation is emerging to challenge the US today just as the US emerged to challenge the UK in 1914. That power is China. The US had massive gold inflows from 1914-1944. China has been experiencing massive gold inflows in recent years.

Gold reserves at the People's Bank of China (PBOC) increased to 1948.31 tonnes in the fourth quarter of 2019. For comparison, it held 1,658 tonnes in June, 2015.

But China has acquired thousands of metric tonnes since without reporting these acquisitions to the IMF or World Gold Council.

Based on available data on imports and the output of Chinese mines, actual Chinese government and private gold holdings are likely much higher. It's hard to pinpoint because China operates through secret channels and does not officially report its gold holdings except at rare intervals.

China's gold acquisition is not the result of a formal gold standard, but is happening by stealth acquisitions on the market. They're using intelligence and military assets, covert operations and market manipulation. But the result is the same. Gold's been flowing to China in recent years, just as gold flowed to the US before Bretton Woods.

China is not alone in its efforts to achieve creditor status and to acquire gold. Russia has greatly increased its gold reserves over the past several years and has little external debt. The move to accumulate gold in Russia is no secret, and as Putin advisor, Sergey Glazyev told Russian Insider has said, "The ruble is the most gold-backed currency in the world."

Iran has also imported massive amounts of gold, mostly through Turkey and Dubai, although no one knows the exact amount, because Iranian gold imports are a state secret.

Other countries, including BRICS members Brazil, India and South Africa, have joined Russia and China in their desire to break free of US Dollar dominance.

Sterling faced a single rival in 1914, the US Dollar. Today, the Dollar faces a host of rivals. The decline of the Dollar as a reserve currency started in 2000 with the advent of the Euro and accelerated in 2010 with the beginning of a new currency war.

The Dollar collapse has already begun and the need for a new monetary order will need to emerge. The question is whether it will be an orderly process resulting from a new monetary conference, or a chaotic one.

Unfortunately, it'll probably be chaotic. Don't count on the elites to act in time.

- Source, Bullion Vault

James Rickards: Stocks Are in Bubble Territory Based on Weak Earning

Just scan the headlines (that’s what computers do), weigh the factors and make the call. It’s easy! What’s not so easy is understanding where markets go when these factors are no longer in play.

Stocks are in bubble territory, based on weak earnings, and have been propped up by expected good news on trade.

The other driver is FOMO — “fear of missing out” — that can turn to simple fear in a heartbeat. If the phase one trade deal and a successor to NAFTA (USMCA) are both approved by late December and the Fed pauses rate cuts indefinitely, which are both likely, what’s left to drive stock prices higher?

It won’t be earnings or GDP, which are both weak. Once the good news is fully priced in, there’s nothing left but bad news. And we’re at the point right now.

That leaves stocks vulnerable to a sharp decline around year-end or early 2020. Simple solutions for investors include cash, gold and Treasuries. Get ready...

- Source, Jim Rickards

Helicopter Money Cannot Work and Will Have Dire Consequences

The first problem is there’s not much of a multiplier at this stage of the U.S. expansion. The current expansion is already the longest in U.S. history. It’s also been the weakest expansion in history, but an expansion nonetheless. The multiplier effect of government spending is strongest at the beginning of an expansion when the economy has more spare capacity in labor and capital.

At this point, the actual multiplier is probably less than one. For every dollar of government spending, the economy might only get $0.90 of added GDP; not the best use of borrowed money.

The second problem with helicopter money is there is no assurance that citizens will actually spend the money the government is pushing into the economy. They are just as likely to pay down debt or save any additional income. This is the classic “liquidity trap.” This propensity to save rather than spend is a behavioral issue not easily affected by monetary or fiscal policy.

Finally, there is an invisible but real confidence boundary on the Fed’s balance sheet. After printing $4 trillion in response to the last financial crisis, how much more can the Fed print without risking confidence in the dollar itself?

Quantitative tightening brought the balance sheet back down to $3.8 trillion. But now it’s over $4 trillion again, as the Fed has added hundreds of billions to its balance sheet since September, when it starting shoring up short-term money markets. It’s basically been “QE-lite.”

Modern monetary theorists and neo-Keynesians say there is no limit on Fed printing, yet history says otherwise.

Importantly, with so much U.S. government debt in foreign hands, a simple decision by foreign countries to become net sellers of U.S. Treasuries is enough to cause interest rates to rise thus slowing economic growth and increasing U.S. deficits at the same time.

If such net selling accelerates, it could lead to a debt-deficit death spiral and a U.S. sovereign debt crisis of the type that hit Greece and the Eurozone periphery in recent years.

In short, helicopter money could have far less potency and far greater unintended negative consequences than its supporters expect...

- Source, Jim Rickards via the Daily Reckoning

James Rickards: World On Knife Edge Of Debt Crisis

Herbert Stein, a prominent economist and adviser to presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, once remarked, “If something cannot go on forever, it will stop.”

The fact that his remark is obvious makes it no less profound. Simple denial or wishful thinking tends to dominate economic debate.

Stein’s remark is like a bucket of ice water in the face of those denying the reality of nonsustainability. Stein was testifying about international trade deficits when he made his statement, but it applies broadly.

Current global debt levels are simply not sustainable. Debt actually is sustainable if the debt is used for projects with positive returns and if the economy supporting the debt is growing faster than the debt itself.

But neither of those conditions applies today.

Debt is being incurred just to keep pace with existing requirements in the form of benefits, interest and discretionary spending.

It’s not being used for projects with long-term positive returns such as interstate highways, bridges and tunnels; 5G telecommunications; and improved educational outcomes (meaning improved student performance, not teacher pensions).

And developed economies are piling on debt faster than they are growing, so debt-to-GDP ratios are moving to levels where more debt stunts growth rather than helps.

It’s a catastrophic global debt crisis (worse than 2008) waiting to happen. What will trigger the crisis?

In a word — rates. Low interest rates facilitate unsustainable debt levels, at least in the short run. But with so much debt on the books, even modest rate increases will cause debt levels and deficits to explode as new borrowing is sought just to cover interest payments.

Real rates can skyrocket even as nominal rates fall if deflation takes hold. Real rates are nominal rates minus the inflation rate. If the inflation rate is negative, real rates can be significantly higher than the nominal rate. (A nominal rate of 1% with 2% deflation equals a real rate of 3%.)

The world is on the knife edge of a debt crisis not seen since the 1930s. It won’t take much to trigger the crisis.

Meanwhile, the stock market is set up for a sharp decline in the days and weeks ahead. Here’s why…

Stock market behavior has become remarkably easy to predict lately. Stocks go up when the Fed cuts rates or indicates that rate cuts are coming. Stocks also go up when there’s good news on the trade war front, especially involving a “phase one” mini-deal with China.

Stocks go down when the trade war talks look like they’re breaking down. Stocks also go down when the Fed indicates it may stop raising rates or actually goes on “pause.”

Good news (rate cuts in July, September and October and good prospects on the trade wars) has outweighed bad news, so stocks have been trending higher. You don’t have to be a superstar analyst to figure this out.

The key is to understand that markets are driven by computerized trading, not humans. Computers are dumb and can really only make sense of a few factors at a time, like rates and trade.

- Source Jim Rickards via Zero Hedge

Helicopter Money Is No Panacea

In recent decades, the Fed has engaged in a series of policy interventions and market manipulations that have paradoxically left it more powerful even as those interventions left a trail of crashes, collapses and calamities.

This contradiction between Fed omnipotence and Fed incompetence is coming to a head. The economy has been trapped in a prolonged period of subtrend growth. I’ve referred to it in the past as the “new depression.” And the Fed has been powerless to lift the economy out of it.

You may think of depression as a continuous decline in GDP. The standard definition of a recession is two or more consecutive quarters of declining GDP and rising unemployment. Since a depression is understood to be something worse then a recession, investors think it must mean an extra-long period of decline. But that is not the definition of depression.

The best definition ever offered came from John Maynard Keynes in his 1936 classic, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money. Keynes said a depression is, “a chronic condition of subnormal activity for a considerable period without any marked tendency towards recovery or towards complete collapse.”

Keynes did not refer to declining GDP; he talked about “subnormal” activity. In other words, it’s entirely possible to have growth in a depression. The problem is that the growth is below trend. It is weak growth that does not do the job of providing enough jobs or staying ahead of the national debt. That is exactly what the U.S. is experiencing today.

Long-term growth is about 3%. From 1994 to 2000, the heart of the Clinton boom, growth in the U.S. economy averaged over 4% per year.

For a three-year stretch from 1983 to 1985 during the heart of the Reagan boom, growth in the U.S. economy averaged over 5.5% per year. These two periods were unusually strong, but they show what the U.S. economy can do with the right policies. By contrast, growth in the U.S. from 2007 through today has averaged something like 2% per year.

That is the meaning of depression. It is not negative growth, but it is below-trend growth. And growth under Trump has been no greater than it was under Obama.

The bigger problem is there’s no way out, as I said. One manipulation leads to another. My greatest fear is that the U.S. is becoming like Japan, which has used every trick in the book to no avail.

In my 2014 book, The Death of Money, I wrote, “The United States is Japan on a larger scale.” That was six years ago now.

Japan started its “lost decade” in the 1990s. Now their lost decade has dragged into three lost decades. The U.S. began its first lost decade in 2009 and is now entering its second lost decade with no real end in sight.

What I referred to in 2014 was that central bank policy in both countries has been completely ineffective at restoring long-term trend growth or solving the steady accumulation of unsustainable debt.

In Japan this problem began in the 1990s, and in the U.S. the problem began in 2009, but it’s the same problem with no clear solution.

Now in 2020, central banks have been cutting rates again, as the trade war and slowing global growth have policymakers considering the implications of a new recession without the firepower they need. As things stand, the next recession may be impossible to get out of. And the odds of avoiding a recession are low.

The only way out is for the Fed to guarantee inflation “whatever it takes.” Nothing else has worked. So why not try a more active fiscal policy? Why not load the helicopters with cash and dump it out over Main Street?

First, we need to understand what helicopter money is, and what it isn’t.

The image of the Fed printing paper money, and dumping it from helicopters to consumers waiting below who scoop it up and start spending is a popular, but not very informative way to describe helicopter money.

In reality, helicopter money is the coordination of fiscal policy and monetary policy in a way designed to provide stimulus to a weak economy and to fight deflation.

Helicopter money starts with larger deficits caused by higher government spending. This spending is considered to have a multiplier effect. For each dollar of spending, perhaps $1.50 of additional GDP is created since the recipients of the government spending turn around and spend that same money on additional goods and services. The U.S. Treasury finances these larger deficits by borrowing the money in the government bond market.

Normally this added borrowing might raise interest rates. The economic drag from higher rates could cancel out the stimulus of higher spending and render the entire program pointless.

This is where the Fed steps in. The Fed can buy the additional debt from the Treasury with freshly printed money. The Fed also promises to hold these newly purchased Treasury bonds on its balance sheet until maturity.

By printing money to neutralize the impact of more borrowing, the economy gets the benefit of higher spending, without the headwinds of higher interest rates. The result is mildly inflationary offsetting the feared deflation that would trigger helicopter money in the first place.

It’s a neat theory, but it’s full of holes...

- Source, James Rickards via the Daily Reckoning

Jim Rickards: His Gold Price Prediction Explained...

Jim Rickards, legendary gold expert, says soon you might not be able to buy gold at any price! 

I reveal the insider information you need to understand Jim Rickards reasoning and determine if you should buy gold now or wait. And how gold could go to 100k an ounce, or more.

Jim Rickards is the foremost expert on the price of gold, when he talks the markets listen and you should too. If you've followed his work you know Jim Rickards is one of the premier macro thinkers in the world. 

And if you don't know who Jim Rickards is, you need discover his ideas right now. Understanding and listening to Jim Rickards now, could save and make you a lot of money in the future.

- Source, George Gammon