Readers here know that I have followed Jim Rickards for many years because of his extensive understanding of the issues we cover here and because he has talked about the potential for major monetary system change. That is what this blog was created to watch for.

Jim has written a series of best selling books on these issues and in July 2019 will be releasing the latest one titled “Aftermath”. Jim kindly agreed to do a brief Q&A on the upcoming book which is just below. After that a brief summary will follow.

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Q: Should readers read your earlier books (Currency Wars, Death of Money, The New Case for Gold, and The Road to Ruin) before they read the new book “Aftermath”?

A: I’m grateful to all of the readers of my books, but there’s no need to read them in any particular order. The books are a chronicle of the post-2009 period. There’s a lot of economic and monetary history, but they track developments through Bernanke, Yellen and now Jay Powell. There’s a cumulative element so reading Aftermath will incorporate many of the points touched upon in the earlier volumes, albeit in shorter form. Hopefully, someone reading Aftermath first will be encouraged to read the earlier books and complete the entire quartet.

Q: What were some main themes you wanted to cover in “Aftermath”?

A: Many of the trends identified in my earlier books have moved much closer to a critical threshold (point of collapse) and so deserved deeper analysis. These include passive investing, robo-investing, Chinese debt, gold accumulation by Russia and China and the role of crypto-currencies in a global monetary reset. Other new themes are the rise of Trump (not covered in the earlier books) and the exact dimensions of life in the aftermath of a new crisis. Currency Wars and The Death of Money warned that a crisis was coming. The Road to Ruin put you in the middle of a crisis and showed the official response function, (which I called “Ice Nine”). Aftermath takes you to the post-crisis environment as a way to show you what you can do now to survive it.