Jim Rickards: An Origin Story

“If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.” [Wiggin Sessions] February 22, 2022 Jim Rickards: An Origin Story “University biologists working with infectious viruses have airtight facilities to ensure that the objects of their study do not escape from the laboratory and damage the population at large. Unfortunately, no such safeguards are imposed on economics departments.” ― James Rickards, Currency Wars: The Making of the Next Global Crisis [Addison Wiggin]Dear Reader, Hello, and welcome to your first regular daily Wiggin Sessions missive. As you know, each week I’ll send you a video recording of a conversation between me and some of the most original and independent thinkers, authors and investors... In-between episodes, I’ll send you updates like this one. It’s my chance to share insights about my upcoming guests… build on previous conversations we’ve had… and explore the connections between themes that could have a major impact on your wealth. This week, you’ll get to hear from Jim Rickards. We’ve been friends, a publisher and travel companion to Jim for almost a decade. We first met when he was on the road talking about his best-seller, [Currency Wars](. It’s uncanny how many of the themes he’s followed in that and ensuing books have come to fruition. Made even more impressive by how prolific he’s been during these years, writing [The Death of Money]( [The New Case for Gold]( [The Road to Ruin]( [Aftermath]( and [The New Great Depression](. How did Jim get this way? Well, his story is interesting, as he relates in this week’s Session. He’s experienced bankruptcy — or close enough to it — twice in his life. The first time was when he was 12 years old. “The bankruptcy laws were a lot more stringent than they are today,” he tells me. Not only did his family lose their house and car, but Jim’s father had a lien against his salary, dramatically reducing his income. The family was forced to move to a new town where people were mostly either “farmers or fishermen.“ He had to find a place for himself in the homogenous community while adjusting to a lower standard of living. “My closet was a nail in the wall,” he relates. While it was “highly stressful for my family,” Jim says, “it was the best thing that ever happened to me.” For one thing, he “became very focused on studies and got good grades.” In fact, he says, “it’s kind of how I got into college.” It also taught him resilience. Even today he believes “if it all went away, I could survive just fine.” “That’s a great source of strength,” Jim Rickards will say straight to your face… which is why he felt OK decades later, when he nearly went bankrupt on his own dime. You may know that Jim helped negotiate the terms of Long-Term Capital Management’s (LTCM) bankruptcy in 1998, which came “close to taking down the entire global financial system.” The negotiations were tense. “We were hours away from shutting every market in the world,” he tells me. “That's not an exaggeration.” Jim was the seminal interview for the expose about the LTCM collapse called [When Genius Failed]( written by Robert Lowenstein, then an author and a reporter for The Wall Street Journal. But LTCM’s downfall affected Mr. Rickards personally. “I also had quite a bit of money invested in the firm,” Jim admits. He assumed that since the place was full of geniuses — including two Nobel Prize winners — “they’ll do fine.” Indeed, he tripled his money in just four years… only to watch… watch it all… collapse. Down 92%. “I wasn't bankrupt, I wasn't kicked out of my house,” Jim says, “but that was a real setback.” Still, his family’s bankruptcy had prepared him to reinvent himself. “You just pick yourself up and you go from there,” he tells me. Years later, he was negotiating with one of the “big hedge fund asset allocators.” Over drinks, the man explained why he was trusting Jim with his money. “I wouldn't give money to anyone who's never had a setback, because you know what it's like,” he told Jim. “You won't let it happen again.” That attitude has led him to a lot of different careers: “a little bit of law, finance banking, hedge funds, intelligence, national security, economics, writer,” Rickards explains. We’ll talk about some of his specific experiences — including how he got involved with the Central Intelligence Agency — tomorrow. Follow your bliss, Regards, [Addison Wiggin] Addison Wiggin Founder, The Wiggin Sessions P.S. “I have appreciated PJ 's outlook for as long as I can remember,” a reader writes, dismayed that we included a link to a point of view critical of O’Rourkes satire last week. You’ll find we like to include reader responses in our daily missives. We find it uplifting, even if we often disagree. “I was disappointed that you gave him the time of day!” reader BD continues. “Politicians are a terrible breed of humanity. But Jon S just proved that he is the joke! I wish I could bring back PJ to put him in his place at the bottom of the pile! Thanks BD.” Without being pithy, we do respect differing points of view. Ours is such a polemic one-size fits all era, it would be worth all of our time to listen, just a little. “Charles speaks of the federal government having a part to play,” writes another reader about our recent Charles Hugh Smith interview ([in the archives]( if you’d like to catch up), “but the real question is who in the federal government, because decisions are not made by the ‘government’, they are made by individuals. Many/most of those decisions that really hurt us are not even taken at the elected official level - congress or the presidency - but in the innumerable federal agencies that appear to be accountable to no one.” Mr. Foreman, as he goes by, then asks us to consider a prior interview with Dan Denning. Dan [mentioned a few weeks ago]( the people in the Davos set “want to run all the details of our lives. They want to tell people in Laramie, WO how to live their lives, what kind of car to drive, how much fertilizer to apply to their crops, and all sorts of stuff, from wherever in the world they happen to be.” “Charles is absolutely right,” our correspondent asserts, “these decisions need to be pushed back to the local level, but the people controlling the capital in the world today are determined to push things the opposite way.” Part of what makes reader mail interesting is, we can open up questions, then feature your responses.Your ideas are often more insightful than anything we can conjure up. By all means, feel free to send your own response to this email address: WigginSessions@5minforecast.com. P.P.S. With tensions rising between Ukraine and Russia — not to mention the same happening with Taiwan and Japan — Jim Rickards is putting together an emergency briefing. It’s a live Zoom call scheduled tomorrow, Feb. 22, at 7 p.m. EST. You can register to watch it for FREE [right here](. 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