Financial Collapse and Massive Shortages in Gold Coming

Financial expert and best-selling author James Rickards’ latest book predicts “the coming collapse of the international monetary system.” One of thesign posts is countries like Russiadeclaring it will shed the U.S. Dollar as reserve currency in international trade. Rickards explains, “Putin said he envisions a Eurasian economic zone involving Eastern Europe, central Asia and Russia. The Russian Ruble is nowhere near ready to be a global reserve currency, but it could be a regional reserve currency.”

Rickards’ latest best-selling book, “The Death of Money,” was released in April. Even Rickards is surprised at how fast the economic situation is unfolding.Rickards says, “If you ask me what has happened since you finished writing the book that comes as a surprise, I would say a lot of the things I talk about in my book are happening faster than I would have expected. Things that I thought would happen in the 2015 or 2016 time frame seems to be happening now in some ways. If anything, the tempo of events is faster than expected. Therefore, some of these catastrophic outcomes may come sooner than I wrote about.”

Rickards goes on to say, “Right now, we are on the precipice now. When you are on the precipice, it doesn’t mean you fall off immediately, but you are going to fall off because you can see the forces in play. What I tell clients and investors is it’s not as if we are going to make some mistakes and some bad things are going to happen. The mistakes have already been made. The instability is already in the system. We’re just waiting for that catalyst that I call the snowflake that starts the avalanche. You don’t worry about the snowflakes; you worry about the snow and that it’s unstable and it’s just waiting to collapse. That’s what the system is right now; we are just waiting for a catalyst. People ask me all the time, what could it be? Technically, my answer is it doesn’t matter because it will be something. It could be a failure to deliver physical gold. It could be an MF Global financial failure. It could be a natural disaster. It could be a lot of things. The thing investors need to understand is the catalyst doesn’t matter. It’s coming because the instability is already there.”

On gold manipulation and when it will end, Rickards says, “It will end when the physical shortage gets to the point that someone fails to deliver; which, at that point, there will be a buying panic. There could be a buying panic or what some people call a demand shock. One of the things I said about gold manipulation is if I was the manipulator, I would be embarrassed at this point. The manipulation is obvious. The evidence is coming in from all directions. . . . The manipulation is clear. When will it end? It will end when there is a physical shortage that pops up somewhere, or it will end with a short squeeze.”

Rickards goes on to say, “We are going to get a very large demand shock coming from China and India. Let me explain those two cases. We have a brand new government in India, and they are going to repeal the import tax on gold. We also have the wedding season coming up. . . . So, India is set up for a very large surge in demand in the fourth quarter. Now, over to China, this is one of the things that it’s happening faster than I originally thought. The credit collapse story is happening in real time. I said (in my book) this might be a 2015 event, but it looks like it is happening now. Defaults are piling up. We are seeing money rise. We’re seeing people march down to the banks . . . trying to get their money back. . . . So, if they can’t buy foreign stocks, domestic stocks, don’t want to put their money in the bank and are getting out of real estate, then what’s left? The answer is gold. . . . I see a demand shock coming from China. . . . You could see a scramble to buy gold. It is going on anyway, but you could see it accelerate. That will take down the manipulation. Once the markets prevail over the manipulators, then watch out.”

Rickards says the collapse will happen, but he is not sure of when it will come. Rickards explains, “It is the thing you won’t see coming that will take the system down. Things happen much more quickly than what investors expect.” Rickards adds, “What will happen in gold is that it will chug along and then all of a sudden–boom. It will be up $100 an ounce, and then the next day it will be up another $200 an ounce. Then everyone will be on TV saying it’s a bubble—boom. It’s up $300 an ounce, and before you know it, it will be up $1,000 per ounce. Then people will say gee, I better get some gold, and they’ll find out they can’t get it because the big guy will get it. You know, like central banks and sovereign wealth funds will be able to get the gold. The typical investor will run down to the coin shop and they will be sold out, and the U.S. Mint will say sorry, we’re not shipping. You’re going to find out you can’t get it because the whole thing is set up for massive shortages in supply.”