Currency Wars

James Rickards, a lawyer, investment banker and adviser to the US intelligence community, warns that a new currency war is under way and could bring a crisis deeper than the one of 2008. He revisits earlier rounds, including the conflict President Nixon tried to end in 1971 by imposing price controls and taking the dollar off the gold standard. Rickards writes that such wars at best let countries siphon growth from trading partners and at worst slide into inflation, recession, retaliation and sometimes violence. He reads Chinese currency manipulation, the Greek and Irish bailouts and a debased dollar as signs of the conflict, and treats secret Chinese gold buying as a security threat.

PentesterLab founder Louis Nyffenegger said it broadened his view of the economy and of how the world works.