What does “economic collapse” really look like?

What will the world look like if the global economy collapsed? Glenn invited Jim Rickards, author of The Death of Money: The Coming Collapse of the International Monetary System onto the show to discuss what a catastrophic collapse and reset might look like and how it almost happened before.

GLENN: There is a fascinating article that just came out the last couple of days called In the Year 2024. It's written by James Rickards. He's the author of the book The Death of Money: The Coming Collapse of the International Monetary System. And I've asked him to come on by for a few minutes and talk to us about this. Because my kids ask me all the time, Dad, what do you mean? What do you mean money is going to collapse? What do you mean the system is going to shut down for a while? What does that even look like? The way I explain it to them, and I'd like Jim to take this in greater detail and correct me if he thinks I'm wrong. What I mean by that is, an event unlike anything at least this generation and I believe anything like the world has ever seen before.

A catastrophic failure and reset in a way that we don't know what we're doing for a while. We all kind of have to -- kind of figure it out on our own. And most likely, at least for a while, ends in marshal law. And ends in some pretty frightening times. The -- the Great Depression would look like a picnic, quite honestly. And James is here to comment on that. Do you agree with that?

JAMES: I agree. I think we can see it coming. One of the things is -- let me talk about what it's not going to be like. I don't think we'll all be living in caves. Canned goods. It's not the end of the world.

GLENN: Right. We make it through this.

JAMES: We make it through, but it's a different world when we come out the other side. You know, Mussolini's mantra was, everything in the state, nothing outside the state. That was their succinct summary of what fascism was. Well, you get to a world where the government controls all the money. Everything, first of all, is all digital. We all think we have money. How much cash do you have in your pocket? A couple bucks maybe? You get a direct deposit of your pay. You pay with credit cards. You pay with debit cards. You pay online. You wire money. It's all digital.

Well, that means it can all be controlled. That can all be taken over by the government, number one. E-ZPass tollbooths, and we all like the convenience. I like them too. But those are interdiction points where they can use facial recognition software, license plate scanning, et cetera. I know you have a lot of contacts in Silicon Valley. You talk to people out there. They like the driverless car. Driverless car sounds kind of cool. You can read a book or whatever. Well, driverless car is not driverless. It's just being driven by a system. And the system involves GPS and computers. Essential programmers. So if they decide they want to lock the cars and take the car to a local police station, then your car is a prison. It's a portable jail cell. And if they don't like you for political reasons or other reasons -- these are all things that are here.

GLENN: I want to say this, in case you don't know who Jim is. Because this sounds crazy. Doesn't it? It sounds like Blade Runner or Conspiracy Theory. And just a little bit about him. Portfolio manager at the West Shore Group. An adviser to the International Economics and Financial Threats, to the Department of Defense. And the US Intelligence Community.

So you also did -- didn't you do the first -- you were the --

JAMES: Financial war game. Yep.

GLENN: Yeah, you did the first financial war game at the Pentagon. So this is not someone who is like, yeah, I live in my mom's basement. And you also were right there in 1998, front row seat, with the Wall Street bailout of the hedge funds.

JAMES: I was the general counsel, long-term capital management. That was the hedge fund that collapsed in 1998. It was bailed out by Wall Street. Four billion dollars. We put it together in 72 hours. We foamed the runways, Glenn, and brought it in for a soft landing. But I can tell you, I was there. We were hours away from every market in the world closing.

We tried to get that down before Tokyo opened that morning. And we did. Now it's kind of like old news or whatever. But that's how close we came. Of course, we came that close in 2008. So I had a front row seat on that one. I like to say, in America, when you screw up badly enough, the lawyers take over. And I was the lawyer. So I got to do that one. So I've seen this.

GLENN: Okay. So you've seen this firsthand. You look to history to be able to forecast what is coming. You have -- you told me last night on television that you have seen -- the world has seen financial markets close. I wasn't aware of World War I, the stock exchange close for that long.

JAMES: Well, in World War I, the secretary of the treasury, Mcadoo closed the New York Stock Exchange. Well, the Board of Governors closed it, basically on the influence of the treasury for five months from the beginning of August to the beginning of December. Now, here's the reason. At the time, we were still on the gold standard. Remember, the US was neutral. The other combatants wanted gold because they knew they needed it to fight the war. So they started dumping US stocks. It's not that they hated US stocks. But gold stocks, you got cash, you can get the gold. They were shipping the gold to London. Down at South Street Seaport, there were pallets of gold going to Europe.

Well, they closed the New York Stock Exchange to alleviate the selling pressure. They reopened it five months later. But what happened was, people were very creative. They went out on the street, they went out on News Street, which is behind the New York Stock Exchange. They had a street market. But you had to trade your stocks by appointment. Bring your certificates down, all that. But the New York Stock Exchange was closed for five months.

They wanted to suspend -- all the combatants suspended gold redemptions. Interestingly, John Maynard Keynes, who was vilified as an anti-gold guy, he was the loudest, most persuasive voice in favor of England staying on the gold standard. What he said is, look, Germany, Italy, Belgium, all these other guys, they've suspended. If we the UK, the city of London, stay on the gold standard, we'll have good credit. We'll be able to borrow the money. Fight the war. And win the war. And he was right. JPMorgan. Well, Jack Morgan, the son of Pierpont Morgan did a for multibillion-dollar syndicated loan for Europe. So, yeah, there was a lot of blood spilled on the field. But they won it with finance.

GLENN: Okay. So who can win with finance this time? Because we're all in the same boat. What happens? The banks are closed. Because I think there could be anything. Anything can happen. You know, it could be -- Iran closing the Straits of Hormuz and that could just send things spiraling.

JAMES: Sure.

GLENN: And all of a sudden we're just out. This could happen in a three-day, four-day, five-day period where all of a sudden the world has changed. The banks are closed. You don't have access to money. $300 out of the ATM. That's all you can get.

JAMES: Right. Gas and grocery money. That's about it.

GLENN: That can go on for?

JAMES: Weeks, months. Hey, if you have your gas and groceries, what else would you need? That would be the point. They wouldn't steal your money. You just couldn't get it. It's not just stocks. It's money market funds. You wouldn't be able to redeem those. Close the stock exchange. Say, hey, we're not stealing your equity. But we've converted it to private equity.

GLENN: You said they wouldn't steal things. Well, they did in Cypress.

JAMES: It's state power.

GLENN: The state comes in and says, everybody gets a 50 percent haircut. So whatever you have, you lose 50 percent of it. To me, that's theft. This is all going on. The state starts to crock down. Everybody is kind of pinned into their own place. What does it -- what does it look like afterwards?

JAMES: Well, now there are a couple of states to the world. So maybe everybody will just acquiesce. That's actually a lot of history. When things get bad, people just say, hey, don't bother me. I'll go alone with this. But you could see the outbreak of money riots. You could see people in the streets, protesting not social conditions, but financial conditions. Of course, we have a heavy militarized police ready to respond to that with tear gas and flash bang grenades and they're armored up with all this money from the federal government. So they're ready.

GLENN: How much of this makes you feel -- you're like, I don't want to believe this. But it's just the fact. Because it really sounds nuts.

JAMES: Well, when my first book came out, Currency Wars, the Financial Times reviewed it and they said, let's hope he's wrong. You know what I say? I hope I'm wrong. I don't think I am. At least I wouldn't be writing and doing interviews if I thought I was wrong. I'm trying to warn people. People say I'm giving predictions. I don't think of myself as giving predictions. I think of myself as giving warnings. By the way, this doesn't have to happen. I don't think this is like Clockwork Orange, where it's inevitable. But I think it's likely because the things that you need to do to prevent it from happening are actually -- in our politically dysfunctional age, they're unlikely to happen.

GLENN: Like?

JAMES: You can break up the big banks.

GLENN: Not going to happen.

JAMES: Right. It won't happen. There are a set of things you can do. By the way, we're in a depression. This is not a recovery. This is a depression. As Kings defined it, he said, a prolonged period of below-trend growth, which neither collapses nor gets back to trend. That's the period we're in right now. Could be heading for a collapse for other reasons.

GLENN: That's the actual definition of depression?

JAMES: By John Maynard Keynes. And I agree with that definition. People say I say we're in a depression. People go, you're nuts. GDP is not going down. We've been recovering for six years. Where are the soup lines? Well, the soup lines are Whole Foods. Because now you get food stamps on a digital card. By the way, I'm not disparaging people. You can go into Whole Foods and get your soups. So we have the soup lines. They're just at Whole Foods. We all know the only reason why unemployment is not higher is because labor participations collapsed.

The point is, this 2 percent growth that we're chugging along. In some quarters, a little more. In some quarters, a little bit less. If we're capable of three and a half, which we are, and in the short-run, maybe 5 percent, which we saw between '83 and '86, if we're capable of that and you're actually growing at two, it's the gap between the three and two. Or the five and the two that's depressed growth. That's the definition of a depression. The problem is, we are Japan. We'll be in this for 20 years, unless we make structural changes. A depression is structural. It's not cyclical. You can't solve a cyclical problem with a cyclical solution, which is money. Money printing, if you know, inflation is a little high and you want to dial down the money supply. Or unemployment is high, dial it up. That's a cyclical solution. We need structural solutions. We're not getting them.

GLENN: You told me off TV yesterday. You said to me that behind closed doors, people who know know. And they say it. They know what's coming.

JAMES: Yeah.

GLENN: And they also admit to you, they don't have any idea what they're doing.

JAMES: That's exactly right. I had dinner with one of the members of the board of governors of the federal reserve system. Very bright individual. Don't need to give out names. I looked at this individual. I said, well, you know, the fed is insolvent. On a mark to market basis. Meaning, if you took your assets to mark them to market, it would wipe out their capital. They have about 60 billion in capital and 4 trillion of assets. So the individual said, no, we're not.

And she said, no one has done the math. And I said, well, I have done it. And I think others have done it too. And I kind of looked at her, and she knew that I knew that she couldn't fool me. So she goes, well, maybe. And then in the next breath she said, well, we are, but it doesn't matter. So she went from no to maybe to yes in a matter of 30 seconds. But her last point was the most interesting one. She said, well, maybe we are insolvent on a mark to market basis, but it doesn't matter. The central banks don't need capital.

Really? Well, that might be news to most of the American people. Your money. The money in your pocket is a liability of the Federal Reserve system. It's their liability.

GLENN: Right.

JAMES: And their insolvency of a perpetual -- I look at a dollar bill. I learned in law school, read the contract. It says, Federal Reserve note. A note is a liability. So what is a dollar bill, really? It's a liability. It's a perpetual non-interest bearing liability of an insolvent bank. That's what your money is. So if we all think it's money, it can actually be money. It's a question of confidence. But confidence is very fragile. It can be lost very quickly. And that's the problem. When that confidence is lost, what do we do? What's plan B? I think the main plan B is the one we've been talking about. Which is, lock everything down. In '98, the solution was to print money. In 2008, the solution was to print money. When you get to the point where you can't print money anymore, just don't let people have their money. Just lock it down.

GLENN: I have two minutes. Can you tell me what the average person should be doing right now?

JAMES: One thing they should have is some physical gold. Don't go overboard. I recommend 10 percent. Don't sell everything. I don't think it's good advice.

GLENN: It can be taken.

JAMES: It can be taken. Well, you make a good point, Glenn. Nothing is risk-free. There's nothing out there that is risk-free.

GLENN: And you don't have any idea what's coming.

JAMES: Correct. So the question is, how much risk? And are the risks correlated? You know, can you prepare for different things? That's the right way to do it. One of the things I like about gold is it's physical. It's not digital. People go, I have money. I say, really, interesting, where is your money? Well, it's in the stock market. It's in the bank. Well, that's all digital. It's in a computer. You may get a statement, but that's all digital. Putin has a 6,000 member cyber brigade. You don't think they could shut down the New York Stock Exchange tomorrow? They can.

GLENN: So when you say have cash on hand, do you believe have actual access to cash in your house or someplace?

JAMES: Well, let's say you did. Try getting it. Try going down to the bank and getting $5,000 of cash without being looked at like a drug dealer. They will. They'll file a suspicious activity report. They'll file a currency transaction report. The SAR, the CTR. And you're a perfectly honest citizen. You just say, you know what, for precautionary reasons, I'd like some notes. I don't want it all in digital form. You'll be treated like a criminal, even though you're a perfectly honest citizen. So that's easier said than done.

But for listeners, they might try it. Physical gold, I like it. It's not digital. You can't hack it. You can't erase it. In 2010, the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security found a Russian attack virus in the NASDAQ stock market operating system. This was not a criminal gang trying to get your Social Security number. This was Russia military intelligence inside NASDAQ. That was reported by William Bloomberg. Again, everything I'm saying, you can document or I can document. None of it is conspiracy stuff.

GLENN: James Rickards. The name of the book is the Death of Money. Best-selling author of Currency Wars: The coming Collapse of the International Monetary System. If you want to understand what's coming, you want to be a leader in the next phase of what's coming. You need to understand. This is a great way to understand it. The Death of Money: The Coming Collapse of the International Monetary System. Jim, thanks a lot, appreciate it.

JAMES: Thank you.

What do clay pots have to do with to preserving American history?

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Editor's note: This article was originally published on TheBlaze.com.

Why should we preserve our nation’s history? If you listen to my radio program and podcast, or read my columns and books, you know I’ve dedicated a large part of my life and finances to sourcing and preserving priceless artifacts that tell America’s story. I’ve tried to make these artifacts as available as possible through the American Journey Experience Museum, just across from the studios where I do my daily radio broadcast. Thousands of you have come through the museum and have been able to see and experience these artifacts that are a part of your legacy as an American.

The destruction of American texts has already begun.

But why should people like you and me be concerned about preserving these things from our nation's history? Isn’t that what the “big guys” like the National Archives are for?

I first felt a prompting to preserve our nation's history back in 2008, and it all started with clay pots and the Dead Sea Scrolls. In 1946, a Bedouin shepherd in what is now the West Bank threw a rock into a cave nestled into the side of a cliff near the Dead Sea. Instead of hearing an echo, he heard the curious sound of a clay pot shattering. He discovered more than 15,000 Masoretic texts from the third century B.C. to the first century A.D.

These texts weren’t just a priceless historical discovery. They were virtually perfect copies of the same Jewish texts that continue to be translated today. Consider the significance of that discovery. Since the third century B.C. when these texts were first written, the Jewish people have endured a continued onslaught of diasporas, persecutions, pressures to conform to their occupying power, the destruction of their temple, and so much more. They had to fight for their identity as a people for centuries, and finally, a year after the end of the Holocaust and a year before the founding of the nation of Israel, these texts were discovered, confirming the preservation and endurance of their heritage since ancient times — all due to someone putting these clay pots in a desert cave more than 2,000 years ago.

I first felt a prompting to preserve our nation's history back in 2008, and it all started with clay pots and the Dead Sea Scrolls.

So, what do these clay pots have to do with the calling to preserve American history? I didn’t understand that prompting myself until the horrible thought dawned on me that the people we are fighting against may very well take our sacred American scriptures, our Declaration of Independence, and our Bill of Rights. What if they are successful, and 1,000 years from now, we have no texts preserved to confirm our national identity? What kind of new history would be written over the truth?

The destruction of American texts has already begun. The National Archives has labeled some of our critical documents, like our Declaration of Independence, Constitution, and Bill of Rights, as “triggering” or “containing harmful language.” In a public statement, the National Archives said that the labels help prepare readers to view potentially distressing content:

The Catalog and web pages contain some content that may be harmful or difficult to view. NARA’s records span the history of the United States, and it is our charge to preserve and make available these historical records. As a result, some of the materials presented here may reflect outdated, biased, offensive, and possibly violent views and opinions. In addition, some of the materials may relate to violent or graphic events and are preserved for their historical significance.

According to this statement, our founding documents are either “outdated, biased, offensive,” “possibly violent,” or a combination of these scathing descriptions. I’m sorry, the Declaration of Independence is not “triggering.” Our Constitution is not “outdated and biased,” and our Bill of Rights certainly is not “offensive and possibly violent.” They are glorious documents. They should be celebrated, not qualified by such derogatory, absurd language. Shame on them.

These are only the beginning stages of rewriting our history. What if they start banning these “triggering” documents from public view because they might offend somebody? Haven’t we torn down “triggering” statues before? What if we are no longer able to see, read, and study the actual words of our nation's founding documents because they are “harmful” or “possibly violent”? A thousand years from now, will there be any remnant to piece together the true spirit behind the nation that our founders envisioned?

The Declaration of Independence is not “triggering.”

That is why in 2008, I was prompted to preserve what I could. Now, the American Journey Experience Museum includes more than 160,000 artifacts, from founding-era documents to the original Roe v. Wade court papers. We need to preserve the totality of our nation’s heritage, the good, the bad, and the ugly. We need to preserve our history in our own clay pots.

I ask you to join with me on this mission. Start buying books that are important to preserve. Buy some acid-free paper and start printing some of the founding documents, the reports that go against the mainstream narrative, the studies that prove what is true as we are continually being fed lies. Start preserving our daily history as well as our history because it is being rewritten and digitized.

Somebody must have a copy of what is happening now and what has happened in the past. I hope things don’t get really bad. But if they do, we need to preserve our heritage. Perhaps, someone 1,000 years from now will discover our clay pots and, Lord willing, be able to have a glimpse of America as it truly was.

Top 10 WORST items in the new $1.2 TRILLION spending bill

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Biden just signed the newest spending bill into law, and Glenn is furious.

Under Speaker Johnson's leadership, the whopping $1.2 TRILLION package will use your taxpayer dollars to fund the government through September. Of course, the bill is loaded with earmarks and pork that diverts money to fund all sorts of absurd side projects.

Here is the list of the ten WORST uses of taxpayer money in the recently passed spending bill:

Funding venues to host drag shows, including ones that target children

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Money for transgender underwear for kids

Funding for proms for 12 to 18 year old kids

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Border security funding... for Jordan and Egypt

Another $300 million for Ukraine

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$3.5 million for Detroit's annual Thanksgiving Day parade

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$2.5 million for a new kayaking facility in Franklin, New Hampshire

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$2.7 million for a bike park in White Sulfur Springs, West Virginia, a town with a population of less than 2,300 people

$5 million for a new trail at Coastal Carolina University

$4 million the "Alaska King Crab Enhancement Project" (whatever that means)

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There is no doubt about it—we are entering dark times.

The November presidential election is only a few months away, and following the chaos of the 2020 election, the American people are bracing for what is likely to be another tumultuous election year. The left's anti-Trump rhetoric is reaching an all-time high with the most recent "Bloodbath" debacle proving how far the media will go to smear the former president. That's not to mention the Democrats' nearly four-year-long authoritarian attempt to jail President Trump or stop his re-election by any means necessary, even if it flies in the face of the Constitution.

Meanwhile, Biden is doing worse than ever. He reportedly threw a tantrum recently after being informed that his polls have reached an all-time low. After Special Counsel Robert Hur's report expressed concerns over Biden's obviously failing mental agility, it's getting harder for the Democrats to defend him. Yet he is still the Democratic nominee for November, promising another 4 years of catastrophic policies, from the border to heavy-handed taxation, should he be reelected.

The rest of the world isn't doing much better. The war in Ukraine has no clear end in sight, drawing NATO and Russia closer and closer to conflict. The war in Gaza is showing no sign of slowing down, and as Glenn revealed recently, its continuation may be a sign that the end times are near.

One thing is clear: we are living in uncertain times. If you and your family haven't prepared for the worst, now is the time. You can start by downloading "Glenn's Ultimate Guide to Getting Prepared." Be sure to print off a copy or two. If the recent cell outage proved anything, it's that technology is unreliable in survival situations. You can check your list of supplies against our "Ultimate Prepper Checklist for Beginners," which you can find below:

Food

  • Canned food/non-perishable foods
  • Food preparation tools
  • Go to the next level: garden/livestock/food production

Water

  • Non-perishable water store
  • Water purification
  • Independent water source

Shelter

  • Fireplace with a wood supply
  • Tent
  • Generator with fuel supply
  • Go to the next level: fallout shelter

Money

  • Emergency cash savings
  • Precious metals

Medicine

  • Extra blankets
  • Basic first aid
  • Extra prescriptions
  • Extra glasses
  • Toiletries store
  • Trauma kit
  • Antibiotics
  • Basic surgery supplies
  • Potassium Iodate tablets

Transportation

  • Bicycle
  • Car
  • Extra fuel

Information

  • Birth certificates
  • Insurance cards
  • Marriage license
  • Immunization records
  • Mortgage paperwork
  • Car title and registration
  • House keys, car keys
  • Passports
  • Family emergency plan
  • Prepping/survival/repair manuals
  • Go to the next level: copy of the Bible, the U.S. Constitution, and other important books/sources

Skills

  • Cooking
  • Gardening
  • Sewing
  • First Aid
  • Basic maintenance skills
  • Go to the next level: farming/ranching
  • Self-defense training

Communication

  • Family contact information and addresses
  • HAM radio

Miscellaneous

  • Flashlights and batteries
  • Lamps and fuel
  • Hardware (tools, nails, lumber, etc)
  • Extra clothes
  • Extreme weather clothes and gear
  • Gas masks and filters
  • Spare parts for any machinery/equipment

Is Trump's prosecution NORMAL?  This COMPLETE list of ALL Western leaders who served jail time proves otherwise.

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Mainstream media is on a crusade to normalize Donald Trump's indictments as if it's on par with the electoral course. Glenn asked his team to research every instance of a Western leader who was jailed during their political career over the past 200 years—except extreme political turmoil like the French Revolution, Napoleonic Wars, Irish Revolution, etc.—and what we discovered was quite the opposite.

Imprisoning a leader or major political opponent is not normal, neither in the U.S. nor in the Western world. Within the last 200 years, there are only a handful of examples of leaders in the West serving jail time, and these men were not imprisoned under normal conditions. All of these men were jailed under extreme circumstances during times of great peril such as the Civil War, World War II, and the Cold War.

What does this mean for America? Are Trump's indictments evidence that we are re-entering times of great peril? Below is a list of Western leaders who were imprisoned within the last 200 years. Take a look and decide for yourself:

Late 1800s

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Jefferson Davis: The nearest occurrence to a U.S. President to serve jail time was in the case of Jefferson Davis, the first and only president of the Confederate States of America. Jefferson was captured in Georgia by Northern Soldiers in 1865 and locked up in Fort Monroe, Virginia for two years. He was offered a presidential pardon but refused out of his loyalty to the confederacy.

Early 1900s

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Eugene V. Debs: Debbs, a Midwestern socialist leader, became the first person to run for president in prison. He was locked up at a federal penitentiary in Atlanta having been convicted under the federal Sedition Act for giving an antiwar speech a few months before Armistice Day, the end of World War I. Many of his supporters believed his imprisonment to be unjust. Debs received 897,704 votes and was a distant third-part candidate behind Warren G. Harding, the Republican winner, and James M. Cox, the second-place Democrat. Harding ordered Debs’s release from prison toward the end of 1921.

Nazi sympathizers and collaborators: After the end of World War II in 1945, several European leaders who had "led" their countries during the Nazi occupation faced trial and imprisonment for treason. This list included Chief of the French State Philippe Pétain, French Prime Minister Pierre Laval, and Minister-President of Norway Vidkun Quisling. The latter two were also executed after their imprisonment. President of Finland Risto Ryti and Prime Minister of Finland Johan Wilhelm Rangell were also tried and jailed for collaborating with the Nazis against the Allied Powers.

Late 1900s

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The end of the Cold War: The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 was one of the pivotal moments that brought the Cold War to a close and marked the end of Communist East Germany. With the fall of the wall and the collapse of the German Democratic Republic (East Germany), the former leaders were brought to trial to answer for the crimes committed by the GDR. General Secretary Erich Honecker and General Secretary Egon Krenz were both put on trial for abuse of power and the deaths of those who were shot trying to flee into West Germany. Honecker was charged with jail time but was released from custody due to severe illness and lived out the rest of his life as an exile in Chile. Krenz served 4 years in jail before his release in 2001. He is one of the last surviving leaders of the Eastern Bloc.

Lyndon LaRouche: Larouche was a Trotsky evangelist, public antisemite, and founder of a nationwide Marxist political movement, became the second person in U.S. history to run for President in a prison cell. Granted, he ran in every election from 1976 to 2004 as a long-shot third-party candidate. When he tried to gain the Democratic presidential nomination, he received 5 percent of the total nationwide vote. Even though in 2000 he received enough primary votes to qualify for delegates in a few states, the Democratic National Committee refused to seat his delegates and barred LaRouche from attending the Democratic National Convention.