![]() And then, in 1998, the Russian crisis hit and things went a little sour.” Basically I had to sit with a blank sheet of paper and think of every way a country could steal your money. “My job was to figure out what it meant for a country to default. Rickards himself was involved in deep financial tinkering – he lays claim to having laid out the legal structure of the world’s first sovereign credit default swap (CDS) while at LTCM – much before Blythe Masters ran with the idea at a JP Morgan offsite weekend in Boca Raton in the mid-1990s. Rickards says he was confident enough – “I was already in the big leagues so for me it was like going from the Mets to the Yankees.” Indeed, the first three years were wildly successful: LTCM posted returns of 21%, 43% and 41%, growing its assets to $7bn. I was already in the big leagues so for me it was like going from the Mets to the Yankees ![]() In fact, the start-up was no less than Long Term Capital Management (LTCM), perhaps the most famous hedge fund of its era, run by the best bond derivative trader in the world at that time, John Meriwether, backed by the bosses of modern financial theory, Myron Scholes and Robert Merton, all garnished with ex- and future finance luminaries including former vice-chairman of the Fed David Mullins, and Matt Zames, once touted as successor to JP Morgan chief, Jamie Dimon. It is a little disingenuous to call his new company that. It was a good time to be in finance, coinciding with the rise of the derivatives market and the money splurge that came on the back of this.Īfter ten years, he decided to leave for a “start-up” in 1993, he says. He followed this by becoming general counsel at Greenwich Capital Markets which was at the time one of the biggest bond dealers in the US. Rickards studied international economics at the Paul Nitze School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, whose ex-students include Madeleine Albright and Tim Geithner, then shifted to law in the 1970s which led to his first job as tax counsel for Citigroup. ![]() But more importantly, it is a severe warning of what is to come. The ominous title is a reflection of the last ten years of crisis, which Rickards says has never resolved itself. He is in New York to promote his new book, Aftermath: Seven Secrets of Wealth Preservation in the Coming Chaos, which shot to the top of the Amazon wealth management book charts even before it was released last month. Rickards is thoughtful and polite, and looks like your average finance professor. I meet him in the drawing room of the elegant Greenwich Hotel in downtown New York, owned by a certain Robert de Niro. How did we get here? Ex-lawyer, financial commentator and author Jim Rickards has arrived here via a 50-year career at some of the most famous financial institutions in history. “The current run could go on longer than anyone expects, but when it ends it will be a bigger crash than all of them.
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