Posts by James G. Rickards

This article is one of the most fascinating I’ve read in a while. It’s a 39-year-old interview with a KGB defector to the United States named Yuri Bezmenov. In it, he describes the psychological and propaganda techniques the KGB used (and that Chinese Communists still use today) to undermine the U.S. (By the way, there’s a video…

We all know that Donald Trump has been bombarded with lawsuits and prosecutions from all sides in a desperate effort to handicap his presidential campaign and prevent him from becoming president again. There are several civil lawsuits claiming defamation and fraud in the case of business records violations. The fraud case, while civil, is the…

Here’s a headline that caught me off guard (although I can explain it): “Fed Posts Largest-Ever Annual Operating Loss.” How, exactly, does a bank with a printing press in its basement manage to lose money? Leave it to the Federal Reserve. Here’s how: in the first place, the printing press prints dollars, but those are not assets;…

Here’s a story you may not have heard about but certainly should know. Gonzalo Lira was an American citizen of Chilean descent, a war correspondent, and a public commentator on social media. Starting in 2022, he gained global attention as a reporter in Ukraine who criticized the Ukrainian government. He moved to Ukraine and was not afraid…

I have been a relentless critic of the Green New Scam and the climate alarmists. (By the way, Trump recently picked up our phrase “Green New Scam” on the campaign train. Welcome aboard, Mr. President!) Everything about climate alarmism is phony, including the fake science, the flawed models, and the consistently wrong predictions. Still, it…

Everyone agrees it’s a good idea to keep a flashlight, extra batteries, a transistor radio, water, and a first-aid kit handy in case of storms or power outages. If you want to dial-up your disaster preparation, you can add several hundred day’s worth of freeze-dried food, a generator, and maybe a ham radio. So far,…

It’s an election year. Interest rates are high relative to current inflation rates and are the highest they’ve been since 2006. Do those two conditions have anything to do with each other? The Federal Reserve would say “no,” but history would say “yes.” On the one hand, the Federal Reserve has always maintained they are…

It’s often the case that the Democrats are the ruthless party and Republicans are the dumb party, but sometimes the Democrats give the Republicans a run for their money when it comes to stupid. This is one of those times. Democrats have launched a nationwide campaign to strip Donald Trump from the ballot in the presidential election…

This article reports that Russian oil exports rose 7% in 2023 compared with 2021, the year before the War in Ukraine began. Almost all the data coming out of Russia these days is similarly positive. The Russian economy is projected to have grown about 5% (annualized) in the fourth quarter of 2023 compared to about 2.1% for…

California has so many laws, rules, and regulations that make no economic sense that it’s hard to keep track of the latest wacky idea. Tax rates are among the highest in the country. Building regulation is so bad that it recently took one Los Angeles developer 17 years to build just 49 housing units, and…