Homestead mailing list

[bobf <bobford79 AT yahoo.com>]

You were right, Rob.  I didn't know who he was when I posted that article.  
This short article is about that same speech, but gives info on who Rickards 
is , his background, how influential he is , etc............

--------------------------------------------------------------------

 POLITICO 

Four really, really bad scenarios

By EAMON JAVERS    
 


Intelligence adviser James Rickards outlines four financial scenarios that 
threaten national security.

 What’s the worst that could happen? 

That’s a question that James Rickards spends a lot of time pondering these 
days, as he sifts through the national security implications of the financial 
crisis facing the United States. 

Rickards will lay out his worst case scenarios in a lecture sponsored by the 
Navy and the Office of the Secretary of Defense for Policy tonight. And his 
forecasts aren’t for the faint of heart. 

Rickards calls it the “A to Z” problem: What are the threats that could make 
the U.S. economy look less like America and more like Zimbabwe? He sees them 
everywhere – in the Chinese ownership of vast amounts of American debt, in 
Russia’s increased centralization of its economy, in Al Qaeda’s 
long-established fascination with damaging the U.S. economy. 

In many ways, Rickards is the ultimate bear. He’s not just thinking about 
whether the stock market will decline, but whether or not the stock market 
will survive. 

All that puts Rickards decidedly outside mainstream economic and political 
thinking in America. But he does have an influential audience: the United 
States intelligence and defense communities.


Rickards is a regular adviser on financial issues to the director of national 
intelligence's office, and he lends his financial advice to the national 
security community. 

His lecture comes as part of an annual “Rethinking Seminar” produced by the 
Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. Rickards argues that 
government is not doing nearly enough to prepare for the worst. “Here’s the 
policy problem for the United States,” he said in an interview. “We have 
experts in defense and intelligence, and huge depth in capital markets 
experience at the Fed and at Treasury. But they’re separated by the Potomac 
River. And they’re not talking to each other.” 

Rickards came by his economic experience the hard way. He was the general 
counsel at Long Term Capital Management, the hedge fund that collapsed in 
spectacular fashion in the late 1990s and nearly took the global economy 
along with it. That near-economic death experience gave him a healthy 
appreciation for risk. Today, he’s the senior managing director for research 
at Omnis, an applied research firm. 

Four of the scenarios keep him up at night: .........................

.................................................................

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1208/16663.html
 
 
 
 



--- On Sat, 12/20/08, Rob <becida AT comcast.net> wrote:


> 
> It was a 'what if' game and when he started using
> government 
> unemployment numbers I had to step back. I have a general
> lack of 
> trust in the government unemployment numbers.
> 
> 
> 
> Rob
> becida AT comcast.net 
> 
> _______________________________________________