The Street

DANIELA CAMBONE  MAR 19, 2020 We are potentially entering an “Ice-9” situation where the entire world may “freeze” over economically, said Jim Rickards, best-selling author of “The Road to Ruin” and “Aftermath: Seven Secrets of Wealth Preservation in the Coming Chaos.” Rickards is using a metaphor, alluding to a Kurt Vonnegut book, “Cat’s Cradle.” In the book, a vial of “Ice-9”, a liquid that has a freezing point of room temperature, leaks into the streams and rivers and turns all water into ice, effectively covering the planet in an ice age and wipes out all life. Something similar may be underway, financially, when markets halt trading activity, he said. “If you shut down the New York stock exchange, and I can’t sell stocks and get cash, I’m going to sell my money market funds or redeem my money market funds. Then you’ve got to shut down the money market funds industry, and then people say ‘ok, I’ll go to the banks or the ATMs,’” he said. “And then you’ve got to shut down the banks so the point is, it spreads from exchange to money markets, to brokerage accounts, to banks, and you end up shutting down the entire system.” At the end of an Ice-9 scenario, the entire global financial system shuts down, and any Federal Reserve intervention may no longer be effective. Rickards noted that contrary to conventional economic thinking, now is not a bad time to own gold. “People say that gold does well in inflation, and … Continue reading →