CHAPTER 10

The Best Way to Understand the

Global Financial System

■ Backstory

My background is fairly diverse or eclectic. Some people say I

could never decide what I wanted to be when I grew up, but

I started as a lawyer. But before I went to law school, I got a

graduate degree in international economics from the School of

Advanced International Studies in Washington.

The interesting thing about that is I was studying interna-

tional economics at a time when the world was still on a gold

standard so I was taught about gold in an academic context in

an economics course.

That hasn’t been true since. I was really the last generation,

almost the last student, to learn about gold in the monetary

sense. Literally a year after I left grad school, the IMF officially

demonetized gold and so, for several generations since then, if

you want to learn about gold, you have to go to mining college

or else be self-taught.

After that, I went to law school then got a second graduate

law degree in taxation. Soon after I started my career as an

international tax counselor at Citibank. I had the opportunity

to travel around the world at a fairly early stage in my career,

which was a great experience and allowed me to apply what I

had learned about international economics in a banking legal

context.