Rickards graduated from Lower Cape May Regional High School in Cape May,
New Jersey, in 1969. He graduated from
Johns Hopkins University in 1973 with a B.A. degree with honors and in 1974, from the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, D.C. with an M.A. in
international economics. He received his
Juris Doctor from the
university of
Pennsylvania Law School and an LL.M in taxation from
New York university School of
law. As
general counsel for the
hedge fund Long-Term
Capital Management (LTCM),[7] Rickards worked on
Wall Street for 35 years.[8] Rickards was the senior
managing director for
market intelligence at Omnis, Inc.,[9] a
consulting firm.[6] On March 24, 2009, Rickards presented his view at a symposium at Johns Hopkins, that the U.S. dollar was facing imminent
hyperinflation and was vulnerable to attack from foreign governments through the accumulation of
gold and the establishment of a new global
currency. On September 10, 2009, along with hundreds of other people, Rickards testified before the U.S. House of Representatives about the risks of financial
modeling, VaR, and the
2008 financial crisis.