The Return of High Inflation: Risks, Myths, and Opportunities

This book is about the NEXT financial crisis. A crisis, that - according to the author – will result from an unexpected return of high inflation and rising interest rates. The author explains the risks of such an event, describes analogies from the past, and offers numerous paradigms, concepts, and ideas that may help companies and individuals to turn inflation risks into opportunities.

Dr. Hammes was one of the first experts who foresaw the last financial crisis. As early as 2000, Dr. Hammes warned publicly that a major financial crisis was unavoidable if risk management deficiencies in the financial industry remained unaddressed. In his new book, Dr. Hammes warns of an even more serious crisis caused by an unprecedented state of collective unpreparedness regarding inflation risks.

A return of high inflation to the developed world should not surprise us. Judging from historical analogies, inflation is a likely outcome of the economic malaise we are in and the policies we have chosen. Irresponsible fiscal behavior, excessive levels of government and private sector debt, and ultra-loose monetary policies are very likely to be followed by a period of excessive inflation. While we cannot exactly time the occurrence of such an inflation risk event, we can quite well assess its general probability of occurrence.

The vast majority of companies and individuals are not prepared to deal with a return of high inflation. We are in a state of collective unpreparedness. Also, there is very little practical research out there that could help managers and individuals prepare for such a risk event. Even worse, our modern economic and financial systems and processes in the developed world are based on the assumption of low inflation. They have never been stress-tested for a different scenario.

Inflation management requires a different set of skills than those taught to us in western business schools. Reading this book should be the start of an important journey to better understand the risks of high inflation and how they impact your company and your personal life. Maybe the journey will take you one step further and enable you to turn inflation risks into a big opportunity as some best practice examples did during past inflation periods.

We are now at a stage in history when the economic, fiscal, financial, and social situation in many developed countries resembles terrifying parallels to past periods of history prior to major outbreaks of high inflation. At the moment, a wide range of inflation strategies is available to companies and individuals who take inflation risks seriously. Many of these ideas and concepts are discussed in this book. Therefore, the author's recommendation is simple: prepare for the worst and hope for the best. Do not base important risk management strategies on hope and gamble that everything will be fine. The price for being wrong is extremely high when it comes to inflation risks.

Dr. Hammes worked as a top management consultant and partner at McKinsey & Co. in New York and Germany. At McKinsey, he was a leader and pioneer of the firm's strategic risk management consulting activities. In early 2000, he was one of the first experts who publicly warned of a major banking crisis in the U.S. due to deteriorating risk management standards in the financial sector.

After McKinsey, Dr. Hammes had been a Managing Director in Investment Banking for both Merrill Lynch and Deutsche Bank in London. He advised clients around the world on strategy and investment banking topics. At Deutsche Bank, he was co-head of the European Financial Institutions Group, advising banking and insurance clients on M&A, capital management, strategy, and risk management topics.

Currently, Dr. Hammes is the CEO and co-founder of The Vangi Group LLC, a management consulting firm that focuses on achieving long-term success by linking strategy, risk management, critical thinking and future anticipation techniques.

Dr. Hammes has a Ph.D. (summa cum laude) in business administration from Trier University in Germany and an M.B.A. from Clark University in Massachusetts. He is a member of the Board of Trustees at Clark University, where he has chaired the strategy, finance and compensation committees. He is also an active speaker at international management conferences and company events in North America and Europe.