Second Chance

Kiyosaki published Second Chance in 2015, almost seven years after the 2008 crisis erupted in the United States and spread around the world. Unlike Rich Dad Poor Dad, which tells the story of his childhood, this book is born as a reaction to a specific moment: banks at risk of bank runs, governments bailing out banks with newly created money, and a generation that saw its own job or its own home at risk.

The title carries an invitation and a warning at the same time. For him, 2008 was a warning most people did not use to change their behavior with money, and now a new opportunity would come before the next stumble, which, according to the author, would be bigger. That countdown tone runs through the entire book.

To support the argument, the book organizes the history of money into three blocks: the past, with real backing in metal; the present, held up only by trust and debt; and the future, what the author believes could happen if nothing changes. That timeline is the thread running through almost every chapter.

For much of history, a currency was worth something only because it could be exchanged for a fixed amount of precious metal kept in some vault. That is what we call backing: the guarantee that the paper in your wallet represents a real piece of something scarce, not just a promise.

After World War II, the Bretton Woods agreement tied the U.S. dollar to gold at a fixed rate, and the other currencies of the world anchored themselves to it. In practice, this limited how much money a government could print, because every extra bill needed enough gold stored behind it.

The book uses this period as a reference for what it calls real money: something that does not appear out of thin air by decision of a central bank. For Kiyosaki, that restriction worked as an automatic brake on government overspending, even though it was a system with crises of its own.

In 1971, the American government suspended the conversion of the dollar into gold for other countries. The decision, made amid economic pressure and the spending of the Vietnam War, removed once and for all the metal backing of the world's main currency.

From then on, the dollar and practically every currency on the planet became what is called fiat money: paper that is worth something because the law says so and because people trust it, with no metal guaranteeing conversion on the other side of the counter.

Second Chance treats this episode as the watershed for everything that follows: without the brake of gold, central banks gained the freedom to issue money in much larger volumes and to postpone financial problems by pushing them down the road instead of solving them on the spot.