Howard J. Ruff (1930–2016)

History of Financial Advice Collection. Howard Ruff was an engaging, if rather apocalyptically-minded, entrepreneur who had careers as a publisher, singer, and broadcaster as well as a stockbroker and writer. Ruff was, like Paul Erdman and George Goodman, concerned to try and offer ways that investors might negotiate the financial crises that were occurring in America in the ’70s and was especially concerned to defray what he saw as the drastically damaging effects of inflation. Ruff’s sense of impending crisis was often articulated through a conservative political agenda and his fears of “exploding inflation, price controls, erosion of savings” was linked to both “more government regulation” and a future “international monetary holocaust which will sweep all paper currencies down the drain and turn the world upside down. Paper fortunes based on lending will be destroyed and a new kind of investment and planning morality will put some very unlikely people on top of the heap.” Amongst Ruff’s unorthodox financial advice was to “invest in inflation,” by taking on more debt and investing it, and to hedge against crisis, by purchasing silver, gold, and (the right kind of) real estate.… (meer)