Cost of Government Is Not What It Taxes, But What It Spends

American Exceptionalism on Display

Myths About Economic Collapse | Peter Schiff and Stefan Molyneux

Did government deregulation cause the financial crisis? Did the partial repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act lead to America's banking crisis - and to massive government bailouts? Stefan Molyneux speaks with Peter Schiff about the persistent myth of financial deregulation and the true cause of the economic crisis!

Peter Schiff is an economist, financial broker/dealer, author, frequent guest on national news, the host of the Peter Schiff Show Podcast, the CEO of Euro Pacific Capital and the Chairmain of Schiff Gold.

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Political Prisoners, Economic Delusions, and Escaping the Next Crisis

Gold (coin) bugs: No, we're not crazy for buying

Even in the face a steep price swoon and a variety of other factors that seem to be lining up against the yellow metal, true believers have been stepping in to buy physical gold at a robust pace.

But before you start fitting them for tinfoil hats — the kind that folks who fear alien invasion and the end of times might wear — consider that gold advocates believe their reasons are sound and not based on preparing for the apocalypse.

"That's not why I buy it. It's got nothing to do with the end of the world for me," said Peter Schiff, CEO of Euro Pacific Capital and perhaps the most prolific standard-bearer of the gold crowd. "If the world's going to end, gold's not going to do you any good, either. I'm buying gold because of its monetary properties."

- Source, CNBC

Did The Fed's Luck Run Out On Friday The 13th?

Weak Holiday Sales Confirm the Best Bargain is Gold

Peter Schiff - It's Going to Be a Horrible Christmas

Thursday, the contrarian investor said that while Americans are wrapping presents this holiday season, they should instead brace themselves for "a horrible Christmas" and possible recession.

"I expect [job] layoffs to start picking up by the end of the year," Schiff said, pointing to retailers as the first victim. "Retailers have overestimated the ability of their customers to buy their products. Americans are broke. They are loaded up with debt," he said. "We're teetering on the edge of an official recession," and "the labor market is softening."

For Schiff, there is no one else to blame but the Federal Reserve. As he sees it, the central bank's easy money policies have created a bubble so big that any prick could send the U.S. economy spiraling out of control. And that makes the possibility of hiking interest rates slim to none.

"The Fed has to talk about raising rates to pretend the whole recovery is real, but they can't actually raise them," said the CEO of Euro Pacific Capital. "[Fed Chair Janet Yellen] can't admit that she can't raise them because then she's admitting the whole recovery is a sham and that the policy was a failure."

According to Schiff, the recent rally in the dollar is "the biggest bubble that the Fed has ever inflated" and "it's the only thing keeping the economy afloat." The greenback hit a three-month high this week after Yellen said a December rate hike was a "live" possibility.

"[The inflated dollar] is keeping the cost of living from rising rapidly and it's keeping interest rates artificially low. It's allowing the Fed to pretend everything is great," Schiff said. "Eventually the bottom is going to drop out of the dollar and we are going to have to deal with reality," he added. "That reality is we are staring at a financial crisis much worse than the one we saw in 2008."

Schiff, a longtime Fed foe, has been doubting a rate hike for some time. And while his predictions for a stock market and dollar crash have yet to pan out, he has maintained his stance that the Fed's hands are tied.

- Source, CNBC

Gold Will Take Off Once Market Comes to Terms With Reality

Peter Schiff discusses the yellow metal and its upcoming turn around. Gold will take off once the market returns to reality, the question is, when will this happen?

The Next Great Bubble about to Collapse

Peter Schiff, The Next Great Bubble about to Collapse, Alex Jones talks with Peter Schiff about the economies collapsing around the world and how they are going to deal with it.

Peter Schiff Why An Economic Crash Is Coming In 2015

It's 2006 All Over Again

Peter Schiff talks about his recent argument with Scott Nations on CNBC. He highlights how he was right and Scott was dead wrong. The FED did not and cannot raise rates in 2015. QE4 may be on route.

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Sept. Jobs Report Confirms Weakening Labor Market

Peter Schiff explains the recent job numbers reports. He points out how weak the economy actually is and highlights the erosion of high quality jobs, which are being replaced by more and more part time jobs.

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Peter Schiff at Jackson Hole Summit: The Monetary Roach Motel

Peter Schiff's speech at The Jackson Hole Summit.

Scott Nations Refuses to Admit Peter Schiff Was Right

Will She or Won't She?

Gold Will Breakout as Rate Hike Myth Dies

The Fed has probably made the same mistake it did before the housing crash, overestimating the strength of the economy just as it was about to slip into a recession.

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Peter Schiff: QE4 Is Coming!

In economic news, central banks may finally be losing control over the markets and financial expert Peter Schiff joins the show to explain why. *The printing presses are firing up all over again… err, at least the digital ledgers are, anyway.

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The Last Thing That Fed Wants is a Rate Hike

US Dollar Bubble Is Going to Burst

The U.S. economy has plenty of problems, but China’s devaluation of its currency isn’t one of them, Peter Schiff, CEO of Euro Pacific Capital, told Newsmax TV.

However, the impending collapse of the US dollar should be getting all of the attention of investors, he warned Newsmax Prime.

China rattled global financial markets Tuesday by devaluing its currency — an effort, in part, to revive economic growth. The yuan's value declined 1.9 percent, its biggest one-day drop in a decade. The move could help Chinese companies by making their products less expensive in global markets. U.S. stocks plummeted, partly on fears about a worsening economic slowdown in China.

China doesn't let its currency trade freely in financial markets as the United States does. Instead, it links the yuan's value to the U.S. dollar. Then it restricts trading to a band 2 percent above or below a daily target set by the People's Bank of China. On Tuesday, the central bank set the target 1.9 percent below Monday's level — the biggest one-day change in a decade. It also made a technical change to give market forces more influence in determining the yuan's value: Its daily target will now be based on the previous day's closing value.

But Schiff said investors should be worried about the U.S., not China.

“China's economy is not failing and this is a small devaluation, 2 percent. The Chinese currency has increased in value dramatically over the past several years along with the US dollar. So this move was motivated not by the exchange rate between the yuan and the dollar, but between the yuan and all the other currencies because the dollars is in a bubble right now,” he said.

“The dollar is very over valued … and the dollar is a bubble,” he told Newsmax Prime. “This dollar bubble is going to burst,” he said.

“Our economy is in much worse shape than the Chinese economy. The Fed is going to be forced to admit this. They're not going to be raising interest rates, they're going to be doing QE4," he said, referring to a fourth round of quantitative easing.

"That's going to sink the dollar and then the Chinese are going to have to revalue their currency much higher in the future against the dollar and it's the dollar collapsing that's going to hurt the US. Not this recent move by China,” he said.

Schiff said the dollar has been propped up based on hope, based on hype, based on speculation.

“We have an enormous trade deficit with China. Obviously the Chinese economy is better than ours. They produce all the things that we can't produce. All the goods that Americans want to consume, they're made in China. We don't make anything the Chinese want to consume,” he said..

“Their economy is far more powerful, far more dynamic than the American economy. That's why we have these big deficits. But people believe in the myth of this US economy, they believe that this bubble is genuine, they made the same mistake in the late 1990s, they made the same mistake right before the financial crisis of 2008. They're making a mistake again,” he said.

"We're on the verge of a much worse financial crisis than the one we went through in 2008 and it's going to take the form of a currency crisis. You're talking about currency wars. American is going to win the currency war, which is a race to the bottom, and you don't want to win a currency war because a currency war is different from most wars in that the object is to kill yourself and unfortunately, we're going to succeed.”

- Source, NewsMax

Markets Wrong Again: QE4 & Higher Gold on Horizon

Peter Schiff on the Fed, Rand Paul, and the Next Financial Crisis

"The bubbles are pretty much everywhere," says investment guru and radio host Peter Schiff, CEO of Euro Pacific Capital. "They are in the stock market, they are in the bond market, they are in the real estate market, they are in the U.S. dollar."

Schiff sat down with Reason's Matt Welch while at FreedomFest 2015 to discuss the dollar, his support of Rand Paul, and his argument that we are already living in another stock bubble.

"The mainstream—the investors, the government, central banks—they never see a crisis until after the fact. And then they go back and they say, 'Well nobody could have possibly predicted this. This was a complete random occurrence that had nothing to do with our policy,'" says Schiff. "They never understood the cause of the bubble that burst in '08. They didn't understand the Fed's role in creating it, so they don't understand that the Fed is simply exacerbating all the problems that everybody believes they solved."

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Peter Schiff: We Are All Slaves

Alex Jones talks with Peter Schiff about the Civil War and they break down how what really came out of it wasn't the liberation of the slaves, but the turning all of America into one big federal plantation.

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Why The US Dollar Will Collapse

Is the United States economy recovering - or are we being lied to by the mainstream establishment? Why has Gold recently hit a five year low despite long term predictions of it's rise in value? Are the government statistics on inflation accurate? What does the future hold for the US Dollar? Why has the Dollar strengthened and how will this play out in the long term? What does Peter Schiff think about Donald Trump and his recent success in the Republican presidential primary?

Also Includes: China economic situation, the Shanghai Stock Exchange Composite Index collapse, Puerto Rico debt default, gold repatriation, physical vs. paper gold holdings, the student debt bubble, the new real estate bubble, more quantitative easing, interest rates and what happens if you raise the minimum wage to $70,000 per year.

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The US Economy is Doomed

While the Fed has discussed plans to raise interest rates this year as early as September, Schiff believes that the Fed will instead implement another round of quantitative easing.

"They are going to do QE4, they're going to do QE5, they're going to do QE's indefinitely until a currency crisis ends the party and they can't do it anymore. And that crisis is going to come," Schiff said. "That is what the drug addicts on Wall Street want. They want another fix, and I think the pushers are going to provide it, unfortunately."

To be sure, Schiff has made several other bold predictions, some of which, like his accurate call on the housing crisis in 2007, have come true. Others, like his claim that gold would go to $5,000, have not.

Still, Schiff remains resolute that the dollar will soon see its day of reckoning.

"You have all these currency speculators that have been fooled by the Fed's monetary magic," Schiff said. "[They] are betting the wrong way, and when they figure it out I think the bottom is going to drop out of the dollar."

By Schiff's reasoning, the U.S. economy is doomed.

"This economy will be in recession if the Fed raises rates, and it'll be in recession even if they don't raise rates," he said.

 - Source, CNBC

Peter Schiff: America is On a Race to the Bottom

With Tuesday's stunning announcement that the People's Bank of China would devalue the Chinese yuan about 2 percent against the U.S. dollar, China became the latest nation to join the global currency war. But according to outspoken market pundit Peter Schiff, China's too late, because the U.S. already has the inside track in the battle to debase its currency.

"America is going to win the currency war," Schiff said Tuesday on CNBC's "Futures Now." "I think we're going to win, but right now you have a dollar bubble."

The dollar bubble claims fly in the face of how the U.S. common currency has performed this year. The dollar index is up more than 7 percent year to date.

But according to the Euro Pacific Capital CEO, the Federal Reserve will hold off on raising rates as long as possible, and over time, that will cause the dollar to collapse...

- Source CNBC

The Fed Considers a More Seasoned Approach

By: Peter Schiff

Just as the steady torrent of awful economic data, which began in the First Quarter and continued well into April and May, had forced many market analysts to grudgingly concede that 2015 would not see the robust economic growth that most had expected, the statisticians arrived on the scene like a cavalry charge and routed the forces of pessimism with a wave of their spreadsheets.

The campaign began in late April with some seemingly groundbreaking analysis by CNBC's Steve Liesman showing that over a 30 year time frame GDP data had consistently measured first quarter growth at 1.87%, which was far lower than the 2.7% rate averaged in the following three quarters of the year. He pointed out that the trend had gotten even more pronounced since 2010, when first quarter growth averaged just .62% and the remaining three quarters averaged 2.3%. The disparity caused Liesman, and others, to question whether first quarter data should be regarded as reliable.

The problem hinges on the efficacy of the "seasonal' adjustments that are baked into the GDP methodology. These filters are designed to smooth out the changes in spending, production, and consumption that occur over the course of the year. After all, business and consumers behave differently in December than they do in July.

When Liesman pressed the Bureau of Economic Analysis (the government entity that supplies the data) to explain his findings, the agency responded "BEA is currently examining possible residual seasonality in several series, which may lead to improvements in...the regular annual revision to GDP." We should understand "improvements" to mean changes that make first quarter GDP higher. A few weeks later the BEA provided some specifics saying methods for counting government defense spending and "certain inventory investment series" could be improved to help address the distortion. It promised to correct these deficiencies by July 30. It promised to correct these deficiencies by July 30. But to make sure that everyone understood that the help was definitely on the way, the BEA issued a blog post on May 22 in which it specified a number of areas in which it will eliminate what it calls "residual seasonality." This term should be accurately defined as "areas that we think should be higher."

As if on cue, the Federal Reserve itself waded into the debate with its own new study (released by the San Francisco Fed - Janet Yellen's former stomping grounds) that seemed to confirm and expand on Liesman's analysis and the BEA's concessions (makes one wonder if these campaigns are coordinated). Fed economists took a hard look at the disappointing .2% annualized first quarter 2015 growth, and determined that the seasonal adjustments that have been in use for years were insufficient to fully reveal the true health of the economy. When the San Francisco Fed added a second level of seasonal adjustments, it determined that Q1 growth should have been measured at 1.8% annualized. While that growth rate would not be considered strong, it is much closer to the 2.7%-3.0% that most forecasters had predicted at the end of 2014. No matter that the Atlanta Fed's "GDP Now," which was designed to be a more objective and contemporaneous measurement tool, was confirming near zero growth in Q1, many economists and media outlets jumped on the Fed study as proof positive that the economy is stronger than the pessimists portray.

In reality, few people actually understand how the complex and opaque seasonal adjustments really work (I know I don't). Fewer still have the patience to wade through the formulas to determine inefficiencies and potential remedies. This provides the statisticians with a good deal of convenient refuge against critics. But it's important to realize that unlike straight GDP measurement, which is ideally a strict accounting of spending, these adjustments can introduce an element of subjective institutional bias.

Government entities (and to a lesser extent media outlets) have many reasons to suggest that the economy is better than it really is. The Fed wants us to believe that its policies are effective; the Federal government wants us to believe that the economy is healthy, and financial media outlets depend on confident investors. I'm not saying that these biases are insidious or conspiratorial, but it does produce an environment where there is more emphasis placed on finding reasons to explain why GDP measurements are low, than there is to find reasons why it is too high. The subjectivity of the seasonal adjustments gives these biases room to run.

People understand that holiday spending juices GDP at the end of the year, and that post-holiday depletion and cold winters cause consumers to retrench. This causes them to try to compensate for the weakness in the first quarter. But there is no pressure for them to find reasons that GDP may be too high in December and May (when Christmas lists and pleasant weather should be encouraging shopping).

Given that, why do we really need seasonal adjustments in the first place? Yes December is different from July, but those differences persist every year. If we are looking at full year GDP, which is the measure that everyone is really after, why not keep a cumulative tally that we compare to prior years rather than prior quarters? Wouldn't this strip out a needless and opaque system of adjustments from a measurement system that is already overly complex to begin with? I believe the truth is the system is getting more complex because we want it that way. We prefer the ability to manipulate figures rather than allowing the figures to tell us things that we don't want to hear.

The real disconnect lies in the failure of the economy to grow, as most people assumed that it would, after the Fed's quantitative easing and zero interest rates had supposedly worked their magic. But as I have said many times before, these policies act more as economic depressants than they do as stimulants. As long as these monetary policies persist, our economy will never return to the growth rates that would be considered healthy.

In any event, many market watchers are grabbing at the San Francisco Fed report to conclude that Janet Yellen will raise rates this year, despite the weakness that the unadjusted GDP reports indicate. Such a conclusion is premature. I believe that the Fed wants us to think that the economy is strong, in the hopes that perception may one day soon become reality. If people think the economy is strong their optimism could influence their spending, hiring, and investing decision. As a result, optimistic Fed pronouncements should be considered just another policy tool; call it "open mouth operations." But I do not believe the Fed has any actual intention of delivering the rate increases that it may expect will damage our already weak economy.

- Source, Euro Pac

Peter Schiff Warns This May Be The First Bubble To Burst Without A Pin

It is well known that I don’t think much of the ability of government officials to correctly forecast much of anything. Alan Greenspan and Ben Bernanke have made famously clueless predictions with respect to stock and housing bubbles, and rank and file Fed economists have consistently overestimated the strength of the economy ever since their forecasts became public in 2008 (see my previous article on the subject). But there is one former Fed and White House economist who has a slightly better track record…which is really not saying much. Over his public and private career, former Fed Governor and Bush-era White House Chief Economist Larry Lindsey actually got a few things right.

Back in the late 1990s, Lindsey was one of the few Fed governors to warn about a pending stock bubble, and to suggest that forecasts for future growth in corporate earnings were wildly optimistic. He also famously predicted that the cost of the 2003 Iraq invasion would greatly exceed the $50 billion promised by then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, a dissent that ultimately cost him his White House position. (But even Lindsey’s $100-$200 billion forecast proved way too conservative – the final price of the invasion and occupation is expected to exceed $2 trillion).

- Source, Peter Schiff via ETF Daily

Why the Peter Schiff Gold Price Target Is $13,000

A typical Peter Schiff gold forecast points to mounting government debt and "money printing" as evidence that someday, the fiat money system will be upended. At that point, people will pour into gold to stave off the rapid deceleration of the U.S. dollar's value.

A skeptic's typical Peter Schiff gold rebuttal will consist of questioning why, after U.S. debt has reached $18.3 trillion and the U.S. Federal Reserve has pumped $2.4 trillion in the banking system through three rounds of quantitative easing, the dollar is still stronger than it's been in recent history.

Quantitative easing is the process by which the Fed buys bank assets and credits them with newly created reserves in an attempt to bring down interest rates. But QE by itself is not an inflationary policy.

The reason why inflation, or hyperinflation for that matter, hasn't happened yet is that the U.S. economy hasn't entirely shrugged off the effects of a so-called "balance sheet recession."

In a balance sheet recession, households and firms use extra money to pay down debt, as opposed to making purchases on consumer goods. The classic definition of inflation as "too many dollars chasing too few goods" breaks down when the economy is not "chasing goods." Instead it's redirecting that money to reduce debt.

When there simply isn't enough economic activity and consumer loan demand is stifled, no amount of quantitative easing or government spending is going to get money moving around in a way that stokes inflation/hyperinflation.

But, there is another more sinister force brewing beneath all these policies that can help explain why gold is a valuable portfolio builder…

- Source, Money Morning

What to Take Away from This Bold Peter Schiff Gold Prediction

Recent Peter Schiff gold forecasts predict the metal's rapid rise to a five-figure price tag -$13,000 long term, according to his gold investing blog. Schiff says the gold-price driver will be a hyperinflationary episode brought on by easy money.

Peter Schiff gold price predictions like this are typically predicated on gloom-and-doom forecasts of a dollar collapse and a financial meltdown.

This take on gold investing tends to attract skeptics. The gold skeptics are so dead-set on discrediting this caricature of gold investing – brought on by the Peter Schiff gold investing thesis – that they write gold off altogether as an asset for the paranoid investor.

This polarizes the investing world between gold bugs who think an economic collapse is imminent and gold bears who think the gold bugs are scare-mongering demagogues.

The truth about why gold matters lies somewhere in between.

You don't have to agree 100% with Peter Schiff gold predictions to appreciate the yellow metal's value. Regardless of which "side" you're on, gold is an important part of a portfolio.

- Source, Money Morning

Jim Rickards & Peter Schiff Gold market, Global Economy Forecast

Currency Traders Still Buying Rate Hike Rhetoric

Markets Still Fooled as Fed Plays "Let's Pretend"

What are the problems weighing on US economy?

Peter Schiff, CEO of Euro Pacific Capital, says factors such as inventory overhang that will weight on the US economy...

- Source, CNBC

Is Gold Overvalued? Peter Schiff & Mike Maloney

Recently Peter Schiff visited Mike Maloney in California. During his stay they filmed nearly 3 hours of discussions about gold, silver, freedom, and the economy in general. Over the next few weeks we’ll be publishing a series of these videos to our YouTube channel so make sure you are subscribed as this analysis is not to be missed. In this second installment, Mike and Peter discuss whether gold is overvalued or undervalued.

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Yellen Almost Admits Fed Not Ready to Raise Rates

Capitalism Doesn't Work If You Don't Have It

Investors Looking Abroad to Protect Their Purchase Power

Economic Crisis 2015 - Peter Schiff & Mike Maloney

Recently Peter Schiff visited Mike Maloney in California. During his stay they filmed nearly 3 hours of discussions about gold, silver, freedom, and the economy in general. Over the next few weeks we’ll be publishing a series of these videos to our YouTube channel so make sure you are subscribed as this analysis is not to be missed. In this first installment, Mike and Peter discuss hard evidence that a huge economic crisis awaits us in the not too distant future.

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Fed Destroyed the Economy, QE 4 Now Guaranteed

Financial expert Peter Schiff contends, “We have destroyed this economy. The Federal Reserve has prevented capital investment, entrepreneurship, economic growth that is real. Instead, we have diverted all these resources to sustaining asset bubbles to keep the stock market up, the real estate market up, to fund debt for education, housing and health care. We are strangling the real economy, and Main Street can feel it. Even though Wall Street is ignoring the pain on Main Street, you can see all these protests that have picked up.”

So, is another round of money printing, or QE, a lock? Schiff contends, “Oh yeah, the minute they did QE, 3 QE 4 was a lock because whenever you do a round of quantitative easing, you cannot stop without doing it again. If you take drugs and you want to stay high, you need more drugs. Otherwise, you go through withdrawal. Whenever you get the economy high on QE, if you take away the QE, you take away the high. That’s why we are going back into recession. To pretend that you can have an economy on cheap money, and you take away the cheap money and the economy is going to endure, is nonsense.

- Source, USA Watchdog

Will the Fed Run Out of Excuses as the Weather Warms?

FOMC Rate Hike Hints are a Bluff

The Fix Is In. Government To Rig GDP Again

Schiff: Yellen is "Half Right" About the Market

Fed chair Janet Yellen spooked investors Wednesday when she warned against sky-high equity values. And in a strange turn of events, she's finding an unlikely ally in her assessment in the form of her biggest critic, Peter Schiff.

On CNBC's "Futures Now," the outspoken Schiff said that the stock market is "more than just a little overvalued, it's extremely overvalued." But rather than defending Yellen's call, Schiff instead blamed the Fed's policies for the frothy valuations that Yellen was warning about.

According to Schiff's logic, the sky-high valuations for equities are a direct result of the Fed's easy money policies over the past couple years. Schiff said that "artificially low rates" have forced investors to buy stocks and in the process have made them more expensive.

"Janet Yellen was half right when she said the stock market was overvalued," Schiff, Euro Pacific Capital CEO on said on Thursday.

According to Schiff, the Fed is now trapped and unable to raise rates, as he believes doing so would prick the very bubble in stocks that it created.

"If the Fed was really going to raise interest rates [the market] would be a lot lower," he said.

As a result, Schiff is convinced that the Federal Reserve will not only not raise rates anytime soon, but will likely enact another round of quantitative easing. By his logic, the Fed will do "anything" to keep stocks high.

"That's also why I don't think the Fed is going to raise interest rates, because I don't think Janet Yellen wants the stock market to go down. This whole phony recovery is based on asset bubbles and the Fed is not going to intentionally prick those bubbles."

So, how overvalued does Schiff think the stock market is? "It's difficult to say," he said. "I don't know how far the market will drop because I don't think the Fed will allow it to."

- Source, CNBC

Schiff: Fed's 'heroin' is about to wear off

While traders obsess over the timing of the Fed's next rate hike, Peter Schiff has a simple message for Wall Street: don't.

On CNBC's "Trading Nation," the outspoken investor said the central bank is "bluffing" and instead of waiting for a rate increase, traders should have their sights set on another round of quantitative easing.

"We are addicted to zero percent rates," he said. Schiff says that raising rates would "pop" the stock and real estate bubble that the Federal Reserve has created through its low-rate policies. And that would send the U.S. economy into a catastrophic recession. By his reasoning, the Fed will do anything to prevent stocks from falling. In fact, he sees more stimulus ahead.

"I think they're going to do another round of quantitative easing," added Schiff, CEO of Euro Pacific Capital. But according to Schiff, even another round of easy monetary policy won't be able to stop what he calls an impending crisis.

"When the dollar finally does collapse based on our failure to raise rates and our launching QE4, it's going to be that kind of inflation and currency crisis that will ultimately force the Fed's hand," he said. "That's when we're going to be in some real trouble."

And according to Schiff, there's no telling how bad it could get. "We've had a huge dose of this monetary heroin and it takes a while for that high to wear off," he said. "We've just postponed the pain."

Of course, Schiff has made similar predictions in the past. And although he has correctly forecast the lack of Fed rate hikes, some of his other predictions—including gold going to $5,000—have yet to pan out.

- Source, CNBC

Peter Schiff warns U.S. economy in a bubble being inflated by Federal Reserve

The United States economy hasn’t exactly been the bastion of recovery since the financial collapse a few years ago. Millions of people are still out of work, households nationwide are in massive debt, students are on the brink of a personal collapse and the only people and organizations benefitting in today’s economy are those who are close to the money printing.

Peter Schiff, CEO of Euro Pacific Capital, speaking in an interview withNewsmax, isn’t exactly impressed with the overall economy and believes it’s currently in a bubble that is being inflated by the Federal Reserve. To Schiff, the U.S. economy can’t remain strong because it’s not even strong to begin with, citing the lies being purported by the Fed, including the central bank shrinking its astronomical balance sheet (nearly $5 trillion).

According to Schiff, the balance sheet will never contract or diminish.

“The balance sheet is going to get bigger and bigger when the fed launches QE4 [quantitative easing],” averred Schiff. “They cannot shrink this balance sheet, and they cannot raise interest rates without pricking the bubble. That’s what they should do, but unfortunately, that’s not what they’re going to do.”

- Source, Economic Collapse News

Why higher minimum wage is bad for Wal-Mart

Wal-Mart has announced that it will raise its lowest wages to $9 in April and $10 by February 2016, well above the national minimum wage or $7.25. The move has been widely hailed as a salve for the poorest working Americans, and a potential benefit to the American economy insofar as it will pressure other companies to raise wages and therefore spur consumer spending.

But Peter Schiff, the CEO Euro Pacific Capital, says the move has a darker side.

“Ultimately, it’s going to cause Wal-Mart to cut back on hiring,” he said. “I mean, if it has to pay higher wages, it may decide just to have fewer job opportunities.”

“When Wal-Mart has a job opening, they get inundated with applicants,” Schiff added. “I mean, this is going to make it even harder to get a job at Wal-Mart. Because if people were lining up for Wal-Mart jobs before, they’re obviously a lot more attractive now at these higher wages.”

But that’s not the only potential harm to lower-income Americans that could come from this move, according to Schiff, who has long defended Wal-Mart against pressure for the world’s largest retailer to raise its minimum wage.

“They may end up passing on some of that extra cost to their customers,” he said. “It’s not all going to be about lower profits at Wal-Mart. It also could be about higher prices for Wal-Mart customers. And of course, many of those customers are low-income workers themselves.”

Finally, Schiff notes a third potential negative ramification.

“By paying higher wages – if it forces higher prices – Wal-Mart could end up losing some of its customers, because they’re going to end up going somewhere where the wages are lower and the prices are lower. So it might backfire, and Wal-Mart might end up having to cut back on its staff.”

“They might pay higher wages, but they may pay them to fewer people,” he added. “And it will be harder to get a job. So pretty soon, you might have to have a connection to get a job at Wal-Mart.”

- Source, Yahoo Finance

US Debt Balloons To $18 Trillion And Will Continue To Grow

Peter Schiff: US Debt Balloons To $18 Trillion And Will Continue To Grow.

- Source, Fox Business

Peter Schiff - QE4 is Coming

Peter Schiff talks about the oncoming of QE4, he believes the market will enter back into a bear market if the FED doesn't act. You can't take away the drugs and expect the market to stay high.

- Source, Fox Business

Peter Schiff on The Strong Dollar, U.S. market risk and Fed Chair Janet Yellen

Peter Schiff on The Strong Dollar, U.S. market risk and Fed Chair Janet Yellen.

- Source, RT

Schiff on US market risk and Magnus on EM corporate debt

The US Department of Justice and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission are investigating at least 10 major banks for possibly rigging the precious metals markets. According to the Wall Street Journal, the CFTC has opened a civil investigation into the matter while prosecutors from the DOJ simultaneously examine the price setting process for gold, silver, platinum, and palladium. Precious metal benchmarks have been under increased regulatory scrutiny ever since the 2012 scandal over Libor rate manipulation broke. Erin weighs in.

Then, Erin is joined by Peter Schiff – CEO of Euro Pacific Capital and host of the Peter Schiff Show. Peter gives us his take on Fed Chairwoman Janet Yellen’s remarks to the Senate and tells us if there’s a chance of a hike. He doesn’t see the Fed raising interest rates primarily because it fears the risk of markets suffering. He thinks other markets outside the US offer more value at this time, especially due to the strong dollar, which he sees as vulnerable.

After the break, Erin sits down with George Magnus – former chief economist at UBS and author of "Uprising: Will Emerging Markets Shape or Shake the World Economy?" George tells us what he seems as major economic themes leading up to the UK elections and gives us his take on why emerging markets haven’t been in the spotlight recently. Overall, he is cautious on emerging market because of the large increase in non-financial corporate debt.

And in The Big Deal, Erin and Edward Harrison discuss the big tech stories of the day. Take a look!

- Source, RT

Fed Might Begin Thinking About Raising Rates at Some Point

Gold Seek Radio Interviews PETER SCHIFF - Feb 18, 2015

GoldSeek Radio's Chris Waltzek talks to Peter Schiff CEO of EuroPacific Capital.

- Source, Gold Seek Radio

Economic Collapse Headed for US in 2015 - Peter Schiff

Shocking Admission & Denial from Alan Greenspan

Whenever There's A Bubble, 'It's Always Different This Time'

This time it is different - it's worse

Markets, Rate Hikes, and Student Loans

Peter Schiff on Renouncing US Citizenship

In 2014, a record number of Americans renounced their United States citizenship for the second year in a row. Even though exit fees are rising, more and more people are willing to jump through hoops to escape the American tax man. Indeed, our Chairman Peter Schiff even relocated one of his companies to Puerto Rico last year to reduce its tax burden. From his new condo in Puerto Rico, Peter shares his insights into this new American diaspora and how you can opt-out of overbearing government without leaving your country behind.

- Source, Schiff Gold

Money Printing is Going to Crash the Economy

When I wrote Crash Proof in 2005/2006, I wrote that book, and I wrote about the coming economic collapse. It wasn’t the one that happened immediately after the book came out. It wasn’t the ’08 financial crisis, even though that was a large part of my book. I wrote in detail about that coming crisis and what was gonna facilitate it, and I wrote a lot about the housing market and what was gonna happen when that bubble burst.

But the first book basically laid out the premise that after the housing bubble burst and it brought about a financial crisis and the greatest recession since the Great Depression and I wrote that we’d have trillion-dollar budget deficits and double-digit unemployment – I wrote about all the things that were gonna happen. I then wrote that in response to that, the government would make the mistake, the Fed would make the mistake of trying to stimulate the economy with cheap money and re-inflate the busted bubbles. So I wrote about the fact that they would do all this quantitative easing. I just didn’t know what they were gonna call it, but I just said this is what they’re going to do. They’re gonna slash interest rates. They’re gonna print a bunch of money, and they’re gonna start buying up debt.

And what I’ve said is that, that action was what was gonna bring about the economic crash, that it wasn’t this disease that I was diagnosing that was the real problem, but the government’s cure that I anticipated would be administered. And that’s happened. The only thing that’s happened that has surprised me from the vantage point that I was at back in ’05 when I was writing that book is the length of time that has transpired between the ’08 financial crisis and the economic collapse that I thought it would usher in, because it hasn’t happened yet. It’s taken longer. The financial crisis and the next crisis, the gap between them is longer than I thought, and I think it’s because I made the mistake of overestimating the intelligence and the ability of the rest of the world to recognize the problem even after the 2008 financial crisis.

It’s amazing the level of financial and monetary ignorance that still permeates the establishment. I mean, the academics and the big money managers and the economists still don’t get it even after having been so spectacularly wrong about the state of the U.S. economy leading up to the financial crisis. They’ve learned nothing. They haven’t questioned any of their premises or any of the dogma that they’ve accepted as fact. Their confidence wasn’t jarred by that. In fact, if anything, they have more confidence than ever in the Federal Reserve and their ability to micromanage the economy and save us, even though the Fed was so wrong and so instrumental in causing the last crisis and so completely ignorant in understanding it. But I think that crisis is coming, and I think what’s gonna start it is going to be as the U.S. economy relapses into recession officially, maybe as soon as next year, and if the Federal Reserve has to call off the rate hikes and replace it with QE4, maybe then the light bulb will start to go off in enough people’s heads to perceive the box that we are in.

And the reason that people have confidence that this is gonna work is because they believe that it’s all temporary, that the low interest rates are temporary, that the Fed can remove the stimulus, shrink its balance sheet and everything is gonna go back to normal. When people realize that this is permanent, that to maintain this artificial economy requires permanent zero-percent interest rates and permanent QE, that the Fed can never back way, that the balance sheet has to keep growing exponentially to prevent a collapse – and when people realize that, that’s what brings on the currency collapse, because if it’s true that the Fed can never raise rates and if the Fed has to keep on printing money forever and there’s no endgame, there’s no exit strategy, then there’s no way to stop the dollar from collapsing.

And that’s what people haven’t figured out. They think that the dollar’s already rising. It has been rising recently based on the anticipation that the Fed is going to raise rates, but they can’t raise rates without precipitating another financial crisis, which would mean that they would have to flash rates. But that also means that as the economy starts to weaken simply on the anticipation of higher rates, that the Fed is forced to cut rates or do another round of QE before they ever get to the rate hike. That’s the catch-22 that people just haven’t figured out.

- Source, Peter Schiff via Wall Street Daily

What is Really Stopping the Fed From Raising Rates?

Switzerland Loses Currency War - Swiss Win

As The New Year Begins, Will The "Recovery" End?

Pretend and Extend is the Name of the Game

They’re concerned with getting reelected, and so they don’t wanna do something that jeopardizes their reelection, and dealing with these problems would do that, because in order to effectively deal with these problems, you have to admit that there is a problem. You have to admit what the source is, and politicians don’t wanna do that, I mean, because they basically have to admit that they’ve been lying to the public for years, that all the things that the government has done to help the economy have actually made it worse and that the tough medicine that’s required now is a result of all the snake oil that the politicians have been spoon-feeding us over the years, which has allowed the problem to get worse. So, their own self-interest is to pretend that the problems don’t exist or to try to get the Fed to cover ‘em up.

And that’s what’s going to happen. You’re seeing this now. The oil market is going down and people are worrying, “Well, is this going to be a problem for the stock market?” It’s not that the oil price going down is the problem. It’s just indicative of the problem. Oil prices were propped up by the Fed. So were home prices. So were stock prices. And if the Fed is not gonna be there anymore, all the prices that were influenced by QE are gonna come down. And since the U.S. recovery was a function of inflated asset prices, as these asset prices deflate, then the recession is going to return. And, of course, what is the government’s response? It’s gonna be more QE, but the real issue is that the recession is part of the healing process. It’s part of what is necessary.

The reason we don’t have real economic growth, the reason that the poor are getting poorer, the divide between the rich and the poor are growing, the middle class is disappearing, people are reporting great dissatisfaction with the economy – look at the voters who voted Republican in the midterms, very upset about the direction of the economy – real incomes are falling. Household net worth is declining. Homeownership has plunged. The number of people living off the government has skyrocketed. Labor-force participation is only rising among older people who are coming out of retirement because they’re too broke to stay retired. Meanwhile, younger people, labor-force participation is plunging as young people can’t find jobs and they just go to grad school.

And student debt is skyrocketing, because so many people can’t find jobs if they’re just going to school, although a lot of the people that are borrowing money using college loans are just going to college so they can get the loans. They don’t even care about the education. They’re enrolling in online courses just so they can get government loans so they can pay their electric bills.

So, the reason that we’re having this real recession under this phony recovery is because the Fed won’t allow the recession to run its natural course, because the recession is kind of like a detox. It’s what’s necessary to make the economy healthy, to allow a restructuring that would facilitate legitimate economic growth. But instead of that happening, we just inflate financial bubbles. And superficially it looks like things are getting better, because the stock market goes up. The real estate market goes up, and there’s some increased spending as a result of all the extra borrowing, but all that is actually hurting the economy. But if we’re gonna allow the recession to run its course, then debt is gonna be defaulted on, because there’s no way around it.

I mean, if the government allowed the recession, banks would fail. People would default on their debts because they couldn’t pay the interest, let alone the principal, but that is more healthy. Allowing that natural, free-market restructuring, that process is healthier and more conducive to a return to legitimate growth than what the Fed is doing. Than trying to prevent that through inflation, through printing money and quantitative easing and zero-percent interest rates. But the Fed is going to continue to fight this battle until it loses the war, and that means the dollar collapses. And I think that’s ultimately where we’re headed.

- Source, Peter Schiff via Wall Street Daily

The Real Earthquake Is About to Hit

The only way that we can avoid the inevitable is to keep creating more inflation and continue to blow air and acid bubbles that undermine real economic growth. So, right now the Fed is winding down QE4, and they’re pretending that they’re going to stop raising interest rates, but they actually can’t do that. Because of the enormity of the debt that we have, if interest rates actually went up, we lack the ability to pay. We can’t service the debt at a normal rate of interest. The federal government can’t do that, and so ultimately what’s gonna happen is the Fed is gonna end up doing QE4, and rather than raising rates, they are going to do more stimulus, because as they stopped quantitative easing, the economy is now heading back to recession.

I mean, people are looking in the rearview mirror when they look at these last couple of quarters of GDP growth. Most of the data that comes out about the U.S. economy has been negative, and it’s been very negative for months. And so, I think you’re gonna see a very rapid deceleration now that the Fed is no longer providing all the monetary support and people are starting to brace themselves for higher interest rates. So this whole bubble economy that the Fed inflates starts to implode without the air, and the big drag, of course, is it’s all debt, right? We’re all depending on American consumers to spend, but consumers are broke. They’ve borrowed too much money. The government’s borrowed too much money, and the only way to solve these problems is to allow the debt to be discharged. And people have to stop spending. They have to start saving. Government has to cut spending. The Fed has to let interest rates go up, but none of this is happening. All we’re doing is trying to delay the pain by exacerbating the disease that’s causing the pain.

- Peter Schiff via Wall Street Daily

State of the Gold Market 2015: Exclusive Forecast & Charts

In his first Gold Videocast of 2015, Peter Schiff looks back at gold’s performance on the global markets in 2014 and forecasts where the yellow metal is headed in the new year.

Find the full transcript and charts at SchiffGold: http://schiffgold.com/commentaries/go...

Peter Schiff on ECB 'easy money' - 'Things are going to get worse'

The head of Goldman Sachs says the world's embroiled in 'currency wars'. Meanwhile, Europe's Central Bank has announced a massive cash injection into the bloc's economy - to the tune of 50-billion-euros a month from March.

- Source, Russia Today

What to think about going into 2015

Peter Schiff gives his take on what to expect going into 2015. He believes the recovery is false and the dollar is going to suffer heavy losses.

Why An Economic Crash Is Coming In 2015?

Bursting Oil Bubble Could Put US Back in Recession

Peter Schiff appears on Fox Business where he discusses the recent collapse in the price of oil. Was oil a bubble created by cheap money? What if everything is a bubble?