Peter Schiff on the Fed, Rand Paul, and the Next Financial Crisis
"What the voters want is snake oil. They want something that makes them feels good"
"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."
About 13 minutes.
Hosted by Matt Welch. Edited by Joshua Swain. Cameras by Meredith Bragg and Paul Detrick.
Check out Reason TV's other interviews Schiff; Is China Moving Toward a Gold Standard? and Peter Schiff on Greece, Puerto Rico, and America's Looming Economic Crisis.
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Hapless internet advice to Reason; More Schiff, less Trump
Agreed.
Sure, he's a lot better than trump, but he's not very good at making libertarians look good considering how much of a broken clock he's been.
I used to follow him, but got tired of him always jumping the gun and being unable to understand the fed and current conditions will keep the musical chairs going for another 30 years easily.
"the fed and current conditions will keep the musical chairs going for another 30 years easily."
A 30+ year bubble, eh? Reddit has a bot that reminds posters to revisit a prediction at a future date. Maybe Reason could benefit from the same.
Which bubble are you talking about specifically? I was more talking about the US government's debt and unfunded liability problems. I honestly think the fact that everyone loves to rush to King Dollar will keep us going for another 20-30 years.
One thing I've learned over the past 5 years is, "don't underestimate the fed", and also "don't underestimate the magnitude at which investors will rush at USTs when things look scary".
I was a gloom and doomer long before you were I'm sure. I just finally wised up and realized despite everything the government is doing wrong the economy will likely continue to chug along just fine, just not as the same efficiency it would otherwise.
Schiff has been predicting the next crisis non-stop since 2009.
"A broken clock ...." comes to mind.
Yes the markets will eventually break for all the reasons Schiff has been pounding on for years. But the reality is people following his advice have gotten hammered again and again. Schiff does not understand how long the FED can keep the music going.
Exactly.
I also think he sounds pretty stupid when he harps on fractional reserve banking too.
Considering that in every instance of mostly deregulated banking, the free market has created fractional reserve systems requiring no central bank to operate and have tended to be very robust.
Free markets with sound money were robust because the market's forced banks to carry very very little leverage. Having little leverage is what made them sound.
In the 1800s gold standard banks were typically leveraged only 1.5x. The key was if the bank went bust, there was no one to help depositors and depositors lost everything. So if a bank leveraged themselves any more than a minimal amount word would spread, people would show up in a panic to withdraw funds, and the bank would quickly run out of capital and go bust.
So market forces kept banks honest, and every single not honest bank went bust taking everyone down with it.
Then people were sold on the concept of a FED to protect their deposits. The FED "protected" people by printing money when a bank went bust, which rewarded people who speculated in risky banks while punishing the prudent. It also took away the market forces which kept banks honest, by making it not in depositors interest to watch their banks (because the FED would save them).
The result is a banking industry that has exploded to well over 10x leverage, many mega banks were at 50x leverage in 2008. This means that banks have less than $1 on hand for every $10 of bank deposits, and often have much less than that.
This simply is not possible without a printing press to keep people whole, otherwise the entire system would contract overnight.
People that argue for the FED to create stability, do not understand that the FED created the instability.
An over leveraged bank going bust is beautiful. If provides an example of what not to do.
Actually, it wasn't really a "gold standard" that kept banks from overextending themselves, it was lack of a central bank.
You could run a plenty stable system off other types of reserves.
In a free banking system if a bank issues too many banknotes they will sapped of their reserves by the more conservative banks when they settle with each other and that's what kept the banks from overextending themselves.
See this video for more on the 1800s banking system in the US and Canada:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?&v=JeIljifA8Ls
Rocks and Plopper: Thanks for the knowledge.
How long can the fed keep interest rates at zero? This guy has some very valid points, and, frankly, scares me.
Of course ZIRP is a trap, no shit.
I didn't even say anything about that, I was saying that he sometimes says some very stupid things, like for example the fractional reserve banking thing, which he believes is "fraud", even though that's exactly what the free market has created in the past and they were very stable systems.
The problem is simply central banks and bad regulations, not allowing banks to loan out deposits.
Also, if you had followed his investing advice for most of the time after the last financial crisis, you wouldn't be doing very good right now. He has very much been a broken clock even if a lot of what he says makes sense.
I actually didn't bother to watch the video because I can already guess exactly what he's going to say. Maybe I should though.
I used to follow him and watch all of his videos for a couple of years after the financial crisis, and then I finally realized he was unable to see past what he thinks should happen, vs what will happen and is a constant premature ejaculator as far as that kinda stuff goes.
Well, you sound like you know alot more about markets than me, which is a pretty low bar, I admit.
So here's a guy who is an expert, and he's saying stuff I have already had concerns about, and that I have seen other people question. So, yeah, it's scary.
BTW, I have no idea what fractional reserve banking is. Would I be able to grok the Wikipedia or would it be over my head?
Basically banks make loans from people's deposits, which means they're only holding a fraction of their actual deposits at a time.
Some of the more retarded people in the Austrian camp think this is "fraud" and is bad, when in reality the market would be completely starved for credit without it.
See here for more info about the debate:
http://www.alt-m.org/2012/07/1.....e-not-and- have-never-pretended-to-be-warehouse-receipts/
http://www.alt-m.org/2012/07/17/ 100-reserves-confusion-about-money/
(Get rid of spaces, stupid Reason's spam filter won't let me post a string longer than 50 chars.)
George Selgin is probably my favorite living economist btw, and I would watch any of his videos on youtube, like this one for example:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?&v=JeIljifA8Ls
alt-m (formerly freebanking.org) is probably my favorite economic blog too.
Here are those links shortened:
http://bit.ly/1Vn8sGl
http://bit.ly/1Kh2R0I
Again, thanks.
Stupid phone, I hit submit too soon.
I was going to add: Well duh, isn't that how banks make money? You put your money in, they loan it out, at say 10%, and pay you, say %4.
I have never heard of criticism of that. Is that a for real branch of Australian economics? What is the alternative model for banks?
Sorry I guess I should follow your links.
Austrian, of course.
WOW,I just clicked on one of the links, and haven't read it yet.
But it starts with a criticism by Murray freaking Rothberg!
I guess I have some reading to do. This time my thanks is sarcastic.
Actually, meant to link to this post more so than the warehouse one...
http://bit.ly/1CSVLN8
And yes, Rothbard was wrong and from as far as I can tell dishonest about fractional reserve banking. He was wrong about quite a few things.
Doubt you'll see this now, but oh well if you do check it out.
Might as well this one too:
http://www.alt-m.org/2015/03/04/backing-shmacking/
Also check this one out:
http://www.alt-m.org/2015/01/1.....economics/
I've heard him bring up the dangers of fractional reserve banking (not in this video) but not bc it is bad in and of itself. He doesn't like capital reserve requirements as mandated by govt and then backed with a govt promise to bail out depositors. I've read a few of his books and yes he is a broken record. Bob Murphy of Mises predicted extreme CPI increases, but admitted he missed it. Schiff just says the govt is fudging the numbers and so his prediction of raising CPI is actually true. Who is right? Seems that is where criticism of Schiff should be focused on.
Yeah. Schiff is good on a lot of stuff, but it seems like he thinks all the world's problems stem from the Fed. Don't get me wrong. The Fed can and has repeatedly fucked shit up. Having said that, not every problem in the economy stems from the Fed. Hell, half the time the problem is that rates were too high. He always blames the Fed for keeping rates too low and creating bubbles. That totally does happen. But what about the other side of the coin? If the Fed can create problems by lowering rates, couldn't they also cause problems by leaving rates too high?
Of course; the problem is that the Fed is a central planning, monetary policy politburo. It manipulates and distorts market rates of interest to levels that they otherwise would not be. Just like any price control, a price floor can cause just as many problems as a price ceiling.
The answer isn't to have interest rates at X or Y but to let the market set the rates itself. In other words, the answer is to eliminate the American monetary politburo known as the Federal Reserve.
So what makes you think they can go 30 more years...?
Inquiring minds want to know.
We're the best horse going to the glue factory, it's that simple.
Everyone else is in so much worse shape the capital is flowing at us so hard that it has easily pushed our problems into the future for another 2-3 decades.
Just look at the dollar strength and the fact stocks are STILL going up so hard even with the insane strength of the dollar lately.
"If something cannot go on forever, it will stop."
- Herbert Stein
Yeah, but when? He's been saying we're doomed again for the past 5 years, and I lost a lot of money listening to him.
Right, I get that, but I'm not an investor, except occasionally in real estate, which I know it's a bubble. But I don't get the markets, and I don't do short term investments.
So, to you, five years of bad advice regarding investing would make your view point correct, without negating his points about the fundamental weakness of the economy.
"The market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent." -John Maynard Keynes
Conversely...
"If something cannot go on forever, it will stop." -Herbert Stein
No one knows for sure how long it can continue on in its present form. What we DO know is that eventually, it WILL come to an end, which is what Schiff meant in the video when he said that he'd rather be wrong until he's right as opposed to right until he's wrong. Timing the market is VERY risky, and if you bet wrong, you can be wiped out in a heartbeat.
And don't forget, while the government always claims no one could have foreseen what happened, government always can fix it with just a bit of massive federal spending and higher taxes. We're still paying the interest on the loans the government took to 'fix' the great depression.
Well, even I understand that. It's known colloquially as "the house always wins".
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