Peter Schiff
American businessman, financial commentator and author noted for his predictions of the housing market crash in 2005, support for unregulated markets and reduction of the powers of federal government.
The process of dumbing people down so they’ll buy official figures showing inflation “under control” at levels of 1 to 2 percent or so (when it is actually more like 8 to 9 percent) is actually a fairly recent development.
I'm interrupting my career. It's not like I want my new career in politics. But I'm willing to interrupt it the same way that somebody interrupted their career and joined World War II and went off to fight the Nazis. I don't think that I'm that heroic, and I don't think I'm risking as much as a soldier. But it's the same principle.
Existing regulators had all the powers they needed, and more, and they failed miserably to foresee and prevent this crisis. Chris Dodd is now asking us to put all our eggs in one basket and trust a "super regulatory agency." He should know better than to centralize power in the hands of Washington bureaucrats - it's precisely the arrangement that caused our current problems. I think most Connecticut voters know that we need fewer czars in Washington, not more. As long as Fannie and Freddie and Congress are meddling with the economy, changing the structure of the regulators is basically rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.
Non-dividend-paying growth stocks can be attractive but should be viewed as speculation rather than investing.
The Constitution denies the states the power to make anything other than gold or silver coins legal tender in payment of debts.
Here’s why I would recommend against [selling the U.S. stock markets short]....Retail brokers normally require investors to hold any short-sale proceeds in U.S. dollars, usually earning no interest. The dollar, seen through my famously jaundiced eye, could lose more purchasing power than the security you sold short lost value....I’ve got a much better idea, which is to borrow dollars and spend them to acquire foreign income-producing assets, using the income to pay the interest.
What America has succeeded in creating is not an economy impervious to shocks, but merely one which enables their consequences to be postponed to a later date.
Legitimate economic expansions, financed by actual savings, do not need busts. It is only the inflation-induced varieties that sow the seeds of their own destruction.
While we’ve been buying time, things have gone from bad to worse. We have debased our currency so much it is already beyond control. We just haven’t felt the full impact yet because we have had massive artificial support from abroad.
Mutual funds are an overrated investment heavily promoted by Wall Street.
In the perspective of previous bear markets, notably those of the 1930s and the 1970s, the prospects look even worse. Economic conditions now are as bad as or worse than what existed then.
There are no checks and balances if the gov is wrong, if a private entrepreneur makes a mistake, he goes bankrupt, the losses are cut, if he bets wrong, he loses, if the gov bets wrong, they just get bigger, they just appropriate more money, it's a bottomless pit, because they either get it from the tax payers or run it off a printing press.
Paying attention to the CPI and the others is like leaving your house on a rainy day without carrying an umbrella because a government weather report told you it was sunny.
If you think mutual funds aren’t a flagrant enough example of conflict of interest, try hedge funds.
Schiff likes to say he 'predicted' the financial collapse, but with ludicrous theories like these, we're predicting that he'll never be a U.S. Senator.
Borrowing to build factories is not the economic equivalent of borrowing to buy television sets, and it’s amazing just how few modern economists can see the difference...Borrowing to produce is the way poor countries become rich. Borrowing to consume is the way rich countries become poor. A vivid example of the latter is the stream of container ships unloading at U.S. ports and going back empty because we have nothing to ship.
If anyone was questioning whether or not Peter Schiff was truly a Republican, he's certainly made it clear today. After eight years of the Bush Administration's lax regulation and market-first mentality, the last thing we need is to further reduce regulation and allow Wall Street to run the show. Chris Dodd is leading the way to put a balance back into a system that for years has been too far out of whack and ensure that consumers are protected first and foremost.
One of the biggest attractions of the euro is that it is seen as the most likely candidate to replace the dollar as the reserve currency.
Nobody is entitled to someone else's money, that is the bottom line. People think they are entitled to it because hey think they paid into it, nobody paid into anything, it was a fraud. Every single dollar that the gov collected in social security taxes, has already been spent, there is nothing there, there is no money, so the only money the government gets to make current payment is the money it can take from people who are still working. Its a transfer from the working poor in many cases to the retired rich. We don't have the money, I feel bad for the fact people made promises we can't keep, I feel bad for the people that invested with Bernie Madoff and lost their money, but its the same principle, its the same Ponzi scheme. We have to put an end to it, we have to find real solution to these problems because if we keep on denying that they exist and keep on spending money, we're going to destroy the value of everyone's benefits.
Real economic growth emanates from increased productivity, which tends to hold prices down.