Peter Schiff

Peter Schiff

Peter David Schiff (born March 23, 1963) is an 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. He was a Republican candidate for one of the Connecticut Senate seats, against veteran politician Democrat Chris Dodd.

Quotes

• 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.
  • Authors@Google: Peter Schiff (2009)

• When private industry makes a mistake, it gets corrected and goes away. As governments make mistakes, it gets bigger, bigger and bigger and they make more, more and more because as they run out of money, they just ask for more and so they get rewarded for making mistakes. In the meantime that is exactly what we are doing by subsidizing companies which are failing, we have a reverse Darwinism, we've got survival of the unfittest, the companies and people that have made terrible mistakes are being rewarded and other people are being punished and being taxed.
  • Authors@Google: Peter Schiff (2009)

• The real bubble in China is in US Treasuries, in US dollars.
  • Wall Street Unspun, 3 March 2010

• Nobody is entitled to someone else's money, that is the bottom line. People think they are entitled to it because they 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.
  • RTC, Avon, CT, 10th May 2010

• [Consumer credit] is like giving yourself a blood transfusion from your left arm to your right. Nothing is accomplished, except the possibility of spilling blood on the floor. But it's not even that benign.
  • Debt is No Salvation

Economic Views

• 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.
  • [1] [http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/4206656.stm

2010 Senate Campaign

• Too many people in Connecticut are struggling right now, and the last thing we need is meddling politicians making things worse. Only by cutting deficit spending, reducing burdensome regulations, and letting people keep more of their hard-earned dollars will we get our economy back on track.

In a Washington Post interview, Peter Schiff stated

• 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.

This quote elicited a number of response from the political blogosphere.1, 2, 3, 4

Remarks regarding Christopher Dodd

• While it's refreshing to see Chris Dodd finally realize that we need to end the politicization of the Federal Reserve, his latest proposal merely repeats the mistakes that have created this crisis.

• Transferring regulatory authority from one unaccountable agency to another will not solve any problems.

• 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.

• Dodd's proposal takes regulatory authority away from one unaccountable institution and gives it to another even bigger one. This will not solve our problems.

Quotes made by Connecticut Democratic Party spokeswoman Colleen Flanagan

• 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.

• 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.

Quotes from Crash Proof (2006)

• 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.

• ...it is the natural tendency of market economies to lower prices that makes them so successful.

• Real economic growth emanates from increased productivity, which tends to hold prices down.

• 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.

• Today, of course, our current inflation problem is firmly rooted in the irresponsible monetary policies of maestro Greenspan.

• The Constitution denies the states the power to make anything other than gold or silver coins legal tender in payment of debts.

• And the reason the federal government wasn’t given that power [to create paper money or issue bills of credit] was because the framers didn’t want it to have the power to create inflation. They had just experienced it firsthand with the Continental dollar, which ended up being worth around 10 cents and gave rise to the expression “not worth a Continental.”

• 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.

• Inflation is the unhappy result of our monetary mismanagement and the ultimate cause of the coming economic collapse.

• 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.

• Stocks that are selected conservatively and pay high cash dividends [higher than bonds] are, in fact, my favorite investment alternative, especially where there is the prospect of currency profits....

• Non-dividend-paying growth stocks can be attractive but should be viewed as speculation rather than investing.

• If Enron had been forced to pay cash dividends, it could never have pulled that caper off!

• It can be argued that the U.S. brokerage and investment banking industry has transformed the modern American stock market into nothing more than a mechanism for transferring wealth from shareholders to management.

• Mutual funds are an overrated investment heavily promoted by Wall Street.

• If you think mutual funds aren’t a flagrant enough example of conflict of interest, try hedge funds.

• By historical standards and given the gloomy corporate profits outlook in an environment of high corporate debt and rising interest rates, the Dow Jones Industrial Average is considerably overvalued at late-2006 levels and should be avoided. I say that, even setting aside the imminent prospect of a collapsed dollar and the recession and hyperinflation that would accompany it.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• … it is precisely because it is not a democracy that China will likely be so successful...What is of vital importance for economic success is economic freedom, meaning the protection of private property, the rule of law, and minimal regulation and taxation, not the right to vote.

• It is a common misconception that low wages are the main factor influencing prices. The reality is that low capital costs, and the absence of taxation and regulation, are far more important.

• Think about all the rules and regulations American businesses have to deal with. How can we compete with nations that don’t impose those excessive burdens? Does anyone think that the United States could ever have become a great power with all the rules, regulations, and taxation that exist today?

• In the long run, the euro as a fiat currency may very well fail like the U.S. dollar. (2006, before Greece)

• 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.