Peter Schiff Debates Two Socialists on the Debt Ceiling and the Economy

The fake debt ceiling fight rages on.

Last week, the US Senate agreed to a small increase in the borrowing limit, but it only kicked the can down the road a couple of months. The $480 billion increase raises the debt limit to $28.9 trillion, but that’s only going to last until Dec. 3.

Peter Schiff recently appeared on RT Boom Bust to debate economist Steve Keen and Professor Richard Wolf on the debt ceiling and more broadly the US economy.

HIGHLIGHTS FROM THE DEBATE

“The problem isn’t the debt ceiling. The problem is the debt. The problem is we keep raising the ceiling so we keep on piling on more debt.”

“The debt is a huge problem. It doesn’t help capitalism. It interferes with capitalism because what happens is the government is taking resources away from the private sector and diverting them to public spending. And this undermines capitalism. It undermines savings and investment and all of the things we need to grow our standard of living.”

“Much of this debt is now being monetized by the central bank. The Federal Reserve prints up money to buy up all of this debt, and all that is is levying a massive inflation tax on the economy.”

“We are completely depending on the productive capacity of the rest of the world.”

“Eventually, and I think relatively soon, the value of our money – the dollar – is going to collapse and all the prices of the imported goods are going to be going up much faster than they are right now.”

“The problems really started when the government started to grow and started to impose more regulations and more subsidies and more government spending, and the Federal Reserve came around. So, these problems were not created by capitalism. They were created by government’s interference with capitalism.”

“Every time government tries to solve the problems that they create, they make those problems even worse.”

“You have this gigantic speculative bubble. You have asset bubbles all over the place. None of this is a byproduct of capitalism. It’s all because of the failure to have capitalism. If we had capitalism and sound money, we would have much higher interest rates. We wouldn’t have all this debt. We’d have a much more prosperous economy.”