The national debt quietly pushed past $30 trillion on Jan. 31. But that is only the tip of the debt iceberg. The American taxpayer is on the hook for a lot more than that. In his podcast, Peter Schiff said US government borrowing and spending has turned the dollar into monopoly money propped up by a massive Ponzi Scheme.
The mainstream thinking is the gold standard failed. But as Peter Schiff explained in his podcast, the gold standard didn’t fail. We failed to stay on the gold standard.
The gold standard succeeded so well that the government went off of it.”
It appears talk of less loose monetary policy has pricked the bubble. Peter Schiff talked about it in a recent podcast.
We’ve seen a significant rotation out of the overpriced, high-risk momentum stocks that enjoyed the benefit of the bubble. They are now collapsing – not because the Fed has actually tightened monetary policy, but just because it talked about it.
Inflation is running hot. Economic data is running cold. Stocks and bonds are under pressure. The Fed is scrambling. In his podcast, Peter Schiff talked about the trajectory of the economy. He said we’re on the cusp of the most obvious crisis that virtually nobody saw coming. The Federal Reserve made this bed. Now we have to lie in it.
December Consumer Price Index data came out on Wednesday (Jan. 12). Month-on-month, it was again even hotter than expected. Peter called it an inflationary freight train that the Fed’s “field of dreams” monetary policy will not stop.
“Transitory” inflation has now been running hot for a full year.
The Fed FOMC minutes came out last week, signaling tighter monetary policy. Peter Schiff talked about the minutes in his podcast, arguing that the Fed can’t do what it says it’s going to do. If it does, it will crash the markets and the economy. And it won’t lower inflation.
As 2021 goes into the history books, Peter Schiff looks back over what he calls “a year of peak speculation.”
Of course, the big story of the year was inflation.
Gold closed out the week before Christmas above $1,800 an ounce, despite rising bond yields. The $1,800 level has been viewed as a ceiling for the price of gold. In his podcast, Peter Schiff said people need to start thinking of $1,800 as a floor. And he said they will once they realize there is no ceiling on inflation.
Last week, the Fed sped up its timetable for tapering its asset purchases and raising interest rates. While this represents a slightly tighter monetary policy, it’s far from truly tight. And yet, the central bankers at the Fed and a lot of people in the mainstream seem to think these small steps will tame the inflation dragon. In fact, this slight tightening is a little like taking a pea shooter to a bazooka fight.
Despite finally acknowledging inflation will likely runner hotter and last longer than expected, there is still widespread belief that it is transitory in the long run. After all, we had a couple of decades of tame inflation, and that’s now viewed as the norm. In this podcast, Peter Schiff explains why the only thing that’s transitory is the era of low inflation.
The CPI data for November came in pretty close to expectations. Of course, expectations were sky-high as the transitory inflation narrative has faded into myth.
The CPI surged another 0.8% month-on-month in November. The consensus expectation was for a 0.7% rise. The headline year-on-year increase was 6.8%. That was right in line with expectations. It was also the highest CPI print since 1982. And as Peter Schiff talked about on his podcast, the CPI number understates the inflation problem.
