Keith Richards Quit Heroin, but the Fed Can’t Quit QE (Video)

Peter Schiff appeared on Yahoo! Finance yesterday to speak with Jeff Macke about the latest meeting minutes released by the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC). The Fed has admitted that it does not plan on raising rates soon, officially throwing the United States and the dollar into the arena of the international “currency war.” Read some highlights from the interview below.

I don’t think they ever had a plan to hike rates. I think their plan is to launch QE4. But they can’t come out and admit that, so they’ve been pretending that they were going to raise rates. And I’ve been saying for months and months that they were going to come up with an excuse for why they couldn’t. The latest is excuse is, “Well, the dollar’s too strong.” The only reason the dollar got stronger is because people thought they were going to raise rates. And the Fed is saying, “The stronger dollar might mean consumer prices would come down.” Which in the case of gasoline, has already happened. But why is that a threat? What the Fed is really worried about is falling stock prices and falling real estate prices, not consumer prices…

People don’t understand. Remember, I predicted QE4 before they launched QE3. And the reason was, because it won’t work. You’ve got so many people who think the Fed can stop QE, because it worked. It hasn’t worked. It’s just made the US economy more dependent than ever on QE and zero-percent interest rates. So the Fed can no more end QE and raise rates than a heroin addict can stop taking heroin and stay high…

QE is going to continue until we overdose on it. That’s the only thing that’s going to stop the Fed. And so I think it’s going to be a currency crisis, a sovereign debt crisis, when the world understands that it’s QE infinity. The only reason [the dollar is stronger] is because people believe there’s an exit strategy. They think the low interest rates are just temporary. When they realize it’s permanent, it’s a whole new ball game.”

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