Peter Schiff on InfoWars: US Is an Economic Parasite (Video)
Peter Schiff is now a regular guest on Alex Jones’ InfoWars. Peter’s first appearance was last Friday, and the two had a lively conversation about the slow decline of the United States economy. Peter compared Greece to America and argued that the US has less economic freedom than communist China. They also touched on the upcoming Presidential race, and Peter explained why he supports Rand Paul.
Highlights from the interview:
Alex: What are the best countries in the world right now?
Peter: Switzerland is pretty good. They have made some mistakes in kind of pegging the Swiss franc to the euro. They gave that up, but they’re still intervening to prevent their currency from rising. There are countries around the world. Singapore is another good example…
It’s hard to find the countries that aren’t completely screwed up. Most of them are broke… Puerto Rico is claiming that it can’t pay its debts, which is true. But Puerto Rico’s debt-to-GDP is much lower than America’s debt-to-GDP. So we’re broke too. The only difference is there’s no QE program from Puerto Rico. The Fed is not buying Puerto Rican government bonds, so interest rates have already risen in Puerto Rico. That’s why they can’t pay. But if interest rates ever rise in the United States, we are even more broke than they are…
We’re damned if they do, we’re damned if they don’t. If they do raise interest rates, they’ll prick the bubble they inflated. We have so much debt, the only reason the bubble hasn’t already burst is because rates are still at zero…
Alex: What about this jobs report?
Peter: They ought to call it the lack-of-jobs report. On the surface, everything is great. We created 220,000 jobs. What they don’t really talk about on the network news is, number one – they reduced the previous estimate by 60,000 jobs. So the reports weren’t as good as they originally told us. But if you look beneath the surface, the unemployment rate dropped to 5.3%. It’s because 600,000 people left the labor force. It was a mass exodus. The labor force participation rate plunged… These are not older people retiring. These are 30-40 year old guys leaving the labor force. They’re not retired, they’re unemployed…
Alex: Let’s specifically talk about Greece and the, quote, contagion. My issue is, no matter how many times they get bailed out, it’s going nowhere. Now the IMF and the World Bank and the EU – the troika –they want them to put higher taxes on their tourism…
Peter: It can’t work. You have to admit the obvious that Greece is broke. Trying to come up with ways to pretend they can pay the money back isn’t going to work. They never should have bailed them out the first time. All this is is kicking a can down the road. Eventually, you run out of road. That’s really where we are when it comes to Greece… All the bailouts perpetuate is the socialism that has ruined Greece…
There’s one industry in Greece that is thriving. That is shipping. The reason Greek shipping is such a good industry is because by law, the Greek government can’t tax it. So they exempted one industry from taxation, and it’s thriving. Why don’t they do that will all their industries? Why don’t they get the government out of the entire economy? …
Alex: In the US, after Puerto Rico goes down, whether it’s this year or next year or whenever. What’s next? Is it California? We know Michigan already went under.
Peter: Any idiot can redistribute wealth. The hard part is to create the wealth in the first plate. The redistributers get in the way of wealth creation…
The dominos are falling. Greece, Puerto Rico. The countries that borrowed too much are being held accountable. The chickens are coming home to roost, and we’ve got more chickens out there than anybody…
I’m more worried about the United States, because we’re the biggest debtor…
I think people have to prepare [for the day of reckoning]… Prepare for it like it’s going to happen tomorrow. If you’re lucky, it won’t. But at least you’re prepared… You got to get your money out of US financial assets. We talked earlier about the countries that are not making these mistakes. There are solvent countries that are loaning the money that everybody else is borrowing…
We got lots of political freedom. You can go out and complain all you want in the United States. But do you have real economic freedom? Absolutely not. The government controls you. We have a command economy, a centrally planned economy. I feel that every day as an entrepreneur… I know in places like China, there is a lot more free-market capitalism going on beneath the surface than there is in supposedly capitalist America. They have a bad monetary policy… But go to Walmart. Look at all these products. Where are they made? …
I think if we go under, they prosper. I think it’s not a symbiotic relationship, but more of a parasitic one. They just haven’t figured it out that we’re the parasite, and they’re the host. It’s a one-way relationship. They keep lending us money that we can never pay back…
I think before the dollar collapses, the Federal Reserve is going to launch QE4. It’s going to expand its asset purchases. The Federal Reserve is going to be not only buying US Treasuries, but state bonds as well. Who knows, they might even end up buying the ones in Puerto Rico…
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