Schiff on Rocks and Stocks: Debt will Hit $50 Trillion by ‘28

Last week, Peter appeared on Rocks and Stocks News, a YouTube show and substack focusing on the mining sector. Host Allan Barry Laboucan interviews Peter on Bitcoin, the national debt problem, and the future for precious metals and the mining sector. 

Peter starts off by contrasting Bitcoin’s recent performance with gold’s. In some ways Bitcoin is marketed like a precious metal, but its price hasn’t tracked with gold and silver recently.

“But there’s no underlying demand for the token because there’s no real use for it. They’re trying to market it as gold. That’s why Bitcoin is represented as a coin, even though it’s not a coin. They make it the color gold to make it look like a gold coin, but it’s really like a counterfeit. It’s fool’s gold. People have made a lot of money in it, of course, because the greater fools have been willing to pay a higher price. …  The price has gone sideways. Bitcoin is no higher today at 63,000 than it was almost three years ago.”

In contrast with Bitcoin, gold benefits from an inflationary environment, and people flock to gold to avoid inflation taxes:

“Look, you know, when you have this much debt, there’s two options: default or inflate. And either one is good for gold. Inflation is even better. But if there’s a risk that the US Treasury is going to default, then you don’t want to own treasuries. If there’s a risk that the US government is going to inflate, then you don’t want to own treasuries. … Gold is the only safe haven from fiat currencies.”

Peter and Allan discuss the national debt, forecasting up to a four trillion dollar annual deficit in the near future. Interest maintenance and entitlements are the main problem here:

“The debt problem is exploding. Interest on the national debt in the U.S. is over a trillion a year. That’s more than we spend on defense. Within a couple of years, we’ll be spending more on interest than we do on Social Security or Medicare. And those programs are growing in price. The national debt is growing by three to four trillion a year right now.”

President Biden has nearly outspent Barack Obama’s administration, and neither Donald Trump nor Kamala Harris seem likely to reverse the nation’s fiscal course:

“Biden may do in four years what it took Obama eight years to accomplish. We’ll see. But whoever is president next, whether it’s Trump or Harris, is going to break Biden’s record. Yes, that’s my argument. I think we’re going to be looking at three to four trillion. So do the simple math. You don’t need a calculator, folks. Thirty-six trillion at three to four, let’s say three and a half trillion per year—that gets you to fifty trillion before 2028.”

Peter thinks that gold’s performance this year and in the future will both make mining stocks highly profitable and induce larger institutions to invest in precious metals and the mining sector:

“I own a lot of gold. I own a lot of gold mining stocks. I think that the gold mining stocks are going to be some of the biggest percentage gainers in my portfolio. I think there are stocks that I own that will not just go up 5 and 10x, but maybe 50x or 100x. I think there’s going to be a big movement back into gold and mining stocks from institutions, endowments, pension funds, hedge funds.”

While it’s hard to be optimistic about the country’s political future, Peter argues now is the optimal time to get in on gold:

“This is going to be a bull market for the ages. I mean, you know, even if you go back to the 1970s, I mean, this could even be bigger than that. And that’s when gold went from $35 an ounce to $850. So do the math on that. But I think we’re staring at something much bigger.”