Peter Schiff: The Economy Is Fundamentally Weak (And Is Sex Really Better Under Socialism?)

Stocks continued to get pummeled and pundits continue to claim there’s nothing to worry about. They say the economy is fundamentally strong. But is it? Really?

Peter Schiff doesn’t think so.

Friday was yet another bad day on Wall Street. The Dow Jones was down 496.87 points. That capped off a bad week. In fact, US stock markets are in the midst of the worst start for a December since 1980. All of the major indexes have fallen into correction territory. The Russel 2000 is down about 19% from its peak just four months ago – in other words, on the verge of a bear market.

The retail XRT index fell just over 1% Friday and is down over 20% from its high. So, we are now in a bear market in the retail sector. As Peter Schiff noted on his latest podcast, not even the better than expected retail sales numbers on Friday could push that index into the black. Peter said he wasn’t sure if the uptick in retails sales was just an aberration or maybe some kind of consumer last hurrah, but he believes the markets more than he believes the retail sales numbers.

Peter pointed out that Tailored Brands, the owner of Men’s Wharehouse, lost something like 30% in a single day after it announced disappointing earnings. That raises a question: why aren’t people buying suits?

If this is such a strong economy, if this is a booming economy, and we’re creating all these jobs, why don’t people have to buy suits for their jobs? And if there are all these jobs and you’re going on job interviews, you know, people getting out of college and they’re going on job interviews, I mean, I remember when I went on job interviews, I had to have a suit. So, are people not wearing suits now when they go on job interviews? Or are they not even bothering to go on job interviews because they know there’s no jobs there? But you know, if there’s all these new jobs, why aren’t people buying new suits to go with their new jobs? Or any suits. You know, if you’re working, you’re wearing suits. Now obviously, maybe it’s because none of the jobs we’re creating requires suits. I mean, the last time I went to McDonald’s, they weren’t there in a jacket and tie. They have these uniforms, Maybe that’s what the Men’s Warehouse should stock is fast food uniforms so they could actually have a wardrobe for the modern-day American workforce. This is just more anecdotal evidence that this economy is a fantasy, that this job creation is not taking place.”

The S&P financials also slipped into bear territory last week. Goldman Sachs fell another 1.8% and is off nearly 40% from its peak. In fact, most of the big banks are down.

So, the financials getting killed, the retailers getting killed, yet everybody wants to pretend that this economy is booming.”

In fact, pundits and talking head on the financial networks are still calling this a “flushing out” process. They insist we’ll soon be making new highs because the fundamentals of the economy are strong.

What are they talking about? How are the fundamentals of the economy great? Based on what measure? Just looking at the unemployment rate and saying, ‘Oh, we got low unemployment,’ or we have some high confidence? These are all lagging indicators.”

Peter said there really isn’t any evidence that we have a strong economy. In fact, the evidence shows the opposite.

The economy is fundamentally weak. It’s been propped up by artificially low interest rates. Interest rates are still artificially low. But they’re not low enough and the whole thing is imploding.”

One sign of economic weakness is the massive budget deficit.  Through the first two months of the 2019 budget year, the deficit totaled $305.4 billion. That’s a 51.4% increase over the first two months of fiscal 2018.

In a booming economy, you would expect federal revenues to increase as the government collects more taxes on all of that economic activity. And you would expect spending to drop and people fall of the welfare roles and government stimulus ends. But that’s not what we’re seeing. Revenue is down and spending is up.

The fact that revenues are falling and expenditures are skyrocketing is evidence that the economy is already in recession or is on the cusp of one.”

So, what does all of this mean politically? Peter also delves into that in this podcast. You’ll definitely want to hear what he as to say about bad sex under socialism! According to an anthropologist, women have better sex under socialism. Yes. This is a for-real article. But do they?

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