Keynesian central planners suffer from what Peter Schmidt calls “fatal conceit.” Paul Krugman serves as the poster child for central planning arrogance. But it’s the Federal Reserve that gives the central planners power, as Schmidt highlighted in the first article in a series highlighting this fatal conceit. Schmidt built on this theme in the second article, telling the story of Benjamin Strong and his role in blowing up the 1920s stock market. In this third installment of the series, Schmidt tackles the question no one dares to ask.
In the wake of the stock market plunge last week, Pre. Donald Trump said the market drop wasn’t because of his trade war. Trump said, “That wasn’t it. The problem I have is with the Fed. The Fed is going wild. They’re raising interest rates and it’s ridiculous.” He also said the Fed is “going loco.” In a Thursday interview, the president doubled down, saying “I’m paying interest at a high rate because of our Fed. And I’d like our Fed not to be so aggressive because I think they’re making a big mistake.”
Peter Schiff appeared on Fox Business Countdown to the Closing Bell along with National Alliances head of fixed income Andy Brenner to talk rate hikes, the stock market and where things might go next.
Could we be heading toward $5,000 gold?
Last week, there was a big sell-off in the bond market. Yields on the 10-year Treasury soared 11 basis points in one day. Global stock markets sold off the following morning and US stock markets followed suit. This week, things really got really ugly on Wall Street. The Dow dropped over 1,300 points in two days. In a video for SchiffGold, Peter Schiff said stock market investors “finally took notice of the carnage that was going on in the bond market.”
On Thursday, the price of gold popped, rising nearly 3%. But despite all of the action this week, most people in the mainstream remain complacent. The narrative is that this is a normal bull market correction. Peter said nothing could be further from the truth.
The economy is even a bigger bubble than the stock market.”
The SchiffGold Friday Gold Wrap podcast combines a succinct summary of the week’s precious metals news coupled with thoughtful analysis. You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes.
Will work for gold!
Who wouldn’t right? I don’t know about you, but I would work even harder for some gold than I would for dollars, knowing the Federal Reserve isn’t going to inflate the value of my gold away by 2% or more every year.
Well, apparently people aren’t the only organisms that know the value of gold. Scientists have discovered a bacterium that will work for us and actually help us create energy. But you have to pay it in gold.
The Dow Jones fell 831 points Wednesday, a decline of more than 3%. Meanwhile, the S&P 500 charted its biggest daily decline since February and the Nasdaq Composite dropped 4.08 percent. This follows on the heels of a 200-point drop in the Dow last week after the 10-year US Treasury yield hit the highest level since 2011.
In a podcast last week, Peter Schiff said rising interest rates could serve as the pin that pricks the stock market bubble. In his most recent podcast, Peter said the stock market rout seems to confirm his feeling and warned a recession will follow.
US stock markets plunged Wednesday, shedding over 800 points. Could the be the popping bubble Ron Paul recently said was on the horizon? That remains to be seen. But equities in many emerging markets have been shedding value for several months. Take India for instance. As a recent article in the Economic Times of India put it, “Asset classes are in a state of churn. One look at the chaos in domestic equities is enough to suggest that not all is well with this segment.”
So what are Indian investors doing? Buying gold.
The mainstream is giddy about the “booming economy.” We have rising stock markets, continued job creation and solid GDP growth. But Ron Paul recently appeared on CNBC Futures Now and threw a big bucket of cold water on the mainstream narrative. He said we are barreling toward a recession.
Most of the mainstream view the gold standard as an archaic relic from a bygone era. At best, a return to some kind of gold standard is unnecessary. At worst, it would plunge the world into economic chaos.
Conventional wisdom holds that a gold standard would make boom-bust cycles worse. (This is a myth.) Paul Krugman even tried to claim the gold standard prolonged the Great Depression. (Economist Bob Murphy shreds this fallacy in his It’s Your Dime interview with Mike Maharrey.) But the real reason central bankers and politicians hate the idea of a gold standard is that it takes power out of their hands.
We mostly focus on the economics of a gold standard, but as Antonius Aquinas explains, there is an even more fundamental reason we need a gold standard. It’s a matter of liberty. As he puts it, “It has been the advent of central banking and with it the elimination of the gold standard which has provided the means for the state to become such an omnipresent force in everyday life.”
Peter Schiff recently appeared on RT Boom Bust, along with Investor’s Advantage Corporation founder John Grace, to talk about the recent jobs report. Peter summed things up with a dire warning. Stagflation is coming and it’s going to be worse than 2008.
