After the Federal Open Market Committee’s meeting yesterday, the markets finally started to wake up to the fact that Janet Yellen’s Federal Reserve has no clue when or how it will raise rates. Analysts are starting to realize what Peter has said before – how will the Fed deal with the next recession if rates are stuck at zero? Of course, nobody but Peter is pointing out that a fourth round of quantitative easing is the Fed’s only solution.
The price of gold moved up on the news, while stocks were choppy. As usual, Peter Schiff took the time to dig into the latest economic data that reveals the economy is in no condition for the Fed to raise rates in September, let alone this year. This is just one of many reasons why now might be the perfect time to invest in physical gold.
Case in point was the Empire State Manufacturing Index that came out earlier this week on Monday. This is for August. Last month in July, that index was 3.86%, which is a really low number. The consensus was for a slight improvement to 4.75%. That’s what everybody thought. Well we actually got minus 14.92%… It wasn’t even in the realm, anywhere close. The lowest forecast that anybody made was 3%. Positive 3%.”
CCTV America interviewed Peter Schiff last week about the benefits of moving your business to Puerto Rico. Earlier this year, Peter discussed how moving to Puerto Rico is the next best thing to renouncing your United States citizenship without having to pay exit taxes to the federal government. In this interview, he also points out how Puerto Rico may be in debt, but when compared on a per capita basis to the United States, America is in much worse shape. It’s just a matter of time before America’s creditors realize this is the case.
Peter Schiff appeared on Alex Jones’ InfoWars last week to share some sad news. Peter’s father, Irwin Schiff, has just been diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. With a couple more years left in his prison sentence, this effectively means Irwin Schiff will serve a life sentence for his political beliefs. Peter and Alex discussed the hypocritical policies of the Internal Revenue Service and the federal court system that imprisoned Irwin Schiff.
I’ve sat around people who have admitted to me. Lawyers have said, ‘Look, your dad is technically right. He’s legally right, but the government won’t let him get away with it.’ I mean, that’s an important thing. I’ve talked to judges who have told me that. ‘Okay, yes, technically your dad may be right, but it doesn’t matter.’
“What Americans are willing to accept today – the type of taxation, the type of regulation – is off the charts compared to the tiny, little bit of government that Americans were protesting from King George…”
Peter has chosen the less risky route of paying his taxes in accordance with federal laws, though he continues to support Irwin’s ideals. Rather than withdrawing from the tax system, Peter advocates owning gold and silver as a way of withdrawing your savings from the US dollar. The inflation caused by quantitative easing is less apparent, but just as insidious as the official tax system.
Marc Faber explained his gold investment philosophy to CNBC. Like Peter Schiff, Faber is a contrarian who doesn’t buy into the consensus view that the United States dollar is going to remain a strong currency. While the price of gold in Chinese yuan has risen steeply recently, Faber still believes it is a great time to buy gold in US dollars as well.
This article was submitted by Addison Quale, SchiffGold Precious Metals Specialist. Any views expressed are his own and do not necessarily reflect the views of Peter Schiff or SchiffGold.
I recently attended the Freedom Fest Conference in Las Vegas this past month. During a panel discussion that included a number of Austrian School economists, it was remarked with certainty that the United States dollar (USD) would eventually collapse. This invited the inevitable question: “Since the USD is the world’s reserve currency, what will replace it once it collapses?”
A conventional view out there – one espoused by many free-market economists even – is that just as the US displaced the United Kingdom as the world’s superpower and the dollar displaced the pound following World War II, a similar course of events is bound to take place. The consensus seems to be that China is waiting in the wings and will eventually emerge as the world’s next superpower, with the yuan displacing the USD.
This article is written by Peter Schiff and originally published by Euro Pacific Capital. Find it here. Peter discusses the real lessons to be learned from China’s yuan devaluation of last week, which garnered so much mainstream attention. Peter brought up some of these points in a CNBC interview last week.
China’s recent move to devalue the yuan has sent shock waves through the global financial markets and convinced most observers that a new front in the global currency wars has begun. The move has caused many to envision a new round of competitive devaluations around the globe in which the race to the bottom will intensify. In this scenario they envision that the US dollar will solidify its standing as the only strong currency. This misses the point entirely.
In the past, most of the action in the “currency wars” had been focused on the efforts that many nations undertook to prevent their currencies from rising against the US dollar, which itself was being weakened by a perpetually easy Federal Reserve and persistently negative US trade and budget deficits. But with the dollar now strengthening significantly, the Chinese government has become concerned that the yuan, which has remained largely tethered to the dollar, had become too strong against other currencies, particularly its primary trading partners in Asia and the Pacific. To remain competitive locally, it decided to ease the tether to the dollar and instead let its currency float more freely. The purpose and implications of this significant pivot has largely escaped the US media. In reality, the move raises the likelihood that the yuan will rise significantly when the dollar resumes its long-term bear market, not that it will remain weak forever.
Newsmax TV interviewed Peter Schiff earlier this week about the devaluation of the yuan. Peter did not agree with Donald Trump’s mainstream opinion that this news out of China will have terrible consequences for the United States. Instead, Peter emphasized how much more productive and robust the Chinese economy is compared to the US. When asked if the yuan might someday replace the dollar as the world’s reserve currency, Peter reminded the host that China has been buying a lot of gold recently:
I think the Chinese are accumulating a lot of gold. I think they’re being very quiet about how much gold they’re buying. In fact, I think they’re deliberately misrepresenting how much their gold holdings have increased. They’re taking advantage of the recent weakness in the price of gold to buy more. By the way, gold was up today. Not only was it up big in terms of the yuan, but it rose in terms of the dollar as well…
The other week, we wrote about the growing barter economy in Greece. With cash withdrawal limits still in place, Greek citizens are finding it difficult to conduct daily business using traditional methods. Now, the Wall Street Journal reports on the flourishing of a variety of alternative currencies, particularly one named TEM:
TEM—a sophisticated form of barter whose name is the Greek acronym for Local Alternative Unit—was founded in 2010 in the early months of Greece’s debt crisis with less than a dozen members. Now it includes dozens of participating local businesses that use the system to sell goods and services, including prepared food, haircuts, doctor visits, or even for renting an apartment.
“One of the larger and more established alternative payment systems in Greece, TEM has given Greeks living under the strain of wage cuts and tax increases a supplementary way to trade. Instead of dealing with a physical currency, members have an online account that starts at zero when they join. They can opt to take payment for goods and services in TEM, and then use those to buy products from others.”
Earlier this year, we wrote about the latest developments in the international “war on cash.” Some central bankers have gone so far as to suggest that cash be eliminated entirely. In his latest podcast, Tom Woods and Charles Hugh Smith talk about why central authorities want to abolish cash and the role cash plays in a free society.
Near the end, Smith recommends investing in local businesses or real estate as a better way of protecting your savings than keeping large sums of money in the banking system. We’re pretty sure he would agree that buying physical gold and silver is also a good way to save your wealth and maintain its purchasing power over the long term.
This article was submitted by Addison Quale, SchiffGold Precious Metals Specialist. Any views expressed are his own and do not necessarily reflect the views of Peter Schiff or SchiffGold.
So the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) just weakened the yuan fix to the United States dollar by the most on record – 1.9%. A central bank has devalued its currency, you say? Well, duh! With apologies to GEICO, it’s what central banks do. Apparently with exports suffering and their economy struggling to grow, something had to give. Devaluing the yuan immediately gives its export sector a boost. The hope is that this boost offsets whatever capital outflows result from a now weakened currency.
The move recalls another recent currency devaluation on the other side of the world. This time last year, the Swiss National Bank still wholeheartedly protested that it would never let its currency fix of the franc to the euro revalue. It continued declare as much right up until the week that it dropped that very peg. Me thinks it doth protested too much.
