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.
On CNBC’s Futures Now, Peter Schiff shared his take on the Chinese devaluation of the yuan and how it affected the price of gold. Once again, Peter reminded us that gold may not have moved up very much in terms of the US dollar, but in the Chinese currency the yellow metal rose significantly.
While the world still believes the US dollar is the strongest currency amidst an international currency war, Peter warns that the yuan devaluation is just temporary. Eventually, the Federal Reserve will start a new round of quantitative easing, and the United States will “win” the war by pricking the dollar bubble and destroying the value of its currency.
Peter Schiff’s digs into Friday’s jobs numbers and the great expectations for a September rate hike from the Federal Reserve. In this Schiff Report, Peter walks us through the options Janet Yellen has right now and the repercussions they will have on the economy and US stocks.
This year, 2015, is probably going to be the weakest year of the entire recovery. And that’s with interest rates at zero for the entirety of the year. If the Fed really begins to raise interest rates, what’s going to happen in 2016? Obviously, we’ll be in a recession. If the Fed raises rates now, we’ll be in a bear market in stocks…”
This article is written by Peter Schiff and originally published by Euro Pacific Capital. Find it here.
Over the past few years, observing changes in Federal Reserve interest rate policy has been a little like watching paint dry or grass grow…only not as exciting. That’s because the Fed has not changed its benchmark Fed Funds rate since 2008 (Federal Reserve, FOMC). So with nothing else to talk about, Fed observers have focused on the minute changes in language that are included in Fed Policy statements. The minuscule revision in the July statement was the inclusion of the word “additional” to the “labor market improvements” that the Fed wants to see before finally pulling the trigger on its long-awaited rate increases. That should lead to a discussion of what kind of “additional” improvements those could be.
According to a good many Main Street analysts, the labor market has already improved significantly over the past 5 years. During that time, the unemployment rate has declined from 9.8% to just 5.3% (Federal Reserve Economic Data (FRED), St. Louis Fed). In the FOMC’s June 2015 Summary of Economic Projections, Committee participants’ estimates of the longer-run normal rate of unemployment had a central tendency of 5.0% to 5.2%. But that’s not the kind of labor market success that has spurred Janet Yellen to action. She is looking for “additional improvements.” Since it is very unusual for the unemployment rate to fall below 5% (having done so in only ten years in the 45 years since 1970), it must be that she is looking for improvements in other employment metrics, like wage growth, labor force participation, and the ratio of full time to part time job creation. On those fronts there is very little to inspire confidence.
