Peter Schiff: More Doom in the Data

In this episode, Peter recaps the latest batch of economic data, in which revisions to job numbers and a declining manufacturing sector bode poorly for the economy. He also analyzes gold and silver’s big week last week and offers some thoughts on President Biden’s recent post-debate interview on ABC.

Friday saw an apparently optimistic jobs report overshadowed by large downward revisions for May’s and April’s figures:

“They were expecting 189,000 jobs created, and we ended up exceeding that with 206,000 jobs. … In fact, Biden once again bragged that the jobs that were created were over 200,000 for the month. Of course, he took credit for those jobs. But as is normally the case, once you look beneath the surface— and you don’t have to look deep beneath the surface—you get another very weak jobs report. Let’s start with their downward revisions because there were quite a few downward revisions. Both of the prior months were revised down. So April was revised down by 57,000 jobs, and May was revised down by 54,000 jobs. That’s not insignificant.”

Weak manufacturing job growth is indicative of America’s economic woes:

“The government now says that it was zero, that no manufacturing jobs at all were created in May, and 8,000 were lost in June. Again, these are the productive jobs that we need people making stuff. We’re not making stuff. We’re consuming more bigger trade deficits. This is a weak report that is also inflationary. So it’s stagflation, a weak economy, and more inflationary pressures. The labor force participation rate stayed at 62.6, which is a very weak number. And significantly, the unemployment rate rose to 4.1%. It was 4% in the prior month unrevised, and it went up to 4.1%. That is significant.”

If anything, these statistics are still too optimistic. Changes in government statistical methods paper over underlying economic fault lines:

“That’s why when you look at these rigged unemployment numbers and you come to the conclusion that we have a strong economy with low unemployment and you don’t understand why Biden is so unpopular, it’s because the way we’re keeping track of these economic statistics is wrong. The real statistics— if we measured the economy the way we did prior to 1994— you can see why so many people are so miserable.”

With gold hovering closer to $2400/oz, Peter thinks gold mining stocks will improve shortly:

“Gold is holding at a very high price. I expect a lot of these gold mining companies to report much better earnings than the street expects because the price of gold is staying at much higher prices for a much longer period of time than these analysts penciled into their earnings forecast. So I still think that this is the best way right now to play the gold sector is through these mining stocks. I think they’re still dirt cheap. There’s incredible value there. People should be buying these stocks.”

Peter slams President Biden’s most recent ABC interview in which he tries to excuse his ghastly debate performance. In addition to the president’s still-apparent cognitive problems, Peter takes issue with Biden calling Donald Trump a liar:

“You know what I detest most is hypocrisy, right? … Biden tells a lot of outright lies. I mean, complete lies. He has no right to call anybody a liar. When you do something yourself, you can’t accuse somebody else. It’s not just, you know, living in glass houses and not throwing stones. Biden has been in politics all of his life. And you don’t stay in politics without being a liar. You’re not going to have a long political career unless you’re a good liar. You’ve got to lie a lot to get reelected that often. And so he has no right to keep focusing on Trump lying, Trump lying. In fact, the reason he wants to talk about Trump’s lies so much is because that’s what he does. His whole presidency is a lie. Everything out of his mouth is a lie.”

For more technical analysis of last week’s metals price action, check out the SchiffGold Gold Wrap podcast.