Peter Schiff: Powell Was Out There to Lie to the American Public on 60 Minutes

What is the biggest problem in the US economy? As Peter Schiff put it in a recent podcast, “The big, fat, ugly bubble is deflating and the air is coming out.”

And that is precisely why Peter thinks Jerome Powell recently appeared on 60 Minutes.

This is part of a confidence road show – a dog and pony show.”

Over the last few months, 60 Minutes has not only featured Powell. The show also hosted two former Fed chairs – Janet Yellen and Ben Bernanke. Peter said this is all designed to reassure the nation that there’s nothing to worry about.

Even though that they’ve indicated they’re going to be ‘patient’ now and they’re not going to keep raising interest rates, and even though they’ve indicated they’re not likely to shrink their balance sheet on autopilot like they once said but they’re likely going to finish the process this year, that even though they’re doing that, there is nothing to worry about. The US economy is in great shape. It’s going to grow close to 3% for all of 2019, even though the first quarter looks like it’s going to come in sub-1 percent  … the Fed is out there reassuring everybody that there’s nothing to worry about.”

Interestingly, when asked about the increase in the auto-loan delinquency rate, Powell brushed it off and said it just goes to show the widespread prosperity hasn’t reached everybody. Peter said that comment was a bit ironic.

If the prosperity was widespread, well, then it would be reaching just about everybody, right? Isn’t that what widespread means? Like, it’s spread wide over the country. Everybody is enjoying this prosperity. I mean, the reason that we have the problems that we do when it comes to people paying their auto loans or their student loans or even credit card debt is because there is no widespread prosperity. There is some prosperity, but it’s very narrow. It isn’t widely spread out. It’s concentrated among people who own a lot of assets, people who benefited from quantitative easing and artificially low interest rates, people who have stock portfolios or other investments that benefited from the Fed’s monetary policy. But ordinary Americans who are just working for wages and have been living paycheck to paycheck, they’ve seen their standard of living go down. The cost of living has been going up than their nominal pay increases. And so, they are going deeper and deeper into the hole.”

Powell was asked point-blank what problems he sees in the US economy and other than the auto loan delinquency, he didn’t see anything. Everything is great. There is nothing that concerns him in the domestic economy. Not the record amount of debt. Not the record budget deficits. Not the skyrocketing trade deficits.

There are so many things that he should worry about, yet Powell isn’t worried about any of them. Nothing. Obviously, he can’t be this clueless. He’s just there to paint a rosy picture to try to engender confidence that all is well. Because the Fed has to come up with an excuse as to why it stopped its normalization of interest rates.”

So, what’s the excuse?

Weakness in the overseas economies. Everything that worries Powell is something that is happening abroad. Nothing worries him that’s happening in the US, which simply can’t be true unless he’s completely incompetent.

He’s out there to lie to the American public on 60 Minutes, which obviously is a show a lot more people watch than CNBC …  He’s trying to reach a broader audience by going on 60 minutes and telling everybody that there’s nothing to worry about – everything is great.”

Here’s the truth –

They don’t want to admit the real problem is in America. We can’t raise rates because we can’t afford it – because we have too much debt thanks to the Federal Reserve because they kept interest rates so low for so long, we borrowed so much money that it’s impossible to normalize interest rates because we have an abnormal amount of debt. The reason they have to stop shrinking their balance sheet is because they can’t do it because the budget deficits are exploding and they can’t add to the problem by shrinking its balance sheet. And what Powell hasn’t said is that by the way, what we’re going to have to do is go back to quantitative easing because the deficits are so big and air is coming out of this bubble we’re going to have to buy even more bonds, the balance sheet is going to get a lot bigger. In fact, we’re going to have to cut interest rates back to zero. They haven’t let that cat out of the bag yet.”

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