Peter Schiff: Gold Is Not Going to Stop This Time

Gold has continued to push upward. The latest catalyst was another escalation of the trade war. Gold briefly moved above $1,550 in dollar terms. But it has done even better in relation to other currencies. In fact, the yellow metal is at record highs in nearly every currency except the dollar.

Peter Schiff appeared on RT America on Aug. 26 to talk about it. He said he thinks gold is eventually going to make news highs in the dollar as well, and this time, it’s not going to stop going up.

Peter said he doesn’t necessarily think that recession fears, in and of themselves, are pushing gold higher.

They’re worried about what the central banks, and in particular the Federal Reserve, is going to do about the next recession. That’s why the price of gold is going up — because the Fed is going to be going back to zero; they’re going to be going back to quantitative easing and all of this is good for gold.”

Peter noted that gold has been making record highs in almost every currency except the dollar.

And I think ultimately, we’re going to make a high in the dollar, probably before too long. And you know, when the Fed did quantitative easing the first time, the reason that the gold rally stopped at $1,900 was because everybody believed that the Fed had an exit strategy and that they could reverse the process, normalize interest rates, unwind their balance sheet. When they realize that they were mistaken to believe that, that there is no exit strategy, that it’s basically QE forever, that the balance sheet is going to grow into perpetuity  — gold’s not going to stop next time. It’s going to keep on going.”

As far as the trade war goes, Peter called it “a bit of a distraction.”

The US economy is going into recession regardless of what happens with trade … The trade war certainly makes a bad situation worse, but it was a bad situation anyway. And I think a lot of people have some false optimism that all we have to do is end the trade war and we’ll avert recession. That’s not going to happen.”

Peter said he doesn’t expect the Chinese to simply surrender in the trade war. In fact, he sees signs that the Chinese are digging in their heels and believes the trade war could continue on beyond the next election.

Peter said he doesn’t know what the Trump administration could do to stave off the recession. He reiterated that recession is inevitable and the problem is the more they delay it, the worse it’s going to be. He said he thinks the downturn will start before the election and Trump likely won’t be reelected.

I think the Fed will do what it can to avert it. They will go back to zero. They will do more QE. We may even get some type of tax cut or increased government spending in a vain effort to try to stimulate the economy. But that’s not the type of stimulus the economy needs. We need less government, not more government. We actually need higher interest rates, not lower interest rates. But even if we do the right thing, that’s not going to avert the recession because the recession is part of the cure, and we need to embrace it, not resist it. Unfortunately, politicians will never do that because they are more concerned about their reelection that the long-term health of  the economy.”

So, where should the average Joe put his money? Gold?

Well, I think gold’s going up whether or not the stock markets crash. In fact, the only way to prevent the stock markets from crashing is to print a lot of money and slash rates, which is really good for gold. So yes, people should be buying gold. Don’t think you’ve missed the boat if it’s at $1,530 and you haven’t bought. We’re going a lot higher. Remember, we were at $1,900, so we’re well off the highs. There aren’t that many assets that you can find that are off their highs like gold, other than silver, which is probably an even better buy. It’s much further off its high.”

Peter said investors should stay away from the dollar, not only because of the looming recession, but because its days as a reserve currency could be numbered. Peter noted that even the Bank of England president has said the dollar should no longer be the reserve.

Gold is going to be the reserve. Gold was the reserve before the dollar and it will be the reserve after the dollar. So, people should buy it now. Don’t wait for that to happen because when we remonetize gold, the price will be much, much higher than it is today.”