Peter Schiff: Inflation Is Going to Double Digits — The Fed Can't Stop It
Summary
Macro Outlook: Schiff forecasts accelerating inflation alongside recession, arguing the Fed is trapped and risks an inflationary depression scenario.
Precious Metals: He is strongly bullish on gold, viewing pullbacks as buying opportunities and emphasizing that falling real rates support higher prices.
Silver: He calls silver a new bull market after a major breakout, advocating buying dips as part of a metals allocation.
Gold Miners: He expects gold miners to deliver significant earnings upside and sees them as offering the greatest leverage to rising metal prices.
Energy Stocks: He increased exposure months ago, sees oil still cheap in real terms, and cites geopolitical risks that could drive crude to $150–$200.
Dollar Crisis: He anticipates a US dollar crisis, watching bonds/FX/gold as signposts, and prefers non-USD assets, including foreign dividend-paying equities.
Housing/GSE Risk: Warns of a 30–40% home price reset and mortgage stress, highlighting downside risks to Fannie Mae (FNMA) and Freddie Mac (FMCC).
Portfolio Stance: Overall positioning favors commodities, international stocks, and precious metals, with a view that these already outperform US-centric portfolios and will benefit further if the dollar weakens.
Transcript
So inflation is going to continue to accelerate. Inflation is going to go into the double digits and who knows it may even go into the triple digits. I you know but but it's going to become a huge problem because the Fed can't do anything about it politically. You know Donald Trump talks about how he thinks we should have some short-term pain for long-term gain when it comes to paying high gas prices to to win a war against Iran. Well, you know, we should do the same thing in the economy. >> Peter Schiff, chief economist and global strategist at Europacific Asset Management and founder of Shift Gold. It is so wonderful to welcome you back to the show. Great to see you as always, Peter. >> Thanks, Julia. Nice to see you, too. >> Yeah, we had you back on in December and that was such a fun conversation and I told you, Peter, that we'd have you on more often. So, I'm thrilled to have you on Fed Day. We just had the FOMC with Fed Chair Powell talking about the economy saying this is nothing like the 1970s and I saw you post on X that you're like well it's much worse. So let's talk about the state of the economy, the big picture. Where are we today and why do you say it's much worse than the 1970s? >> Well, you know, in the 1970s the national debt was still below a trillion. It didn't even get to a trillion, I think, until 1980. Um, and so we're we just passed 39 trillion if anybody's keeping score. I think that was yesterday. But it's exploding out of control. The national debt has increased by 2.8 trillion just in the last uh 14 months since Donald Trump's been president. But if you look at the trajectory of the debt and what's likely to happen in the coming years, I think we might actually hit 50 trillion before Trump finishes his term. So that'd be about 11 trillion more in debt over the next 3 years. But I think what could drive the debt to that level would be a recession, which I think we could be on the cusps of, an official recession that will reduce uh government tax revenue and increase expenditures, upward pressure on interest rates that will also increase the debt service cost of the government. And the war, you know, we just Trump just started a war. And you know, we know from history, wars last a lot longer and cost a lot more than anybody expects. And and so all the money to pay for the war is going to be borrowed. And and so the debt is just going to explode. And so we're in a much weaker position than we were in the 1970s because the way the Fed was able to get the inflation genie back in the bottle, the genie which it let out of the bottle was by letting short-term interest rates rise to 20%. Now we could afford to pay 20% in 1980 because we didn't have that much debt. we can't afford to pay half that now because we have so much debt. You know, Pal talked about that there's some conflicts in the mandate, some tension, you know, between uh rising unemployment and rising inflation. So, there's a little tension. They're not really sure if they should cut rates or leave them alone. They should be hiking rates. I mean, that's obviously what the data uh show, but they're not doing that. But it's a lot more than just tension. The economy is very weak. The labor market, if you look at the data, forget about Trump's uh, you know, grandiose claims about this booming economy and the hottest economy in history, the US economy only added about 150,000 jobs all last year in total. And about half of them were in healthcare. You can contrast that to over two million jobs that were added in 2024 when we supposedly had the worst economy in history. We added a lot more jobs than we did last year when we had the greatest economy in history. And in fact, if you look at GDP from 2025, Trump's first year, US GDP grew by 2.2. It was 2.8 in Biden's last year. So, how was the economy the worst in 2.4 in in in 2024 and the best in 2025 when you know GDP was 20% stronger last year. In fact, 2.2% GDP growth is worse than the worst year that Biden had. Uh, so we've got a weak economy, but it's getting weaker. Q4 GDP was just.7 and now we have a war which we didn't have back then uh and inflation was already accelerating. Look at the numbers we got today uh for producer prices for the month of February. They spiked up 7/10en of 1% in one month. That annualizes to 8.4% inflation. uh year-over-year we're getting close to 4% now in the in the in the producer prices which are a leading indicator of consumer prices and all this before oil prices shot up by 50%. >> Mhm. So inflation was getting worse, the economy was getting weaker before Trump sh started a war, which may be one of the reasons he started the war as a distraction from the weak economy and rising inflation because now he can blame the weak economy and and the increase in inflation on the war and he can claim that, you know, we had to fight the war. We had no choice, right? We had to we had to take out Iran because all of a sudden they're this big threat. uh even though you know prior to starting the war he you know they weren't supposedly a threat at all. >> Okay, let's explore this a little bit further. So I take it your base case we're going to see much more inflation and a recession. Do would you have okay that's stagflation would you say is something worse than stagflation then? Like how would you describe it? Yeah. I mean, when you say stackflation, most people think of slow growth and high inflation. I'm I think it's going to be a recession >> with high inflation. So, like an almost like a inflationary depression it because I don't think stagflation does it justice because I think it's going to be uh something much worse again than the 1970s. And and part of the reason that it doesn't look as bad now as it did back then is because the government was more honest about the inflation rate and the unemployment rate in the 70s than they are today because the methodology that we used to calculate unemployment and inflation were very different. And so when Pal tries to contrast the current unemployment rate with the unemployment rate during the 1970s, it's apples to oranges. I mean, in fact, it's not even apples to oranges. It's apples uh you know, uh uh uh to bricks, you know. I mean, they're they're not even similar. Uh because the the the methodology is so different. So, if we kept track of unemployment and inflation because it's the same thing. the way we did in the 70s, you would have to double pretty much both the unemployment rate and the inflation rate to to get a number that would represent what it would have been had we met uh me measured them like we did in the 70s. So when you make that adjustment, the inflation and the unemployment rate that we have now is not that much lower or unemployment is not that much lower and inflation not much lower than it was in the 70s and it's about to get a lot higher. That's the thing. Unemployment is going to spike and inflation is going to spike even more. >> H okay. So then the question is where does that leave the Fed then? It sounds like they would be trapped. Like what decision would they have to make? The >> mandate. That's exactly the position. and they're between a rock and a hard place because if they raise rates and tighten monetary policy, which would also mean going back to quantitative tightening, if they were to raise rates by a degree that would actually be sufficient to rein in this inflation that they let loose, the rate would be so high that our debt ladated economy would completely implode and we'd have a much worse financial crisis than the one we had in 2008. I mean, it wouldn't even be close to how bad it would be. And the government couldn't do anything to bail anybody out because the Fed would be hiking rates, not not not cutting them. So, for that reason, I don't believe the Fed will do what Paul Vulkar did in 1980 because from the Fed's perspective, the cure will be worse than the disease. So, the disease of high inflation is going to get worse. And so if people thought inflation was bad when Biden was president, wait till they see how much worse it's going to be during the balance of the Trump term. And then when Trump loses in 2028 and we get a Democrat in 2029, it'll be even worse. So inflation is going to continue to accelerate uh in the foreseeable future. As far as the I can see, inflation is going to go into the double digits. And who knows, it may even go into the triple digits. I, you know, but but it's going to become a huge problem because the Fed can't do anything about it politically. Now, they could if they were willing to, you know, take the hit. You know, Donald Trump talks about how he thinks we should have some short-term pain for long-term gain when it comes to paying high gas prices to to win a war against Iran. Well, you know, we should do the same thing in the economy. We should have to take short-term pain, massive cuts to government spending, eliminations of agencies and departments, and we should have to take a recession, a severe recession with a big drop in the stock market, a big drop in the real estate market. So, a lot of wealth wiped out, a lot of companies going bankrupt, a lot of debt going into default. We have to take that serious economic downturn. That's the long the short-term pain we need uh you know to get the long-term ca gain that unfortunately we're not going to get >> because we won't take that short >> we're not going to get that short-term pain we're just going to get much more excruciating long-term pain >> and that would be in the form of that higher inflation because I guess that's kind of like passing a tax along to everybody who's going to feel it right >> yeah but we're going to get inflation so instead of the government reducing our benefits the government will reduce the value of our benefits by creating inflation So instead of defaulting on its bonds, uh it pays its bonds in money that doesn't buy very much. Instead of cutting social security benefits, the value of your benefits gets cut because you can't buy very much with your social security checks. So but the the way the government is going about it because it's politically more palatable is actually worse economically. So, all the people who are going to suffer from inflation, if we just asked them or told them they were going to get less money, uh, they would actually be better off because the money they got would buy more. Instead, they're going to get all their money, but they're not going to be able to buy very much with it. Hey everyone, I hope you are enjoying this interview. If you can take a quick moment and hit that subscribe button, we are on a mission to hit our next goal of 100,000 subscribers, and your support could really help us get there. Thank you so much and enjoy the rest of the interview. Okay, so you said this got my attention. You said you think this is going to be much worse than 2008. Can you kind of elaborate a bit more? Um, and then for that kind of scenario, what kind of probability are you putting on that? >> Well, it would be worse than 2008 if the Fed did the right thing. Mhm. >> Uh but because it won't do the right thing, because it knows that doing so would create a worse financial crisis than 2008, it won't. And so what's going to happen is not going to look like 2008. It's going to be a different type of crisis. I think it's going to be a US dollar crisis, a sovereign debt crisis. H and you're going to have very high inflation. M and and so I think the real losses that average Americans and investors are going to suffer as a result are going to be greater uh than the losses uh that were suffered in 089. And in fact if you held on I mean even if you know the stock market got cut in half and you didn't sell anything and you held on the government bailouts bailed you out. The market came up and made new highs. But this time, people are going to get wiped out and the bailouts or the attempted bailouts will just wipe out what's left. So, it's, you know, the government's going to make it worse this time for for investors and and all Americans are going to suffer uh the consequences of these misguided policies. >> Okay, real quick, just to emphasize, what would be the right thing to do for the Fed? What is the right thing? >> Well, the right thing to do, you know, it would be a to stop doing the wrong thing. They have to completely do it about phase. Uh interest rates need to be much much higher. They have to they have to go higher than they were. The Fed started cutting rates in the summer of 2023. The Fed funds rate was at 5 and a quarter. Now it's three and a half. They got to reverse all that. We got to get back above five. Problem though, at this point we probably need to go above six. But there's no way they're going to do that. They're they're they're not going to pull the rug out from under the entire bubble economy. They're not going to crash the housing market. They're not going to crash the stock market. But the the alternative is worse. The alternative is that you keep creating inflation. And if you look at the value of the US stock market today, the Dow is worth less than 10 ounces of gold. Now, in 1999, the Dow was worth more than 40 ounces of gold. So you're talking about a 75% decline in the value of stocks even though the nominal price of stocks has gone up almost fivefold but in real terms the stocks have lost value and and and that trend is going to accelerate in the years ahead. So I, you know, I think the Dow could go down to less than two ounces of gold in, you know, in le in the next 5 to 10 years, which is, you know, which is another, you know, 80% drop in real terms. Now, during that same period of time, the Dow might go up. Who the hell knows? But it won't matter if it goes up because you're not going to be richer. You're going to be poorer even if you own the Dow. >> All right. You mentioned gold. We got to talk about it's well it's pulled back today but like I think the last time you and I spoke was December. I'm not even sure. I don't think gold had even hit 5,000 at that point but it has been on an absolute tear. Um what do you make of the performance then we've that we've seen in gold? >> Well gold gold gold got to 5500 and change earlier in the year and after today's almost $200 selloff we're back down below 5,000 or you know 40 >> 482817. Um and and this selloff was mostly the result of the hotter than expected PPI numbers. And then gold sold off a bit more uh after the the PAL press conference where PAL acknowledged that at the last FOMC meeting, they discussed the possibility of a rate hike. Even though nobody was recommending one, the fact that they even discussed raising rates was was problematic. Um, now of course they they they should have hype rates, but gold went down because investors are now pushing back the date when they expect the next rate cut. But I don't think that that is what's important here. It's not about when the Fed cuts rates. Doesn't matter if the Fed cuts rates. What matters is that they're not hiking rates. And they should be hiking rates. See, investors are focused on nominal interest rates. They're saying, "Oh, the nominal rates, the Fed funds rate is going to stay at 3 and a/4. It's not going to go down to three or 2 and 3/4." So, they're selling gold. What matters is the inflation rate. If the inflation rate doubles from three to six and even if the Fed hiked rates to 4%, which they're probably not going to do, but even if they did that, but inflation went from 3 to six, real interest rates would decline from a positive half a percent to a minus 2%. So, a negative 2% real yield. That is very bullish for gold. That is very bearish for the dollar. The markets still don't get what's happening. The Fed is is way behind the curve. There's a huge inflation problem, but the Fed is powerless to do anything about it because if it does something about it, everything crashes. I mean, look at Fanny and Freddy May stock today. The GSC's were down. They're down about 65% now since the the big runoff when when Trump a big runup because Trump was talking about, you know, privatizing them, releasing them from conservatorship, which was a commitment that he made to a lot of his donors who were big shareholders and and Fanny and Freddy. I mean, the best thing he could do for the country is to get rid of them completely. The worst thing he can do is what he was promising his donors he would do. But if you look at what's happened now, um the the share price is collapsing. And I think it's not just because it doesn't look like Trump is going to be able to follow through with with with these uh commitments, but look what's happening to the housing market. H mortgage rate mortgage applications just collapsed. refies just collapsed because mortgage rates are now rising along with other interest rates and houses are the most overpriced they've ever been, more so than they were at their peak in 2005. We need at least a 30% reduction if not more. 30 to 40% decline in home prices given where mortgage rates are now. But if mortgage rates move up, which I think is more likely, uh who knows how much bigger the decline may need before houses are affordable again. But home prices are going to be determined by what the buyers can pay, not what the sellers are hoping to get >> because that doesn't matter. And during this next downturn with a big increase in unemployment and recession, a lot of homes are going to get sold. and they're going to get sold at much much lower prices and it's going to reset all the comps and you're going to wipe out home equity for millions of people. And what does that mean? That that means a lot of those people default on their mortgages and that means big losses for the GSC's. And that that's one of the reasons I think they're starting to go down is people are starting to get worried about forgetting about privatizing them. They're about to need another government bailout. Of course, they're owned by the government right now. So, the government would be bailing itself out. But the point is, who would want to buy Fanny and Freddy when all you're doing is buying a bunch of liability? >> Well, I got to tell you, I met with a mortgage banker this week to buy I want to buy my first home, but now like you're kind of scaring me. Maybe I should wait. >> Well, where where where in the country are you looking at buying it? >> In Raleigh, North Carolina. >> Yeah. >> Not really sure the market there. Um, but I would look around at what you can rent relative to what you can buy and you can compare the relative costs. And remember, renting is pretty simple. You just write your landlord a check. But when you buy a house, you have a lot of other factors, you know, other than the mortgage and the and the opportunity cost of the down payment. You have taxes. Uh, you have insurance, you have maintenance, and the maintenance is is is unknown. I mean, who the hell knows what could go wrong? I mean, I have several houses and stuff's always going wrong. Cost me a fortune to maintain these houses. When I'm was renting, it was a lot cheaper. When something went wrong, I just got on the phone. I called the landlord. It was his problem. Uh, but when you own the house, it's all it's all your problem. The the best thing I think about buying a home still is that if you can get a mortgage in the sixes, I still think you're getting cheap money because I think inflation is going to be a lot higher than six. So ultimately, inflation pays back a lot of your mortgage. You don't have to actually pay it back. Inflation takes care of a chunk of it. So you end up making money as a debtor, not as a a homeowner. >> Well, there you go. Well, maybe maybe I'll get a good deal. Who knows? Um >> but you could probably offer a lower price now that that mortgage rates are are are higher. >> Yeah. Okay. >> I wouldn't pay top dollar. Put in some low bids, you know. >> There you go. Um negotiate a bit here. All right. So you are calling for dollar crisis and you'd been talking about that before we got into the war. So I guess my question is we also have tariffs. Um what do you think is the bigger threat to the dollar right now? Like what is the biggest threat to the dollar? >> Well, you know, ironically and and maybe not so ironically if you're familiar with uh these trading patterns, but the war has helped the dollar. the dollar has rallied a bit on the war and and that's typical as a you know safe haven uh move uh the war has helped to lift interest rates and and that has also acted as a short-term boost to the dollar but I think the dollar's rally uh is not that big compared to rallies of the past under circumstances like this and I think that shows you uh that times are changing and the dollar is not seen uh as as as favorably as it was in past military conflicts. And I think as time goes by and the war drags on, I think it's ultimately going to be a negative for the dollar because it's going to weaken the economy. It's going to lead to bigger budget deficits, more inflation. All this is dollar negative. And you know, it's just another thing that's going to upset the world, something that the United States has caused because the world is going to be dealing with higher energy prices, higher food prices, uh, the longer this war goes on. And you know that they can just blame that on Trump. Meanwhile, Trump has already pissed everybody off with the tariffs. Even though the tariffs are paid by Americans, contrary to the claims of Trump and his administration, Americans pay the tariffs, but to the extent that imported goods are a lot more expensive because we have to pay the tariffs in order to import them, that is uh, you know, bad news for a lot of foreign companies that now sell fewer goods to America. They have to find other customers and maybe they can't pay as much as we did. And so yes, it is, you know, a negative for some companies and, you know, that, you know, so we pissed off a lot of these companies. You know, these are trading relationships that have been going on. Um, and you know, I think we've also antagonized uh people with our threats like, you know, Trump was threatening to invade Greenland. I mean, what the hell did Greenland do, right? Greenland wasn't a threat to anybody. But Donald Trump decided that we needed Greenland strategically. we needed to own that real estate. And he said, "If we can't get a deal, we're going to send our troops in and we're going to take it by force." Now, he never did that. I think he backed away. But the fact that he even contemplated it out loud, I think, is is is a big negative because it gets people to thinking, you know, you know, maybe they'll maybe they'll do it next time. So, I think I think we've, you know, we're losing a lot of our uh you know, credibility. Uh I think a lot of our allies are not as aligned with us and I think we're driving our enemies closer together and I think we're even driving our allies uh to have greater ties with our enemies. I mean to the extent that we perceive China, Russia as enemies, I think they're making a lot of inroads. In fact, if you look at uh Chinese trade is growing with Canada. It's growing in South America. uh even as it's declining with us, uh China is now uh doing more trade with everybody else. >> Do you see a scenario where President Trump could be successful on the foreign policy front? >> I mean, yeah, it's possible. I I just think that the odds that this war is a success are much lower than it being a failure. Now, even if it's a failure, Donald Trump could still claim it's a success. He could define anything he wants as a success and he probably will. Uh just like he claims we have the greatest economy in history and we obviously don't. We we we actually have a worse economy than we had under Biden. And Biden he says we had the worst economy in history. So Trump can very easily lie about whatever the hell he wants. And none of the Republicans will call him out on it. They'll all repeat the same lie as if it was true. And um in fact, you know, I was listening to an interview with Chris Christie and he recalled a conversation he had with Donald Trump and Donald Trump told him, "If you repeat a lie often enough, it becomes true. Not that people will think it's true, but that repeating the lie enough makes it true on its own." And so that's kind of his mentality. So yeah, I'm I'm sure that as far as Trump is concerned, the war is going to be a huge success, but in reality, I think it's more likely to be a failure. And it's not just, you know, anti-Trump. I think all of these wars have been failures, whether they're Republican or Democrats who are running it. I mean, I I I I think I think we go into the Middle East and we we create more problems than we solve. that that's been the history. >> Mhm. I guess like now that we know this is playing out from an investor perspective, has this altered anything for you? Um, and if so, how so? >> No, I mean, I was increasing my holdings in energy stocks months before the war started just because I thought oil was cheap when it was down below $60 a barrel and I thought oil stocks were cheap. So, that was those were good uh uh buys that I made. I wish I actually had had done even more of that. I didn't pair back any of my mining stocks, which have had a very big pullback um since the peak. Uh but I still think that the lion share of the move is in front of us, not behind us. And if anything, you know, this pullback is an opportunity for people who didn't have enough in the mighty sector. Now, that didn't include me. I'm so overweight uh that I I you know my position is okay still. But I mean if we get much more of a downside even I'm going to buy more. But I think for people who watch these stocks go way up and we're you know didn't have enough exposure take advantage of this decline because investors don't get it. Again, they they don't realize that the data is basically um confirming everything that I've been saying was going to happen, that inflation was going to run away and the economy was going to be weak and we're going to have this stagflation. This is what's happening. And all this is bullish for gold. So, the the knee-jerk reaction from people who don't really understand what's happening is to sell gold. But for the people who do understand what's happening, they they they would buy more, you know. >> Yeah. this audience likes gold. Um, that's what I found is uh got a lot of folks out there who like gold even though we're not a gold channel by any means. Um, you did mention oil looking at it last at 99.82 a barrel. I had I had a guest on here who was it was a Peter Bookvar who was like, "Oh, $60. You'll think that's real cheap." Um, that was not too long ago. Um, but gosh, I saw diesel and I drive a diesel engine. I'm not an EV girly. um was $5.19 uh $519 this morning. >> Yeah. And you know, oil prices $100 a barrel is still not that expensive. I mean, we got up to above 140. >> Mhm. >> In 2008. So that was, you know, 18 years ago. >> Yeah. >> And you know, so think about how much inflation we've had over the last 18 years. So, you know, where would oil prices have to be today in real terms to be 140 in 1980? So, you know, we still have a long way to go to get back up to that level. >> Still cheap. >> What caused oil prices to really drop in 2008 was the financial crisis. So, who knows what would have happened to prices if we hadn't had that crisis, but we had a collapse in demand because we had this global financial crisis and that brought the price of oil uh back down. So oil prices could go a lot higher than $100 a barrel. And they will go a lot higher if the straight of Hermuz remains closed for a couple more months and the war continues and more of the energy infrastructure is taken out and more of the production, you know, is is is suspended. Yeah, we could be $150 $200 a barrel. So, you know, think about that. >> Okay. What? Okay. Maybe you have to give me a history lesson because I I was in college during that time like what was going on with the energy prices pre-inancial crisis before the banks collapsed. Um and do you see parallels to today then? >> Well, back then the dollar was very weak. The dollar was really going down and it was also saved by the financial crisis. So, we haven't seen a big dollar weakness yet. Now, that could come. Now, one thing we've seen is gold strength. Gold was very strong leading up to the 2008 financial crisis. In fact, gold had risen from under 300 in 2000 to a,000 by 2008. So, it was a big move. And now we've had a big move in gold, too, because we got up to 5,500. Gold was at 2,000 a couple years ago. So, we've got gold going up. and and even though the dollar hasn't been that weak, the dollar did recently hit an all-time record low against the Swiss Frank. So, I think that's a leading indicator of where the dollar is headed, uh it'll soon be making record lows against all currencies, you know, but it's still a ways to go for the dollar to hit like a record low against the euro or the pound or the yen. There's a long way to go. Switzerland is just a a much stronger economy. So that currency uh you know has gained a lot and in fact the dollar would be a lot lower relative to the Swiss Frank had the Swiss government not deliberately undermine their currency to prevent it from going up because it could have gone up a lot more >> and ultimately it will go up a lot more. >> Okay. Can you kind of walk me through how a dollar crisis might unfold? Like what is what does it look like? How will we recognize it as it's happening? Like what are the signposts? Um yeah, >> well, you know, $5,000 gold is one of the signposts right there, you know, that's going on. But I think you really want to look at the bond market for a more significant rise in the bond market because obviously if there's a dollar crisis, there is a bond crisis. The two are linked together because all dollars are are promises to pay or I mean all bonds are are promises to pay dollars in the future. And if you're losing confidence in the dollar in the present, the last thing you want is dollars in the future because then they'll be even less valuable. So you'll see the bond market, you'll see the spreads, you know, really widening, you know, the tips, you know, spreads and and and the yield curve will be steepening. Um the dollar obviously will be dropping against other currencies and gold will be rising. So look at those markets. Those are the key markets, the bond market, the foreign exchange market, and the gold market. And when you really see them moving in big ways, that's a pretty good sign that the dollar crisis is here. You know, by the time it's obvious, then it's too late, right? By the time the dollar completely implodes. Yeah, we had a dollar crisis, but now now what? I mean, it's too late to prepare for it. That's why, you know, I I've been preparing my clients for a dollar crisis for years and years. We haven't had one yet, but we had a phenomenal year last year. I mean, last year was the best year I had. uh return-wise, I mean our our gold uh portfolios well more than doubled. But even our non- gold strategies, I have a foreign dividend payer strategy where I buy dividend paying foreign stocks and even that was up better than 60% last year and it's doing even better this year. Uh and so I think money is already shifting out of the US into international stocks. You know, Donald Trump talks about all the money coming into the US, but from my perspective, money is fleeing the US because the US pretty much has the worst performing stock market in the world in 2026. You know, all the other markets that I'm investing in are doing much much better and it's not even close. Uh, you know, US is down on the year maybe what five six%. foreign markets are up uh even even with recent declines >> and and so I don't think it's it's costing people money to protect themselves from a dollar crisis because I think right now portfolios that are designed to benefit from a dollar crisis are already substantially outperforming US focused portfolios but once we get a dollar crisis then that outperformance will be dramatically higher than than it is now. >> Yeah. Okay. Do you think it's still early innings on that rotation like out of the US? Do where do you see us in that? And is this like a new regime for investing? >> I think it's very early because it really started last year. So, you know, this is the second year of it. Um, and I think the rotation into gold, central banks started rotating out of dollars into gold a couple years ago and and that transition is ongoing and will accelerate, but private investors have barely even scratched the surface. I think we've seen a little bit of money moving into the gold sector this year and now maybe some of it is already coming out. People are are, you know, are scared now because it's going down. But I think we're very early in private flows, private investment flows, you know, pension funds, endowments, hedge funds. And I don't even think the retail investor, I mean, the retail investor really got sidetracked over the last couple years into crypto, which is very unfortunate because they're going to lose a lot of money in Bitcoin and other cryptoreated investments. The money that was made in crypto was made by all the people who cashed out, right? That was that's how you make money in Bitcoin. you sell yours, right? The people who buy it are are going to lose money. And a lot of people over the last couple years as foreign central banks were buying gold and the price of gold was doubling, Americans were selling their gold and buying Bitcoin. And now the price of Bitcoin has been cut in half. Um, but those trends are going to continue. But when the public realizes that they bet on the wrong horse, uh, they'll they'll move over to gold. And so that, you know, that's that didn't even started yet. So, I think $5,000 gold now it's 4,800. You know, I think this is cheap. I I don't think gold's going to stay under 5,000 for long. So, people should be buying it, you know, going going and get it at shift gold. Silver's at 75. Silver got up to 120. So, it's had a big pullback, but it had a massive breakout. There was a double top just below 50 going back to 1980 and then 2011, and we blew through that. So, silver's in a brand new huge bull market. Uh so people should buy any dips in silver. So you can get both metals, you know, at shift gold and we have strategies that are specifically focused on gold mining stocks. Those are the ones that I think have the most upside potential and people, if you're underweight, you really need to get into these miners. I think they're ridiculously cheap. Where do you see their earnings? The earnings that these num companies are going to be putting out in 2026 should blow away estimates. Uh and all these stocks are very cheap even given the estimates that they're going to blow out. Uh so they're not even factoring any of this in. So you know we have separately managed accounts but people can also buy my gold fund pretty much any discount broker. We have a no-load share class uh institutional share class. EPGIX is the symbol for the no-load gold fund. Uh today would be a great day to buy it. Markets are closed but you know buy it as soon as you can. >> Yeah. as you say like 4,800 for gold cheap. All right, Peter, where do you see it headed then? Like what's do you do price targets? I don't know. But >> well, look, I I don't have a target because gold, you know, gold's going to keep rising. Remember, when the Federal Reserve was created in 1913, gold was $20 an ounce. Um, and so you now you need $5,000 to buy an ounce of gold. An ounce of gold is no different than it was when the Fed was created. What's different is the dollar. The dollar that we entrusted the Fed to protect collapsed and the dollar lost more than 99% of its purchasing power. Whereas, you know, when we established the the dollar as 20 ounces of gold in the Coinage Act of 1789, gold was $20 an ounce. And in 1913 when the Fed was established again, it was still $20 an ounce. So when we had a free market and no central bank, the dollar maintained its value and you could buy an ounce of gold for the same price in 1913 as you could in 1813, right? You had 100 years, you know, the dollar maintained its value. In fact, the price of everything else went way down. Uh so the dollar held its value in terms of gold, but it gained a lot of value in terms of goods and services. But ever since we created the central bank, the dollar has lost more than 99% of its value. So now you need $5,000 to buy the same ounce of gold that you could buy for just $20 before we had a central bank. So that trend is going to continue. As long as we have a central bank, it's going to be debasing the dollar. I just think the rate of decay is going to increase. Uh so gold prices could go to 10,000 20,000 uh in the not too distant future 5 10 years from now. But it's not because gold is changing. It's just because the dollar is losing value. You just need more dollars to buy the same ounce of gold. >> The dollar story. Okay. Um, the last time you and I spoke, um, President Trump had posted about you on Truth Social after your Fox News Fox and Friends appearance. Um, he called you a Trumphating loser. We addressed that at the time, but the thing is, the reason I want to bring it up is I think you voted for Trump or you would have voted for him. I don't really know exactly how it works in Puerto Rico, but I I know you were not a Kla Harris supporter, that's for sure. >> No. Well, I voted for Trump in 2016. >> Okay. >> That was my last year in the US. >> Mhm. >> Uh and and so and I I encouraged my followers in social media on my podcast. I encouraged them to vote for Trump, too. >> So, yeah, I did do that, but I wasn't very enthusiastic about my support for Trump. I I framed it as the lesser of two evils. I just thought that between the two, Harris was worse. Now, you know, I second guess that because Trump is is doing even worse than I thought he was going to do, but it's, you know, it's hard to know what Harris would have done, right? You just, you know, it's a counterfactual. There's no way to know. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. >> So, you know, I it still might be that Harris would have been even worse than Trump. But the problem is that the next president will definitely be worse than Trump. >> Okay, that's what I wanted to ask. >> The next president will be a Democrat. That is the problem. >> Okay, elaborate on that thesis too. Like, okay, 2028, what do you see ahead for 2028? Well, if you understand what's been happening for the last three presidential elections, the incumbent party loses and the the the party that's out of power wins. And that's because the incumbent party has to defend a lousy economy by pretending it's good. So in 2016, Hillary Clinton had a lie about how good the economy is because she wanted to continue uh Obama and she was his secretary of state and you know she is the Democrat. Hey, we want four more years of this. And Donald Trump was like, well, the economy is lousy. The government statistics are wrong. You're being lied to. Uh I'm going to come in and clean house and drain the swamp. Everything is a disaster. Put me there. I'm a businessman. I'm gonna fix this mess. And the public believed Trump and they they voted for Trump. Now, four years later, the economy has gotten worse. Trump pretends that it's better and that he's already made America great again. And Biden says, "No, I feel your pain. Things have gotten worse since Trump was elected." And and that was true. And so the voters went for Biden and not Trump. Four years later, when Kla Harris is trying to defend four years of Biden and she's telling everybody how great everything is, Donald Trump comes back in and says, "Things are lousy. This is a terrible economy. It's a disaster." And he was right. And he's like, "I'll fix it." But of course, you know, the voters voted for Trump. Now, in four years, whichever Republican is running is going to have to run on the Trump record, and they're going to have to lie to the voters about how great everything is. The challenger is going to be able to be truthful and say everything is lousy, things are worse. What the challenger is going to lie about is that they're going to fix it. Mhm. >> And and so elections are won by the person who lies that he's going to make something better, not by the person who lies and tells you it's already good. Because that lie is harder to believe. If you're living in a weak economy and you know it's bad and your cost of living has gone way up and you're in debt and you know you're worse off than you were four years ago and somebody is trying to tell you that you're better off, well, you know that's a lie. You're not going to believe that. But if someone else acknowledges how bad it is and then lies to you about how they're going to make it better, well, you know, maybe you don't know that that's a lie, you might as well take a shot at at at that guy or that gal, whatever. So, that's how it's going to work. But, you know, Donald Trump has kind of branded this whole economy with big with a big T. But people associate Trump with, you know, limited government, uh, conservative. They think he's like another Ronald Reagan. is pro- free market, pro- capitalism. None of this is true, but this is the perception. And so that's going to open up an opportunity for the Democrats to not just run against Trump, but run against capitalism and say that is the problem. What we need is socialism. Capitalism wrecked the economy. Corporate greed, you know, uh this is what destroyed us. We need government to control the economy. Government needs to take over. government needs to make sure everything is fair and that people don't ri, you know, aren't ripping you off. And I, you know, I think this is going to be very destructive once, you know, if the Democrats get the White House and the Senate and House of Representatives, who knows what they're going to do. >> You don't think they'll better be prepared. You better be, you know, they're going to inherit a bad problem and they're going to make it much worse. that. So that's the one thing because at least had the Democrats somehow won the 2024 election, it would be very uh fertile territory for some Republican to come in in 2028 and say, "Look, I you know, with this socialism has destroyed the country. We need to try something different." You know, >> we need like a a Malay that they have down in Argentina. That's what we need here. >> What do you think the economic endgame is for Trump? Well, I mean, he, you know, this is his last term, right? He doesn't really have an endgame. I think Donald Trump's plan is to try to get out of dodge before, you know, everything collapses. So, try to keep inflating the bubble so that if it pops, it's when somebody else is in charge and so they can take the blame. Meanwhile, I think he wants to see how much money he can leverage off of the presidency, how much money his family can can make. I mean, I think he might have a grudge about all the money he spent on legal bills and and and other problems that he had during his first term and and following his first term. And I was very much a supporter of Trump's when he was the victim of all this lawfare that I never uh believed was was was legal or right. And I was, you know, defended him quite a bit. So I'm clearly wasn't a Trump hater. In fact, I was out there on my podcast when the Access Hollywood stuff came out. I was defending Trump. There weren't a lot of people willing to defend that. I I defended that. So So I I've defended Trump for a long time. But I'm also willing to criticize Trump when he's wrong. And that's something that Trump can't stand. He He needs asskissers that that that say he's great no matter what. That that that and that's what he surrounds himself with, which which is a a big problem. Now, now I forgot what I was actually talking about. I went down a couple of times. >> You don't see an opportunity to like write the economic ship, if you will. >> Well, no, we're not going to write the ship right now. We're we're we're we're not even close to that. What what we need is reductions in government spending. We we and and and and Trump delivered the opposite. The big beautiful bill which he you know talks about all the time is was a disaster. The big beautiful bill not only didn't reduce any of the excess spending of the Biden years, it added to it. So the Republicans won by criticizing the Biden spending, but the minute they got into power, they decided to keep all that spending and then spend even more. Uh so the the problems have gotten worse not better. The tariffs have added another layer of problem. Uh they haven't made us rich like like Trump pretends and a lot of the other things that that he is uh uh uh promoting. Uh you know if the Democrats were promoting them the Republicans would be up in arms. Uh but you know Trump is you know pushing a lot of this big government socialist policies because he's he's trying to be a populist. Uh but the problem is you can't solve a problem with popular solutions because the solutions are not popular. When the solutions involve some pain, it's never popular if that's the prescription. You win elections by promising no pain. And and so that that's what Trump wants to be. He doesn't want to be a good president. He wants to be a popular president. And and and a lot of times being a good president means doing things that are very unpopular, >> right? But people will know that they were good in hindsight and they'll look back gee that those are really good things >> that were done. >> Uh but Trump just wants to be popular now. He doesn't care about you what he later. He wants to be popular right now. >> Do you think a lot of politicians >> I know what I was talking about that he wants to make a lot of money and so that's what he's doing too. I think the Trump family is making a lot of money parlaying uh the presidency. I think there's a lot of trading going on on insider information, not necessarily inside information about a particular company, but Trump and his administration, they're able to move markets. They move currency markets, they move precious metals markets, they move oil markets, they move crypto markets with with a a truth social post. So, all you need to know, have is some advanced knowledge of what Donald Trump is going to post and you can make a ton of money. And I think this is going on. Plus, the Trumps have already made billions off of crypto. Uh they've they've they've basically, you know, bled that to death. Uh but it's unfortunate because obviously they're making their crypto money off of others who are losing it. The, you know, the crypto industry doesn't create any wealth. It just separates people from their wealth. It's a transfer from the people who are selling tokens to the people who are buying them. So Trump, the Trump family made a lot of money off of Trump coin and Melaniacoin, but did they add any value? Does does the fact that there are Trump coins around, does that make America a stronger country? Can we produce more goods because we have Trumpcoin? No, we can't do anything with Trumpcoin. But what happened is people were dumb enough to buy it and they lost their money and they lost it to the president, right? His family. I mean, look at look at the hundreds of millions that Baron Trump has made, right? I mean, I'm sure he's a smart kid, but is he is he really that big of a genius? He's making hundreds of millions of dollars as a teenager. Obviously, he's exploiting uh his position. You know, one of the things that the the Democrats were correct about, and I supported this, was they were, you know, all over the Bidens for their corruption and Hunter Biden and all the shell companies that they were using to launder the money that was obviously bribes. But what the Bidens did was chump change compared to what the Trumps are doing. The Trumps are doing a lot more. I mean, the Bidens are jealous. They I mean, Hunter Biden's like, "Oh my god, I should have been a Trump, you know, looking at what they're doing." But one of the thing the Trumps are doing is they do it out in the open, too. They they they don't even bother to launder it. They just they just put it right out there. And it's like, well, look, you know, if we're going to admit that we're doing this, then we can claim that there's nothing wrong with it, right? That's part of Trump's uh philosophy of repeating lies and making them true. So if he keeps, you know, telling lies that there's nothing wrong here, then then then then all then it's true. >> All right, Peter. Oh, you're going to get some truth social post on that one. Just just saying. Um >> that assumes Donald Trump watches your podcast, which you know, you got to be on Fox News. That's that's what he watches even at 5 in the morning. >> Love to interview Donald Trump. I would love to interview President Trump. So, he's welcome to come on. >> Well, I think he got me kicked off of Fox. I was on Fox Business today, so he didn't get me kicked off of there, but >> Oh gosh, Peter. Oh, man. Um, that's your opinions. Just FYI, I just asked the questions and we don't censor. We don't censor on the channel. Okay. Um, let me ask you the final question then. number one risk that's keeping you up at night these days and then the the thing that's making you hopeful about the future. >> Well, I mean, I'm not necessarily worried about about stuff. I mean, I pretty much think I know what's going to happen. So sometimes I'm up at night if I if if things are really volatile and I and and and and I and I wake up and I check prices, you know, I like, you know, so sometimes when the volatility really picks up and things are going on, it's hard to sleep through the night, you know, when you're having and you're, you know, you got your phone right near your bed and you can go and see see what's going on. But I I think that my portfolio is well positioned that all of the things that I think are going to go wrong and that will go wrong that will cause a lot of people to lose a lot of money. I'm not they're I'm going to make a lot of money as a result of those things. And I am not worried that I'm wrong. I'm very confident that I'm right. And so I don't, you know, stay up at night worried about the fact that I might be wrong. I'm confident that I'm right, but I'm right about all these problems that should be keeping other people up at night, especially if they're not protected from those problems. uh which is again why I would encourage people to you know you know become clients of mine so that they can sleep soundly because if you know what's going to happen and if you don't have yourself protected you should have trouble sleeping because I do think that when we get the real beginning of the crisis it's going to happen when most people are asleep because I think you know China holds the cards and I think that this crisis is going to start in their time zone not not our time zone when they really start dumping dollars and dumping treasuries in in a big way. Uh and so you, you know, you need to go to bed with the right portfolio if you want to know that you're going to wake up without a massive hole blown in it. Uh which a lot of Americans are going to see. But as far as what am I am I hopeful about? Look, I am still hopeful that at the other end of this, at the other side of this crisis, we can emerge as a stronger, freer nation. that instead of, you know, the the crisis being a catalyst to socialism, it's a catalyst to reject socialism and and and embrace the free market principles that made America great in the first place. That that's what I'm hoping. Uh, you know, I don't think we're going to embrace those principles until there is a crisis. I don't think we're going to give up on all the government freebies until we realize that it was all a scam and everybody is broke who relied on government promises. And then I'm hoping we could, you know, go back to our roots of the rugged individual of free Americans that aren't dependent, aren't relying, >> not the warm the collective warmth of >> on government, you know, whatever. Yeah. >> My grandparents, all four of my grandparents came here in search of freedom. They didn't come here for welfare or food stamps or housing subsidies because they didn't exist. Uh all America had to offer a 100 years ago was freedom and that was a very powerful thing because other nations didn't have it. And because Americans were free, we were very prosperous. So I would like to go back to that. In fact, Donald Trump often talks fondly about the heyday of America's power in the latter 19th century, 1880s, 1890s. And the reason we were so great back then was not because we had tariffs. It was because the government was so small that we only needed tariffs and we could pay for the whole thing. And so I I want to go back to the economic freedom that we had during that time period, which means dismantling over 90% of the government. But if we can do that, uh, then we lay the foundation for a real economic boom. So I'm hopeful that we get to that point >> and and maybe what's happening, you know, in AI and robotics will make all of that uh happen even faster and to an even greater degree. Uh because we have while I want to go back to 19th century freedom, I don't want to go back to 19th century technology. I'm very happy with 21st century technology. Yeah. So if we combine 21st century technology with 19th century freedom, that is a powerful formula >> for an economic boom. >> I have one quick follow- on question. Is that okay, Dean? Okay. Um just on the the part you said that it will start in China is what's happening in Iran because Iran is really important for China especially for oil. Do you think that's the catalyst then or did that speed up the risk of this playing out like is like a Yeah, >> I don't know if it's necessarily the catalyst but it's just you know like another weight on the scale that's going to tip you know the crisis. It just I think it it it harms our our our position. It weakens the US and you know it ultimately drives our enemies closer together to the extent we think China's an enemy. Look look what's going on with China and Iran. I mean they're you know uh the Chinese ships are are allowed through the strait. >> Uh and and and Iran is now trying to get other nations to trade oil in Chinese yuan. And if they do that, they'll let their ships through. So, they weren't doing that before the war, but they're doing it now. >> Yeah, that'll be something to watch for sure. Peter, um, always fun to have you on the show. Let's do it again. Um, you you said you wanted to do this more often and I didn't I it took me a long time to reach out to you. We had you on episode 319 and um, so it hasn't been that many episodes since we had you. I think we're around 350 or thereabouts or close to it. Matt Matt would know. So maybe we'll do a little quarterly if you're open to it. >> Yeah, they're they're you're how well your audience is growing, too. So that's good. >> They're growing and and look, they love you, Peter. So Peter Schiff, chief economist and global strategist at Europacific Asset Management and CEO of Shift Gold. Thank you so much for being so generous with your time, all of your knowledge, helping us learn. Really appreciate you. >> Oh, my pleasure. Thanks for having me on.
Peter Schiff: Inflation Is Going to Double Digits — The Fed Can't Stop It
Summary
Transcript
So inflation is going to continue to accelerate. Inflation is going to go into the double digits and who knows it may even go into the triple digits. I you know but but it's going to become a huge problem because the Fed can't do anything about it politically. You know Donald Trump talks about how he thinks we should have some short-term pain for long-term gain when it comes to paying high gas prices to to win a war against Iran. Well, you know, we should do the same thing in the economy. >> Peter Schiff, chief economist and global strategist at Europacific Asset Management and founder of Shift Gold. It is so wonderful to welcome you back to the show. Great to see you as always, Peter. >> Thanks, Julia. Nice to see you, too. >> Yeah, we had you back on in December and that was such a fun conversation and I told you, Peter, that we'd have you on more often. So, I'm thrilled to have you on Fed Day. We just had the FOMC with Fed Chair Powell talking about the economy saying this is nothing like the 1970s and I saw you post on X that you're like well it's much worse. So let's talk about the state of the economy, the big picture. Where are we today and why do you say it's much worse than the 1970s? >> Well, you know, in the 1970s the national debt was still below a trillion. It didn't even get to a trillion, I think, until 1980. Um, and so we're we just passed 39 trillion if anybody's keeping score. I think that was yesterday. But it's exploding out of control. The national debt has increased by 2.8 trillion just in the last uh 14 months since Donald Trump's been president. But if you look at the trajectory of the debt and what's likely to happen in the coming years, I think we might actually hit 50 trillion before Trump finishes his term. So that'd be about 11 trillion more in debt over the next 3 years. But I think what could drive the debt to that level would be a recession, which I think we could be on the cusps of, an official recession that will reduce uh government tax revenue and increase expenditures, upward pressure on interest rates that will also increase the debt service cost of the government. And the war, you know, we just Trump just started a war. And you know, we know from history, wars last a lot longer and cost a lot more than anybody expects. And and so all the money to pay for the war is going to be borrowed. And and so the debt is just going to explode. And so we're in a much weaker position than we were in the 1970s because the way the Fed was able to get the inflation genie back in the bottle, the genie which it let out of the bottle was by letting short-term interest rates rise to 20%. Now we could afford to pay 20% in 1980 because we didn't have that much debt. we can't afford to pay half that now because we have so much debt. You know, Pal talked about that there's some conflicts in the mandate, some tension, you know, between uh rising unemployment and rising inflation. So, there's a little tension. They're not really sure if they should cut rates or leave them alone. They should be hiking rates. I mean, that's obviously what the data uh show, but they're not doing that. But it's a lot more than just tension. The economy is very weak. The labor market, if you look at the data, forget about Trump's uh, you know, grandiose claims about this booming economy and the hottest economy in history, the US economy only added about 150,000 jobs all last year in total. And about half of them were in healthcare. You can contrast that to over two million jobs that were added in 2024 when we supposedly had the worst economy in history. We added a lot more jobs than we did last year when we had the greatest economy in history. And in fact, if you look at GDP from 2025, Trump's first year, US GDP grew by 2.2. It was 2.8 in Biden's last year. So, how was the economy the worst in 2.4 in in in 2024 and the best in 2025 when you know GDP was 20% stronger last year. In fact, 2.2% GDP growth is worse than the worst year that Biden had. Uh, so we've got a weak economy, but it's getting weaker. Q4 GDP was just.7 and now we have a war which we didn't have back then uh and inflation was already accelerating. Look at the numbers we got today uh for producer prices for the month of February. They spiked up 7/10en of 1% in one month. That annualizes to 8.4% inflation. uh year-over-year we're getting close to 4% now in the in the in the producer prices which are a leading indicator of consumer prices and all this before oil prices shot up by 50%. >> Mhm. So inflation was getting worse, the economy was getting weaker before Trump sh started a war, which may be one of the reasons he started the war as a distraction from the weak economy and rising inflation because now he can blame the weak economy and and the increase in inflation on the war and he can claim that, you know, we had to fight the war. We had no choice, right? We had to we had to take out Iran because all of a sudden they're this big threat. uh even though you know prior to starting the war he you know they weren't supposedly a threat at all. >> Okay, let's explore this a little bit further. So I take it your base case we're going to see much more inflation and a recession. Do would you have okay that's stagflation would you say is something worse than stagflation then? Like how would you describe it? Yeah. I mean, when you say stackflation, most people think of slow growth and high inflation. I'm I think it's going to be a recession >> with high inflation. So, like an almost like a inflationary depression it because I don't think stagflation does it justice because I think it's going to be uh something much worse again than the 1970s. And and part of the reason that it doesn't look as bad now as it did back then is because the government was more honest about the inflation rate and the unemployment rate in the 70s than they are today because the methodology that we used to calculate unemployment and inflation were very different. And so when Pal tries to contrast the current unemployment rate with the unemployment rate during the 1970s, it's apples to oranges. I mean, in fact, it's not even apples to oranges. It's apples uh you know, uh uh uh to bricks, you know. I mean, they're they're not even similar. Uh because the the the methodology is so different. So, if we kept track of unemployment and inflation because it's the same thing. the way we did in the 70s, you would have to double pretty much both the unemployment rate and the inflation rate to to get a number that would represent what it would have been had we met uh me measured them like we did in the 70s. So when you make that adjustment, the inflation and the unemployment rate that we have now is not that much lower or unemployment is not that much lower and inflation not much lower than it was in the 70s and it's about to get a lot higher. That's the thing. Unemployment is going to spike and inflation is going to spike even more. >> H okay. So then the question is where does that leave the Fed then? It sounds like they would be trapped. Like what decision would they have to make? The >> mandate. That's exactly the position. and they're between a rock and a hard place because if they raise rates and tighten monetary policy, which would also mean going back to quantitative tightening, if they were to raise rates by a degree that would actually be sufficient to rein in this inflation that they let loose, the rate would be so high that our debt ladated economy would completely implode and we'd have a much worse financial crisis than the one we had in 2008. I mean, it wouldn't even be close to how bad it would be. And the government couldn't do anything to bail anybody out because the Fed would be hiking rates, not not not cutting them. So, for that reason, I don't believe the Fed will do what Paul Vulkar did in 1980 because from the Fed's perspective, the cure will be worse than the disease. So, the disease of high inflation is going to get worse. And so if people thought inflation was bad when Biden was president, wait till they see how much worse it's going to be during the balance of the Trump term. And then when Trump loses in 2028 and we get a Democrat in 2029, it'll be even worse. So inflation is going to continue to accelerate uh in the foreseeable future. As far as the I can see, inflation is going to go into the double digits. And who knows, it may even go into the triple digits. I, you know, but but it's going to become a huge problem because the Fed can't do anything about it politically. Now, they could if they were willing to, you know, take the hit. You know, Donald Trump talks about how he thinks we should have some short-term pain for long-term gain when it comes to paying high gas prices to to win a war against Iran. Well, you know, we should do the same thing in the economy. We should have to take short-term pain, massive cuts to government spending, eliminations of agencies and departments, and we should have to take a recession, a severe recession with a big drop in the stock market, a big drop in the real estate market. So, a lot of wealth wiped out, a lot of companies going bankrupt, a lot of debt going into default. We have to take that serious economic downturn. That's the long the short-term pain we need uh you know to get the long-term ca gain that unfortunately we're not going to get >> because we won't take that short >> we're not going to get that short-term pain we're just going to get much more excruciating long-term pain >> and that would be in the form of that higher inflation because I guess that's kind of like passing a tax along to everybody who's going to feel it right >> yeah but we're going to get inflation so instead of the government reducing our benefits the government will reduce the value of our benefits by creating inflation So instead of defaulting on its bonds, uh it pays its bonds in money that doesn't buy very much. Instead of cutting social security benefits, the value of your benefits gets cut because you can't buy very much with your social security checks. So but the the way the government is going about it because it's politically more palatable is actually worse economically. So, all the people who are going to suffer from inflation, if we just asked them or told them they were going to get less money, uh, they would actually be better off because the money they got would buy more. Instead, they're going to get all their money, but they're not going to be able to buy very much with it. Hey everyone, I hope you are enjoying this interview. If you can take a quick moment and hit that subscribe button, we are on a mission to hit our next goal of 100,000 subscribers, and your support could really help us get there. Thank you so much and enjoy the rest of the interview. Okay, so you said this got my attention. You said you think this is going to be much worse than 2008. Can you kind of elaborate a bit more? Um, and then for that kind of scenario, what kind of probability are you putting on that? >> Well, it would be worse than 2008 if the Fed did the right thing. Mhm. >> Uh but because it won't do the right thing, because it knows that doing so would create a worse financial crisis than 2008, it won't. And so what's going to happen is not going to look like 2008. It's going to be a different type of crisis. I think it's going to be a US dollar crisis, a sovereign debt crisis. H and you're going to have very high inflation. M and and so I think the real losses that average Americans and investors are going to suffer as a result are going to be greater uh than the losses uh that were suffered in 089. And in fact if you held on I mean even if you know the stock market got cut in half and you didn't sell anything and you held on the government bailouts bailed you out. The market came up and made new highs. But this time, people are going to get wiped out and the bailouts or the attempted bailouts will just wipe out what's left. So, it's, you know, the government's going to make it worse this time for for investors and and all Americans are going to suffer uh the consequences of these misguided policies. >> Okay, real quick, just to emphasize, what would be the right thing to do for the Fed? What is the right thing? >> Well, the right thing to do, you know, it would be a to stop doing the wrong thing. They have to completely do it about phase. Uh interest rates need to be much much higher. They have to they have to go higher than they were. The Fed started cutting rates in the summer of 2023. The Fed funds rate was at 5 and a quarter. Now it's three and a half. They got to reverse all that. We got to get back above five. Problem though, at this point we probably need to go above six. But there's no way they're going to do that. They're they're they're not going to pull the rug out from under the entire bubble economy. They're not going to crash the housing market. They're not going to crash the stock market. But the the alternative is worse. The alternative is that you keep creating inflation. And if you look at the value of the US stock market today, the Dow is worth less than 10 ounces of gold. Now, in 1999, the Dow was worth more than 40 ounces of gold. So you're talking about a 75% decline in the value of stocks even though the nominal price of stocks has gone up almost fivefold but in real terms the stocks have lost value and and and that trend is going to accelerate in the years ahead. So I, you know, I think the Dow could go down to less than two ounces of gold in, you know, in le in the next 5 to 10 years, which is, you know, which is another, you know, 80% drop in real terms. Now, during that same period of time, the Dow might go up. Who the hell knows? But it won't matter if it goes up because you're not going to be richer. You're going to be poorer even if you own the Dow. >> All right. You mentioned gold. We got to talk about it's well it's pulled back today but like I think the last time you and I spoke was December. I'm not even sure. I don't think gold had even hit 5,000 at that point but it has been on an absolute tear. Um what do you make of the performance then we've that we've seen in gold? >> Well gold gold gold got to 5500 and change earlier in the year and after today's almost $200 selloff we're back down below 5,000 or you know 40 >> 482817. Um and and this selloff was mostly the result of the hotter than expected PPI numbers. And then gold sold off a bit more uh after the the PAL press conference where PAL acknowledged that at the last FOMC meeting, they discussed the possibility of a rate hike. Even though nobody was recommending one, the fact that they even discussed raising rates was was problematic. Um, now of course they they they should have hype rates, but gold went down because investors are now pushing back the date when they expect the next rate cut. But I don't think that that is what's important here. It's not about when the Fed cuts rates. Doesn't matter if the Fed cuts rates. What matters is that they're not hiking rates. And they should be hiking rates. See, investors are focused on nominal interest rates. They're saying, "Oh, the nominal rates, the Fed funds rate is going to stay at 3 and a/4. It's not going to go down to three or 2 and 3/4." So, they're selling gold. What matters is the inflation rate. If the inflation rate doubles from three to six and even if the Fed hiked rates to 4%, which they're probably not going to do, but even if they did that, but inflation went from 3 to six, real interest rates would decline from a positive half a percent to a minus 2%. So, a negative 2% real yield. That is very bullish for gold. That is very bearish for the dollar. The markets still don't get what's happening. The Fed is is way behind the curve. There's a huge inflation problem, but the Fed is powerless to do anything about it because if it does something about it, everything crashes. I mean, look at Fanny and Freddy May stock today. The GSC's were down. They're down about 65% now since the the big runoff when when Trump a big runup because Trump was talking about, you know, privatizing them, releasing them from conservatorship, which was a commitment that he made to a lot of his donors who were big shareholders and and Fanny and Freddy. I mean, the best thing he could do for the country is to get rid of them completely. The worst thing he can do is what he was promising his donors he would do. But if you look at what's happened now, um the the share price is collapsing. And I think it's not just because it doesn't look like Trump is going to be able to follow through with with with these uh commitments, but look what's happening to the housing market. H mortgage rate mortgage applications just collapsed. refies just collapsed because mortgage rates are now rising along with other interest rates and houses are the most overpriced they've ever been, more so than they were at their peak in 2005. We need at least a 30% reduction if not more. 30 to 40% decline in home prices given where mortgage rates are now. But if mortgage rates move up, which I think is more likely, uh who knows how much bigger the decline may need before houses are affordable again. But home prices are going to be determined by what the buyers can pay, not what the sellers are hoping to get >> because that doesn't matter. And during this next downturn with a big increase in unemployment and recession, a lot of homes are going to get sold. and they're going to get sold at much much lower prices and it's going to reset all the comps and you're going to wipe out home equity for millions of people. And what does that mean? That that means a lot of those people default on their mortgages and that means big losses for the GSC's. And that that's one of the reasons I think they're starting to go down is people are starting to get worried about forgetting about privatizing them. They're about to need another government bailout. Of course, they're owned by the government right now. So, the government would be bailing itself out. But the point is, who would want to buy Fanny and Freddy when all you're doing is buying a bunch of liability? >> Well, I got to tell you, I met with a mortgage banker this week to buy I want to buy my first home, but now like you're kind of scaring me. Maybe I should wait. >> Well, where where where in the country are you looking at buying it? >> In Raleigh, North Carolina. >> Yeah. >> Not really sure the market there. Um, but I would look around at what you can rent relative to what you can buy and you can compare the relative costs. And remember, renting is pretty simple. You just write your landlord a check. But when you buy a house, you have a lot of other factors, you know, other than the mortgage and the and the opportunity cost of the down payment. You have taxes. Uh, you have insurance, you have maintenance, and the maintenance is is is unknown. I mean, who the hell knows what could go wrong? I mean, I have several houses and stuff's always going wrong. Cost me a fortune to maintain these houses. When I'm was renting, it was a lot cheaper. When something went wrong, I just got on the phone. I called the landlord. It was his problem. Uh, but when you own the house, it's all it's all your problem. The the best thing I think about buying a home still is that if you can get a mortgage in the sixes, I still think you're getting cheap money because I think inflation is going to be a lot higher than six. So ultimately, inflation pays back a lot of your mortgage. You don't have to actually pay it back. Inflation takes care of a chunk of it. So you end up making money as a debtor, not as a a homeowner. >> Well, there you go. Well, maybe maybe I'll get a good deal. Who knows? Um >> but you could probably offer a lower price now that that mortgage rates are are are higher. >> Yeah. Okay. >> I wouldn't pay top dollar. Put in some low bids, you know. >> There you go. Um negotiate a bit here. All right. So you are calling for dollar crisis and you'd been talking about that before we got into the war. So I guess my question is we also have tariffs. Um what do you think is the bigger threat to the dollar right now? Like what is the biggest threat to the dollar? >> Well, you know, ironically and and maybe not so ironically if you're familiar with uh these trading patterns, but the war has helped the dollar. the dollar has rallied a bit on the war and and that's typical as a you know safe haven uh move uh the war has helped to lift interest rates and and that has also acted as a short-term boost to the dollar but I think the dollar's rally uh is not that big compared to rallies of the past under circumstances like this and I think that shows you uh that times are changing and the dollar is not seen uh as as as favorably as it was in past military conflicts. And I think as time goes by and the war drags on, I think it's ultimately going to be a negative for the dollar because it's going to weaken the economy. It's going to lead to bigger budget deficits, more inflation. All this is dollar negative. And you know, it's just another thing that's going to upset the world, something that the United States has caused because the world is going to be dealing with higher energy prices, higher food prices, uh, the longer this war goes on. And you know that they can just blame that on Trump. Meanwhile, Trump has already pissed everybody off with the tariffs. Even though the tariffs are paid by Americans, contrary to the claims of Trump and his administration, Americans pay the tariffs, but to the extent that imported goods are a lot more expensive because we have to pay the tariffs in order to import them, that is uh, you know, bad news for a lot of foreign companies that now sell fewer goods to America. They have to find other customers and maybe they can't pay as much as we did. And so yes, it is, you know, a negative for some companies and, you know, that, you know, so we pissed off a lot of these companies. You know, these are trading relationships that have been going on. Um, and you know, I think we've also antagonized uh people with our threats like, you know, Trump was threatening to invade Greenland. I mean, what the hell did Greenland do, right? Greenland wasn't a threat to anybody. But Donald Trump decided that we needed Greenland strategically. we needed to own that real estate. And he said, "If we can't get a deal, we're going to send our troops in and we're going to take it by force." Now, he never did that. I think he backed away. But the fact that he even contemplated it out loud, I think, is is is a big negative because it gets people to thinking, you know, you know, maybe they'll maybe they'll do it next time. So, I think I think we've, you know, we're losing a lot of our uh you know, credibility. Uh I think a lot of our allies are not as aligned with us and I think we're driving our enemies closer together and I think we're even driving our allies uh to have greater ties with our enemies. I mean to the extent that we perceive China, Russia as enemies, I think they're making a lot of inroads. In fact, if you look at uh Chinese trade is growing with Canada. It's growing in South America. uh even as it's declining with us, uh China is now uh doing more trade with everybody else. >> Do you see a scenario where President Trump could be successful on the foreign policy front? >> I mean, yeah, it's possible. I I just think that the odds that this war is a success are much lower than it being a failure. Now, even if it's a failure, Donald Trump could still claim it's a success. He could define anything he wants as a success and he probably will. Uh just like he claims we have the greatest economy in history and we obviously don't. We we we actually have a worse economy than we had under Biden. And Biden he says we had the worst economy in history. So Trump can very easily lie about whatever the hell he wants. And none of the Republicans will call him out on it. They'll all repeat the same lie as if it was true. And um in fact, you know, I was listening to an interview with Chris Christie and he recalled a conversation he had with Donald Trump and Donald Trump told him, "If you repeat a lie often enough, it becomes true. Not that people will think it's true, but that repeating the lie enough makes it true on its own." And so that's kind of his mentality. So yeah, I'm I'm sure that as far as Trump is concerned, the war is going to be a huge success, but in reality, I think it's more likely to be a failure. And it's not just, you know, anti-Trump. I think all of these wars have been failures, whether they're Republican or Democrats who are running it. I mean, I I I I think I think we go into the Middle East and we we create more problems than we solve. that that's been the history. >> Mhm. I guess like now that we know this is playing out from an investor perspective, has this altered anything for you? Um, and if so, how so? >> No, I mean, I was increasing my holdings in energy stocks months before the war started just because I thought oil was cheap when it was down below $60 a barrel and I thought oil stocks were cheap. So, that was those were good uh uh buys that I made. I wish I actually had had done even more of that. I didn't pair back any of my mining stocks, which have had a very big pullback um since the peak. Uh but I still think that the lion share of the move is in front of us, not behind us. And if anything, you know, this pullback is an opportunity for people who didn't have enough in the mighty sector. Now, that didn't include me. I'm so overweight uh that I I you know my position is okay still. But I mean if we get much more of a downside even I'm going to buy more. But I think for people who watch these stocks go way up and we're you know didn't have enough exposure take advantage of this decline because investors don't get it. Again, they they don't realize that the data is basically um confirming everything that I've been saying was going to happen, that inflation was going to run away and the economy was going to be weak and we're going to have this stagflation. This is what's happening. And all this is bullish for gold. So, the the knee-jerk reaction from people who don't really understand what's happening is to sell gold. But for the people who do understand what's happening, they they they would buy more, you know. >> Yeah. this audience likes gold. Um, that's what I found is uh got a lot of folks out there who like gold even though we're not a gold channel by any means. Um, you did mention oil looking at it last at 99.82 a barrel. I had I had a guest on here who was it was a Peter Bookvar who was like, "Oh, $60. You'll think that's real cheap." Um, that was not too long ago. Um, but gosh, I saw diesel and I drive a diesel engine. I'm not an EV girly. um was $5.19 uh $519 this morning. >> Yeah. And you know, oil prices $100 a barrel is still not that expensive. I mean, we got up to above 140. >> Mhm. >> In 2008. So that was, you know, 18 years ago. >> Yeah. >> And you know, so think about how much inflation we've had over the last 18 years. So, you know, where would oil prices have to be today in real terms to be 140 in 1980? So, you know, we still have a long way to go to get back up to that level. >> Still cheap. >> What caused oil prices to really drop in 2008 was the financial crisis. So, who knows what would have happened to prices if we hadn't had that crisis, but we had a collapse in demand because we had this global financial crisis and that brought the price of oil uh back down. So oil prices could go a lot higher than $100 a barrel. And they will go a lot higher if the straight of Hermuz remains closed for a couple more months and the war continues and more of the energy infrastructure is taken out and more of the production, you know, is is is suspended. Yeah, we could be $150 $200 a barrel. So, you know, think about that. >> Okay. What? Okay. Maybe you have to give me a history lesson because I I was in college during that time like what was going on with the energy prices pre-inancial crisis before the banks collapsed. Um and do you see parallels to today then? >> Well, back then the dollar was very weak. The dollar was really going down and it was also saved by the financial crisis. So, we haven't seen a big dollar weakness yet. Now, that could come. Now, one thing we've seen is gold strength. Gold was very strong leading up to the 2008 financial crisis. In fact, gold had risen from under 300 in 2000 to a,000 by 2008. So, it was a big move. And now we've had a big move in gold, too, because we got up to 5,500. Gold was at 2,000 a couple years ago. So, we've got gold going up. and and even though the dollar hasn't been that weak, the dollar did recently hit an all-time record low against the Swiss Frank. So, I think that's a leading indicator of where the dollar is headed, uh it'll soon be making record lows against all currencies, you know, but it's still a ways to go for the dollar to hit like a record low against the euro or the pound or the yen. There's a long way to go. Switzerland is just a a much stronger economy. So that currency uh you know has gained a lot and in fact the dollar would be a lot lower relative to the Swiss Frank had the Swiss government not deliberately undermine their currency to prevent it from going up because it could have gone up a lot more >> and ultimately it will go up a lot more. >> Okay. Can you kind of walk me through how a dollar crisis might unfold? Like what is what does it look like? How will we recognize it as it's happening? Like what are the signposts? Um yeah, >> well, you know, $5,000 gold is one of the signposts right there, you know, that's going on. But I think you really want to look at the bond market for a more significant rise in the bond market because obviously if there's a dollar crisis, there is a bond crisis. The two are linked together because all dollars are are promises to pay or I mean all bonds are are promises to pay dollars in the future. And if you're losing confidence in the dollar in the present, the last thing you want is dollars in the future because then they'll be even less valuable. So you'll see the bond market, you'll see the spreads, you know, really widening, you know, the tips, you know, spreads and and and the yield curve will be steepening. Um the dollar obviously will be dropping against other currencies and gold will be rising. So look at those markets. Those are the key markets, the bond market, the foreign exchange market, and the gold market. And when you really see them moving in big ways, that's a pretty good sign that the dollar crisis is here. You know, by the time it's obvious, then it's too late, right? By the time the dollar completely implodes. Yeah, we had a dollar crisis, but now now what? I mean, it's too late to prepare for it. That's why, you know, I I've been preparing my clients for a dollar crisis for years and years. We haven't had one yet, but we had a phenomenal year last year. I mean, last year was the best year I had. uh return-wise, I mean our our gold uh portfolios well more than doubled. But even our non- gold strategies, I have a foreign dividend payer strategy where I buy dividend paying foreign stocks and even that was up better than 60% last year and it's doing even better this year. Uh and so I think money is already shifting out of the US into international stocks. You know, Donald Trump talks about all the money coming into the US, but from my perspective, money is fleeing the US because the US pretty much has the worst performing stock market in the world in 2026. You know, all the other markets that I'm investing in are doing much much better and it's not even close. Uh, you know, US is down on the year maybe what five six%. foreign markets are up uh even even with recent declines >> and and so I don't think it's it's costing people money to protect themselves from a dollar crisis because I think right now portfolios that are designed to benefit from a dollar crisis are already substantially outperforming US focused portfolios but once we get a dollar crisis then that outperformance will be dramatically higher than than it is now. >> Yeah. Okay. Do you think it's still early innings on that rotation like out of the US? Do where do you see us in that? And is this like a new regime for investing? >> I think it's very early because it really started last year. So, you know, this is the second year of it. Um, and I think the rotation into gold, central banks started rotating out of dollars into gold a couple years ago and and that transition is ongoing and will accelerate, but private investors have barely even scratched the surface. I think we've seen a little bit of money moving into the gold sector this year and now maybe some of it is already coming out. People are are, you know, are scared now because it's going down. But I think we're very early in private flows, private investment flows, you know, pension funds, endowments, hedge funds. And I don't even think the retail investor, I mean, the retail investor really got sidetracked over the last couple years into crypto, which is very unfortunate because they're going to lose a lot of money in Bitcoin and other cryptoreated investments. The money that was made in crypto was made by all the people who cashed out, right? That was that's how you make money in Bitcoin. you sell yours, right? The people who buy it are are going to lose money. And a lot of people over the last couple years as foreign central banks were buying gold and the price of gold was doubling, Americans were selling their gold and buying Bitcoin. And now the price of Bitcoin has been cut in half. Um, but those trends are going to continue. But when the public realizes that they bet on the wrong horse, uh, they'll they'll move over to gold. And so that, you know, that's that didn't even started yet. So, I think $5,000 gold now it's 4,800. You know, I think this is cheap. I I don't think gold's going to stay under 5,000 for long. So, people should be buying it, you know, going going and get it at shift gold. Silver's at 75. Silver got up to 120. So, it's had a big pullback, but it had a massive breakout. There was a double top just below 50 going back to 1980 and then 2011, and we blew through that. So, silver's in a brand new huge bull market. Uh so people should buy any dips in silver. So you can get both metals, you know, at shift gold and we have strategies that are specifically focused on gold mining stocks. Those are the ones that I think have the most upside potential and people, if you're underweight, you really need to get into these miners. I think they're ridiculously cheap. Where do you see their earnings? The earnings that these num companies are going to be putting out in 2026 should blow away estimates. Uh and all these stocks are very cheap even given the estimates that they're going to blow out. Uh so they're not even factoring any of this in. So you know we have separately managed accounts but people can also buy my gold fund pretty much any discount broker. We have a no-load share class uh institutional share class. EPGIX is the symbol for the no-load gold fund. Uh today would be a great day to buy it. Markets are closed but you know buy it as soon as you can. >> Yeah. as you say like 4,800 for gold cheap. All right, Peter, where do you see it headed then? Like what's do you do price targets? I don't know. But >> well, look, I I don't have a target because gold, you know, gold's going to keep rising. Remember, when the Federal Reserve was created in 1913, gold was $20 an ounce. Um, and so you now you need $5,000 to buy an ounce of gold. An ounce of gold is no different than it was when the Fed was created. What's different is the dollar. The dollar that we entrusted the Fed to protect collapsed and the dollar lost more than 99% of its purchasing power. Whereas, you know, when we established the the dollar as 20 ounces of gold in the Coinage Act of 1789, gold was $20 an ounce. And in 1913 when the Fed was established again, it was still $20 an ounce. So when we had a free market and no central bank, the dollar maintained its value and you could buy an ounce of gold for the same price in 1913 as you could in 1813, right? You had 100 years, you know, the dollar maintained its value. In fact, the price of everything else went way down. Uh so the dollar held its value in terms of gold, but it gained a lot of value in terms of goods and services. But ever since we created the central bank, the dollar has lost more than 99% of its value. So now you need $5,000 to buy the same ounce of gold that you could buy for just $20 before we had a central bank. So that trend is going to continue. As long as we have a central bank, it's going to be debasing the dollar. I just think the rate of decay is going to increase. Uh so gold prices could go to 10,000 20,000 uh in the not too distant future 5 10 years from now. But it's not because gold is changing. It's just because the dollar is losing value. You just need more dollars to buy the same ounce of gold. >> The dollar story. Okay. Um, the last time you and I spoke, um, President Trump had posted about you on Truth Social after your Fox News Fox and Friends appearance. Um, he called you a Trumphating loser. We addressed that at the time, but the thing is, the reason I want to bring it up is I think you voted for Trump or you would have voted for him. I don't really know exactly how it works in Puerto Rico, but I I know you were not a Kla Harris supporter, that's for sure. >> No. Well, I voted for Trump in 2016. >> Okay. >> That was my last year in the US. >> Mhm. >> Uh and and so and I I encouraged my followers in social media on my podcast. I encouraged them to vote for Trump, too. >> So, yeah, I did do that, but I wasn't very enthusiastic about my support for Trump. I I framed it as the lesser of two evils. I just thought that between the two, Harris was worse. Now, you know, I second guess that because Trump is is doing even worse than I thought he was going to do, but it's, you know, it's hard to know what Harris would have done, right? You just, you know, it's a counterfactual. There's no way to know. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. >> So, you know, I it still might be that Harris would have been even worse than Trump. But the problem is that the next president will definitely be worse than Trump. >> Okay, that's what I wanted to ask. >> The next president will be a Democrat. That is the problem. >> Okay, elaborate on that thesis too. Like, okay, 2028, what do you see ahead for 2028? Well, if you understand what's been happening for the last three presidential elections, the incumbent party loses and the the the party that's out of power wins. And that's because the incumbent party has to defend a lousy economy by pretending it's good. So in 2016, Hillary Clinton had a lie about how good the economy is because she wanted to continue uh Obama and she was his secretary of state and you know she is the Democrat. Hey, we want four more years of this. And Donald Trump was like, well, the economy is lousy. The government statistics are wrong. You're being lied to. Uh I'm going to come in and clean house and drain the swamp. Everything is a disaster. Put me there. I'm a businessman. I'm gonna fix this mess. And the public believed Trump and they they voted for Trump. Now, four years later, the economy has gotten worse. Trump pretends that it's better and that he's already made America great again. And Biden says, "No, I feel your pain. Things have gotten worse since Trump was elected." And and that was true. And so the voters went for Biden and not Trump. Four years later, when Kla Harris is trying to defend four years of Biden and she's telling everybody how great everything is, Donald Trump comes back in and says, "Things are lousy. This is a terrible economy. It's a disaster." And he was right. And he's like, "I'll fix it." But of course, you know, the voters voted for Trump. Now, in four years, whichever Republican is running is going to have to run on the Trump record, and they're going to have to lie to the voters about how great everything is. The challenger is going to be able to be truthful and say everything is lousy, things are worse. What the challenger is going to lie about is that they're going to fix it. Mhm. >> And and so elections are won by the person who lies that he's going to make something better, not by the person who lies and tells you it's already good. Because that lie is harder to believe. If you're living in a weak economy and you know it's bad and your cost of living has gone way up and you're in debt and you know you're worse off than you were four years ago and somebody is trying to tell you that you're better off, well, you know that's a lie. You're not going to believe that. But if someone else acknowledges how bad it is and then lies to you about how they're going to make it better, well, you know, maybe you don't know that that's a lie, you might as well take a shot at at at that guy or that gal, whatever. So, that's how it's going to work. But, you know, Donald Trump has kind of branded this whole economy with big with a big T. But people associate Trump with, you know, limited government, uh, conservative. They think he's like another Ronald Reagan. is pro- free market, pro- capitalism. None of this is true, but this is the perception. And so that's going to open up an opportunity for the Democrats to not just run against Trump, but run against capitalism and say that is the problem. What we need is socialism. Capitalism wrecked the economy. Corporate greed, you know, uh this is what destroyed us. We need government to control the economy. Government needs to take over. government needs to make sure everything is fair and that people don't ri, you know, aren't ripping you off. And I, you know, I think this is going to be very destructive once, you know, if the Democrats get the White House and the Senate and House of Representatives, who knows what they're going to do. >> You don't think they'll better be prepared. You better be, you know, they're going to inherit a bad problem and they're going to make it much worse. that. So that's the one thing because at least had the Democrats somehow won the 2024 election, it would be very uh fertile territory for some Republican to come in in 2028 and say, "Look, I you know, with this socialism has destroyed the country. We need to try something different." You know, >> we need like a a Malay that they have down in Argentina. That's what we need here. >> What do you think the economic endgame is for Trump? Well, I mean, he, you know, this is his last term, right? He doesn't really have an endgame. I think Donald Trump's plan is to try to get out of dodge before, you know, everything collapses. So, try to keep inflating the bubble so that if it pops, it's when somebody else is in charge and so they can take the blame. Meanwhile, I think he wants to see how much money he can leverage off of the presidency, how much money his family can can make. I mean, I think he might have a grudge about all the money he spent on legal bills and and and other problems that he had during his first term and and following his first term. And I was very much a supporter of Trump's when he was the victim of all this lawfare that I never uh believed was was was legal or right. And I was, you know, defended him quite a bit. So I'm clearly wasn't a Trump hater. In fact, I was out there on my podcast when the Access Hollywood stuff came out. I was defending Trump. There weren't a lot of people willing to defend that. I I defended that. So So I I've defended Trump for a long time. But I'm also willing to criticize Trump when he's wrong. And that's something that Trump can't stand. He He needs asskissers that that that say he's great no matter what. That that that and that's what he surrounds himself with, which which is a a big problem. Now, now I forgot what I was actually talking about. I went down a couple of times. >> You don't see an opportunity to like write the economic ship, if you will. >> Well, no, we're not going to write the ship right now. We're we're we're we're not even close to that. What what we need is reductions in government spending. We we and and and and Trump delivered the opposite. The big beautiful bill which he you know talks about all the time is was a disaster. The big beautiful bill not only didn't reduce any of the excess spending of the Biden years, it added to it. So the Republicans won by criticizing the Biden spending, but the minute they got into power, they decided to keep all that spending and then spend even more. Uh so the the problems have gotten worse not better. The tariffs have added another layer of problem. Uh they haven't made us rich like like Trump pretends and a lot of the other things that that he is uh uh uh promoting. Uh you know if the Democrats were promoting them the Republicans would be up in arms. Uh but you know Trump is you know pushing a lot of this big government socialist policies because he's he's trying to be a populist. Uh but the problem is you can't solve a problem with popular solutions because the solutions are not popular. When the solutions involve some pain, it's never popular if that's the prescription. You win elections by promising no pain. And and so that that's what Trump wants to be. He doesn't want to be a good president. He wants to be a popular president. And and and a lot of times being a good president means doing things that are very unpopular, >> right? But people will know that they were good in hindsight and they'll look back gee that those are really good things >> that were done. >> Uh but Trump just wants to be popular now. He doesn't care about you what he later. He wants to be popular right now. >> Do you think a lot of politicians >> I know what I was talking about that he wants to make a lot of money and so that's what he's doing too. I think the Trump family is making a lot of money parlaying uh the presidency. I think there's a lot of trading going on on insider information, not necessarily inside information about a particular company, but Trump and his administration, they're able to move markets. They move currency markets, they move precious metals markets, they move oil markets, they move crypto markets with with a a truth social post. So, all you need to know, have is some advanced knowledge of what Donald Trump is going to post and you can make a ton of money. And I think this is going on. Plus, the Trumps have already made billions off of crypto. Uh they've they've they've basically, you know, bled that to death. Uh but it's unfortunate because obviously they're making their crypto money off of others who are losing it. The, you know, the crypto industry doesn't create any wealth. It just separates people from their wealth. It's a transfer from the people who are selling tokens to the people who are buying them. So Trump, the Trump family made a lot of money off of Trump coin and Melaniacoin, but did they add any value? Does does the fact that there are Trump coins around, does that make America a stronger country? Can we produce more goods because we have Trumpcoin? No, we can't do anything with Trumpcoin. But what happened is people were dumb enough to buy it and they lost their money and they lost it to the president, right? His family. I mean, look at look at the hundreds of millions that Baron Trump has made, right? I mean, I'm sure he's a smart kid, but is he is he really that big of a genius? He's making hundreds of millions of dollars as a teenager. Obviously, he's exploiting uh his position. You know, one of the things that the the Democrats were correct about, and I supported this, was they were, you know, all over the Bidens for their corruption and Hunter Biden and all the shell companies that they were using to launder the money that was obviously bribes. But what the Bidens did was chump change compared to what the Trumps are doing. The Trumps are doing a lot more. I mean, the Bidens are jealous. They I mean, Hunter Biden's like, "Oh my god, I should have been a Trump, you know, looking at what they're doing." But one of the thing the Trumps are doing is they do it out in the open, too. They they they don't even bother to launder it. They just they just put it right out there. And it's like, well, look, you know, if we're going to admit that we're doing this, then we can claim that there's nothing wrong with it, right? That's part of Trump's uh philosophy of repeating lies and making them true. So if he keeps, you know, telling lies that there's nothing wrong here, then then then then all then it's true. >> All right, Peter. Oh, you're going to get some truth social post on that one. Just just saying. Um >> that assumes Donald Trump watches your podcast, which you know, you got to be on Fox News. That's that's what he watches even at 5 in the morning. >> Love to interview Donald Trump. I would love to interview President Trump. So, he's welcome to come on. >> Well, I think he got me kicked off of Fox. I was on Fox Business today, so he didn't get me kicked off of there, but >> Oh gosh, Peter. Oh, man. Um, that's your opinions. Just FYI, I just asked the questions and we don't censor. We don't censor on the channel. Okay. Um, let me ask you the final question then. number one risk that's keeping you up at night these days and then the the thing that's making you hopeful about the future. >> Well, I mean, I'm not necessarily worried about about stuff. I mean, I pretty much think I know what's going to happen. So sometimes I'm up at night if I if if things are really volatile and I and and and and I and I wake up and I check prices, you know, I like, you know, so sometimes when the volatility really picks up and things are going on, it's hard to sleep through the night, you know, when you're having and you're, you know, you got your phone right near your bed and you can go and see see what's going on. But I I think that my portfolio is well positioned that all of the things that I think are going to go wrong and that will go wrong that will cause a lot of people to lose a lot of money. I'm not they're I'm going to make a lot of money as a result of those things. And I am not worried that I'm wrong. I'm very confident that I'm right. And so I don't, you know, stay up at night worried about the fact that I might be wrong. I'm confident that I'm right, but I'm right about all these problems that should be keeping other people up at night, especially if they're not protected from those problems. uh which is again why I would encourage people to you know you know become clients of mine so that they can sleep soundly because if you know what's going to happen and if you don't have yourself protected you should have trouble sleeping because I do think that when we get the real beginning of the crisis it's going to happen when most people are asleep because I think you know China holds the cards and I think that this crisis is going to start in their time zone not not our time zone when they really start dumping dollars and dumping treasuries in in a big way. Uh and so you, you know, you need to go to bed with the right portfolio if you want to know that you're going to wake up without a massive hole blown in it. Uh which a lot of Americans are going to see. But as far as what am I am I hopeful about? Look, I am still hopeful that at the other end of this, at the other side of this crisis, we can emerge as a stronger, freer nation. that instead of, you know, the the crisis being a catalyst to socialism, it's a catalyst to reject socialism and and and embrace the free market principles that made America great in the first place. That that's what I'm hoping. Uh, you know, I don't think we're going to embrace those principles until there is a crisis. I don't think we're going to give up on all the government freebies until we realize that it was all a scam and everybody is broke who relied on government promises. And then I'm hoping we could, you know, go back to our roots of the rugged individual of free Americans that aren't dependent, aren't relying, >> not the warm the collective warmth of >> on government, you know, whatever. Yeah. >> My grandparents, all four of my grandparents came here in search of freedom. They didn't come here for welfare or food stamps or housing subsidies because they didn't exist. Uh all America had to offer a 100 years ago was freedom and that was a very powerful thing because other nations didn't have it. And because Americans were free, we were very prosperous. So I would like to go back to that. In fact, Donald Trump often talks fondly about the heyday of America's power in the latter 19th century, 1880s, 1890s. And the reason we were so great back then was not because we had tariffs. It was because the government was so small that we only needed tariffs and we could pay for the whole thing. And so I I want to go back to the economic freedom that we had during that time period, which means dismantling over 90% of the government. But if we can do that, uh, then we lay the foundation for a real economic boom. So I'm hopeful that we get to that point >> and and maybe what's happening, you know, in AI and robotics will make all of that uh happen even faster and to an even greater degree. Uh because we have while I want to go back to 19th century freedom, I don't want to go back to 19th century technology. I'm very happy with 21st century technology. Yeah. So if we combine 21st century technology with 19th century freedom, that is a powerful formula >> for an economic boom. >> I have one quick follow- on question. Is that okay, Dean? Okay. Um just on the the part you said that it will start in China is what's happening in Iran because Iran is really important for China especially for oil. Do you think that's the catalyst then or did that speed up the risk of this playing out like is like a Yeah, >> I don't know if it's necessarily the catalyst but it's just you know like another weight on the scale that's going to tip you know the crisis. It just I think it it it harms our our our position. It weakens the US and you know it ultimately drives our enemies closer together to the extent we think China's an enemy. Look look what's going on with China and Iran. I mean they're you know uh the Chinese ships are are allowed through the strait. >> Uh and and and Iran is now trying to get other nations to trade oil in Chinese yuan. And if they do that, they'll let their ships through. So, they weren't doing that before the war, but they're doing it now. >> Yeah, that'll be something to watch for sure. Peter, um, always fun to have you on the show. Let's do it again. Um, you you said you wanted to do this more often and I didn't I it took me a long time to reach out to you. We had you on episode 319 and um, so it hasn't been that many episodes since we had you. I think we're around 350 or thereabouts or close to it. Matt Matt would know. So maybe we'll do a little quarterly if you're open to it. >> Yeah, they're they're you're how well your audience is growing, too. So that's good. >> They're growing and and look, they love you, Peter. So Peter Schiff, chief economist and global strategist at Europacific Asset Management and CEO of Shift Gold. Thank you so much for being so generous with your time, all of your knowledge, helping us learn. Really appreciate you. >> Oh, my pleasure. Thanks for having me on.