GOLD $5,000 Isn’t the Top: The Dollar Exodus Has Started
Summary
Precious Metals: Schiff remains bullish on gold and silver despite recent volatility, viewing the pullback as a correction after a major breakout, particularly in silver.
Gold Miners: He argues miners are significantly undervalued with powerful operating leverage to higher gold prices and sees substantial upside, especially in juniors.
Juniors & M&A: Smaller miners are highlighted as prime acquisition targets for cash-rich majors seeking reserves, creating asymmetric upside opportunities.
Physical Silver: Tightness in the physical market, rising premiums, and refining capacity constraints are emphasized, with futures prices diverging from physical availability.
East vs. West Demand: Ongoing central bank and private accumulation in the East contrasts with Western selling, reinforcing sustained demand for bullion.
Macro Drivers: De-dollarization, persistent U.S. deficits, and pressure for lower rates support a long-duration bull case for gold.
Costs & Margins: Lower energy costs and higher byproduct silver revenues are expanding margins for gold producers, further improving profitability.
Risks & Policy: Potential tariff rulings and AI capex crowd-out are noted, but overall viewed as net supportive for gold amid policy-driven currency debasement.
Transcript
I mean, what are we not doing? Because we don't have an unlimited amount of capital. And so, if we're spending all this building out this AI infrastructure, what are we not doing? Where's the money coming from? >> It is volatile out there. Gold, silver, moving hundreds of dollars within minutes without notice. They just drop like water. You see waterfall shorts left, right, and center. What is happening in the world of precious metals, but also what's happening in the US economy? We've got a lot of data last week. jobs report, CPI or CPI as some of our guests like to refer to and we need to dig a little deeper. What is happening? Is the economy really doing well? 15% growth was advertised by the president of the United States. Howard Lutnik was a little more uh conservative. He said five 6% is possible, but we all know this is very difficult to achieve. So, I've invited Peter Schiff, founder of Shift Gold, Europe Pacific Asset Management, back to the program. Really looking forward to catching up with him. But before I switch over, hit that like and subscribe button. helps us out tremendously reach our goal of 100,000 subscribers before the end of this quarter. Let's see if we can make it together. So, Peter, thank you so much for joining us again. It's always great to see you. Happy President's Day. >> Yeah, thanks a lot. Market holiday today, but happy to uh participate in your program. >> Yeah, really appreciate it. It's fairly calm outside today, like no not not a lot of news. It's fairly quiet on the mining side as well. It's quite refreshing to be honest. uh given the backdrop that we've had over the last 10 maybe two 10 days 14 days here um help us maybe start high level like help us make sense of the volatility that we're seeing in precious metals right now um what's your general assessment >> well I mean you you can't um look at that volatility without looking at what preceded it so we had a spectacular rise in in gold and silver rally really took place over a more extended period of time. Really, gold broke out in early 2024 and had a slow and steady rise uh to 4,000. Then it kind of had a very quick move from 4,000 to above 5,500. Silver really went nowhere as gold went from 2,000 to 4,000 and then finally moved from 3,000 to 120. And in fact the move from 80 to 120 was like a few days. Uh so I think once silver broke out above 50 that was both a psychological and a technical uh overhead resistance going all the way back to the Hunt brothers and 1980. So I think once that happened a lot of money came into silver came into gold and silver obviously got ahead of itself. The exchanges came in several rounds of uh you know margin hikes and I think some of the speculators got caught and there was you know a lot of volatility. People got forced out of positions. Uh a lot of uh weaker longs might have bailed out. you saw the media talking about a silver bubble uh which you know bubbles don't form over a matter of days or weeks. It's something that forms over a much longer period of time than that. Um but I think a lot of people uh may have been scared out of the market who recently got in. Maybe other people were motivated to take profits hearing all of the talk of a bubble and the bubbles popped and the market's going to go down. But I think the volatility uh makes sense given the move that preceded it. I think it's a huge breakout in silver. I think silver prices are headed substantially higher from here. Uh I I think a lot of this volatility will ultimately uh you know go away and I think we'll see a far more orderly appreciation of silver. maybe something more similar to what was going on with gold up until uh the recent volatility and I think the bull market in gold is going to persist. Uh you know gold is only about 10% off its highs. So you know nothing like silver down 30 40% from its highs. So it's just a normal correction in the a silver in the gold bull market. But I think what happened in silver is a very rare event, but it coincides with something that was also rare, which was this massive breakout in in in silver. Uh so I think, you know, I think it's very bullish for the metals and even more so for the miners. I think the the precious metals mining companies are are even cheaper and uh Wall Street is still not woken up to that reality either. >> Absolutely. Yeah. this SIJ versus silver ratio, for example, has dropped to historic lows here. And we we'll get to the miners later in the conversation here, Peter, because I'm just trying to emphasize like how healthy or unhealthy that correction is. And maybe just summarizing what you just said, it sounds like quite a normal move that we're seeing in in the precious metals right now. Silver obviously more violent um than gold here. Silver crashed per definition. Gold >> Kai, I don't know that I would say a normal move. I'm just saying that given the abnormal rally that we had and breaking out of such massive overhead resistance, it's not to be unexpected. It's not like, oh my god, look how much silver went down. Yes, but you can't look at that in a vacuum. You have to look at how much it went up and you know, right before then. And even when you're talking about, oh, silver crashed. Okay, but where did it crash from and where did it crash to? Because, you know, if it's crashing into the $70 an ounce level, that's not a crash, you know, other than for the people who happen to buy it at 120, which, you know, was only one day. The vast majority of my clients who have been buying silver from me for 20 years, I, you know, I started um selling my clients silver under $5 an ounce. So for my clients, $70, $80 silver doesn't look like a crash. It looks like a really good price. >> Today's sponsors, Stellar Gold, is sitting on three major Canadian projects. Tower and Colac are among the largest undeveloped gold sites in the country. Tower alone could be worth $2.5 billion after tax at $3,200 gold according to a recent study. And if prices go higher, so does its value. Colomax spends over a thousand square kilometers of greenstone and could be Canada's next big gold camp. They also have Hollinger Tailings, a cleanup project that could deliver near-term cash flow. Across all projects, they've trilled over 16 million ounces of gold, which would cost over $2 billion to replicate today. And with a seasoned team and huge upside potential, Stellar Gold is one to watch. Visit stellarold.com to learn more. This message is forformational purposes only. It's not investment advice. Please do your own due diligence before making any investment decisions. Now, let's jump back into the conversation. AB: Absolutely. No, like we're complaining at a very high level here, right? So, just try to put some context around it, of course. Um, Peters, like a lot of trading or a lot of selling has happened actually during US trading hours. Like, we we see gold and silver tick up during Asian trading hours. US opens and the prices close lower. Um, China is closed this week. What do you make of that? Do you expect lower prices and where do you see perhaps a floor um for gold and silver? >> Well, I think it makes sense because obviously gold is under accumulation in the east and the selling has been coming from the west. Uh and I think the the east has it right. I think you know China is correct that buying gold is the right thing to do and that the price is going to go higher. to the extent there are speculators in the US that don't get this uh and that want to short gold and silver or who want to sell the gold and silver they have because they think it's some kind of a bubble. I think they've got it wrong. And I I think the buyers have a lot more dollars that they need to convert into gold and silver than the speculators can short as far as their ability to short and sell gold and silver that they don't own and have no ability to deliver. >> Absolutely. No, it may makes sense and uh we've seen that trend, you know, for for a number of months now. 15 months of Chinese central bank buying, for example, is a constant reminder. >> It's not just Chinese central banks. There's a lot of other central banks that are buying and there's private demand that is growing, not just around the world, but you're now starting to see some private demand in the US. So, it's picking up all over the world. >> 100%. Yeah. People are worried. Uh the debt bubble we can talk about here later as well. Just the macro picture hasn't changed at all for gold and silver, right? But um the question though is like how should serious investors approach this now? Is this a buy the dip opportunity? Should we wait for this to play out? How do you reframe this moving forward? It uh if if you're new to the space, for example, because the recent price hike or explosion has has brought in a lot of eyeballs, how would you handle this now? >> Well, I mean, I think, you know, buying gold anywhere below or close to 5,000 I think still makes sense. I I don't think there's significant downside risk to me. Gold is acting around 5,000 the way it acted around 4,000, the way it acted around 3,000. uh but also buying gold at 5,000 you're getting it 10% below its high. So that is a a decent correction. Does it mean it can't go to 4,900 or 4,800 or 4750? No, it doesn't mean that. But who cares, right? If you're if you're buying gold as a long-term store of value, it doesn't matter if after you buy it, it gets a couple hundred an ounce cheaper. In fact, you could always buy more. Uh, as far as silver, expect more volatility. So, silver as we're talking is just below 76. Yes, it could easily fall below 70 and so you'd be down close to 10% on paper if you bought some here. But again, I wouldn't worry about it. I don't think silver's going back down below 50. In fact, I don't even think it's going to get anywhere near 50. So, I think we're not that far. maybe the upper 60s or you know low7s is maybe about as cheap as you can get it. But the other problem you have is that physical silver is getting harder to procure. So the premiums that people are paying now on silver coins and bars especially low denomination are higher. So even if silver goes down $10, it doesn't mean you'll be able to buy it $10 cheaper if you actually want physical. So you've got two things working there. You've got, you know, the scarcity of the physical metal. Yeah. If you want to buy a futures contract, you may be able to buy it, but buying a futures contract is not the same as getting metal delivered to your door, you know, which is what we're doing at Shift Gold. So I I just tell people just buy whatever we got while we have it in stock because I could tell by what's happening in the market that we're going to run out at some point. it's going to be hard to get silver phys uh because I think there's been a big disconnect between the paper market and and the real market and eventually that's going to resolve itself with the futures moving higher. Uh but in in the short run, you know, the futures price could do whatever it's going to do, but the physical market is limited by the actual supply of deliverable silver and the demand for that silver, which is growing, not just by investors, but by industry that needs silver. So if you if you're, you know, making batteries and the batteries need silver, you can't just buy a silver contract. You you you can't put the contract into your battery. You got to actually have real silver delivered to you. So you have to buy it in a physical market. >> Is that though more a supply chain issue within the precious metal space or is that really a silver shortage? Like people use that word silver squeeze constantly and maybe misuse it as well because you have access and you have insights into what's happening on the physical side in the supply chain. >> Yeah. Supply chain issue or really a squeeze? Well, it's both because I mean a there's a constraint on how much silver can come out of a mine. There's, you know, there's only so much the mines can produce. They just can't turn on a new mine just because silver is higher in price. They just can't say, "Oh, let's let's mine more silver." Uh, most of these miners were already mining as much silver as they could uh at at at the older prices. but also has to do with the refiners. You know, if they run out of inventory that, you know, they can't magically transfer bullion into into into coins and bars, you know, the raw silver. So, if all of a sudden there's a big increase in demand by investors, they just don't have the capacity to immediately supply it all. So, you get a backlog and you get delays. uh so you know then obviously people will start to pay more money for a more immediate delivery of of their metals. So all these things are happening. I mean I could tell you at shift gold business was very slow for the last several years. It just picked up a lot in the last month to the point that we've never been this busy. But to go from a very slow um you know environment to all of a sudden busy well you don't have the the demand power. You don't have the resources. You're not used to it. All of a sudden there's a big increase. Uh and and that's not unique to my company. Obviously it's happening all over the industry. So yeah, we've hired some more people. We're ramping up um to deal with it. But you know that there there's going to be problems throughout the entire distribution channel when all of a sudden there's a lot more demand for for the metal. >> Absolutely. Yeah. As as you said, like you can't ramp up and I hear the US mint is usually not the best producer, especially when it comes to the American Eagle. Um they're lacking behind massively as well. So been hearing those rumors quite quite for quite a while now. Um Peter, you you you touched on the miners and we we need to talk about them. uh a lot big big opportunity here. Um they they have been lagging the precious metals uh for for a while caught up now the the precious metals have dropped. Like what's the situation here for the mining companies? Is there still room to run and what's the opportunity here? >> Yeah, I mean there's a lot of room. Um Wall Street has pretty much been skeptical of the gold rally ever since 2000. So the whole time gold was going up, Wall Street was expecting it to go down. In fact, if you go back to early 2024 when gold was at 2,000, uh major banks that that that cover mining companies were putting seller recommendations on Pneumont and Bareric and the rationale was gold has peaked at 2000. there's no upside. And so why own these miners when all that's going to happen is the price of gold is going to go down? And and so these companies have never never really reassessed that that bad that bad conclusion. Uh and and so they've watched gold prices more than double uh since that that forecast, right? Um, and even though the gold stocks have, you know, let's say they've tripled as gold went from 2,000 to 5,000, and that's a little bit more than the increase in the price of gold. One would have expected a lot more than that given the magnitude that $5,000 gold has on their earnings. the your earnings don't just triple when the price of gold triples. Your earnings move up by a much greater factor than that. You know, if your if your cost of mining gold is 1,500 and the price is 2,000, you're making $500 an ounce. But if the cost goes to 5,000 and you're still at 1,500, right? You're making $3,500 an ounce. seven times the profits on on not not three times. So there should be a lot more leverage because these companies are inherently much more valuable today. But it's not just that gold is at 5,000 today. It's that it's going to be much higher tomorrow. Wall Street still doesn't get that gold prices are going to keep rising. Not only are gold prices not going to fall, they're going to keep going up, which means the earnings that are already not being properly, you know, attributed to these companies and valued are going to go even higher in the future. So, I I think you still have a great opportunity to buy these companies. And in fact, some of the best opportunities are in the juniors, the real juniors that haven't even moved as much as the senior stocks. and and and there, you know, the opportunities are incredible because I think a lot of these small companies are just going to get bought out by the big companies that have massive cash flow. Now, what are they going to do with all their money? I mean, they they could jack up their dividends a lot. They could buy back a bunch of their own stock or they could try to accumulate more reserves so they have more gold to mine. And the way the easiest way to do that is buy up smaller companies that have a lot of reserves. proven, but that don't have the cash to develop them and just buy up those reserves and just, you know, put them on ice or, you know, you don't even have to develop them now. Just hold on to them because you don't have an infinite uh supply of gold. Uh so, you know, just keep them for the future because it's they're only the gold's only going to get more valuable. The longer you wait to mine it, the more it's going to be worth. So, some of these smaller companies may need to mine the gold now because they have obligations. But if the big companies buy them up, they don't need to mine it. They'll just throw it in there and it'll just be valued as part of their reserves. They got more operating cash flow than they know what to do with right now. They they've never been making money like this. So, you know, we've got a lot of these small companies in my gold fund, the Europe Gold Fund. EPGIX is the the ticker or the no-loadad symbol for the fund that you can get at any discount broker. Uh and we're we have uh separately managed accounts at Europe Pacific Asset Management that focus on the mining companies and we have other strategies. You know, just our dividend payer strategy for example, just owning foreign dividend payer stocks was up I think 62% last year. It's up about 13% this year. So crushing the US stock market. But obviously the mining focus strategies have done even better than that. >> Uh but now I think it's still a great time to get into my my fund because of the big position that we have about a third of the portfolio in these really small stocks uh that you know would be hard for any other fund to buy now in that kind of size uh given the type of liquidity. Uh but I think there's some tremendous performance that that we're going to get in the future based on this portfolio that people can take advantage of by buying into it now. >> Absolutely. Yeah. As as you said like gold price for example Q4 average gold price I think I got it right here it was a 4163 per ounce realized price in in Q4 and as we just discussed at Nausea is like we're at close to $5,000. It's almost $1,000 higher within six weeks. >> Yeah. And what people also don't think about is the cost side of this because the costs have been a big problem for the mining companies until very recently. Oil is barely over $60 a barrel. That's cheap, you know, in relationship to where it's been in the past. I mean, oil's been over a hundred when gold prices were a lot lower than they are right now. So, that's the main cost in mining. I mean, you've got uh wages and then you've got energy. And energy is generally number one and maybe wages number two. And the wages are not up that much given, you know, where the dollar is right now. If you look at the Canadian dollar, the Australian dollar, some of these South American currencies, they're still relatively low compared to where they've traded against the US dollar in the past. So the operating costs are low. And another thing that people don't consider is that silver is a byproduct of mining gold. And almost all the gold mining companies mine some silver. They also may mine some platinum and other precious metals. And what the money they get from mining silver doesn't show up as earnings. It just shows up as reducing their costs. So their cost to mine gold goes down if they get more for their silver. So if they're selling their silver at 80 bucks and they used to sell it at 30 bucks, that's a lot of money, you know, you know, so that lowers their cost. So you're going to see not only the top line going up, right, but that the cost going down. So the margins are just exploding for these gold miners. >> 100%. and I'm here for it as well. So, absolutely, I can't wait for that to happen and price price moves have already been fantastic in my portfolio. I can't complain, right? Um pet Peter, you have a lot of confidence that gold will go higher. I think we need to work through that just a little bit. Explain to our audience who might not be following you as closely as others. Um what is driving gold higher right now? Where where where do you get the confidence that even from $5,000 we could be going higher? What what are you seeing out there that that makes you say that? I think it's inflation ddollarization which is a function of a loss of confidence in the US in its ability to honestly repay its debts in the independence of the Federal Reserve in the Fed Fed's commitment to uh maintain the dollar's value or fight inflation. I think, you know, markets are coming to terms with the reality of, you know, $ 38 trillion national debt rising, you know, you know, in perpetuity by two, three, four, five trillion a year. Who knows? Uh, you've got Donald Trump wanting lower interest rates, putting pressure on the Fed to lower rates because we need lower rates because we can't afford to pay the rates because we have so much debt. Uh Donald Trump's main goal is to continue to inflate a bubble. He doesn't want asset prices to go down. He wants the stock market to keep going up. He wants the real estate market to keep going up. The only way to do that is by sacrificing the value of the dollar. And that's what they're doing. And so if we're sacrificing the value of the dollar, why does the world want to hold the dollars? The world doesn't want to be sacrificed. Foreign central banks don't want to hold a currency that's going to depreciate as a reserve. So foreign central banks are moving from dollars to gold. Uh international investors are doing the same thing and you know Americans are going to be doing the same thing. It's going to be a mass exodus out of US dollars into an alternative and gold is the most viable monetary alternative. I mean for banks it's really the only alternative. uh you know, private citizens. Yeah, they could buy stocks, they could buy real estate, they could buy other things, but but gold and silver are going to be a big part of what investors buy when they want to get rid of their dollars and and that is going to continue. There's no end in sight to the deficit spending. Uh the Republicans have no stomach uh to cut government spending. They refuse to do it. They may criticize deficit spending when the Democrats do it, but the minute they have control, they do the exact same thing. Look at the big beautiful bill that the president brags about signing. You know, they criticize all the spending under Biden and say that's why we had inflation under Biden. Yet, when they had an opportunity to cut back on the Biden spending, they not only didn't do that, they preserved all that extra spending and then added to it with extra spending of their own. And then they cut taxes so that we have less revenue than Biden had, but we have more spending. So, we're going to have bigger deficits under under Trump than we had under Biden. and and and so the world can see this and it's like all right well you know we gota we got to get out >> and you know plus we've weaponized the dollar both under Biden and Trump you know we use it you know to to bludgeon people with sanctions >> uh and you know the world doesn't like this and now you know Trump is out there chastising the world criticizing the world you know we we're entitled to low rates you guys you know and you you're taking advantage of us you're ripping us off. So, we're going to put tariffs on everything. You know, we're angering a lot of our allies and then we're, you know, threatening to invade them. You know, Trump was talking about invading Greenland. He eventually backed down, but the fact that he even put that out there and suggested that it was something that we were considering. I mean, why the hell does the world want to subsidize that? If if we've gone from being the protector of the world to being an aggressor to saying we can take whatever we want if we think it's in our interest to invade your country, we're just going to invade it. Uh I don't think that's something the world wants to subsidize. And that's what they do by by holding dollars. >> Absolutely. No. And uh maybe one thing I want to follow up on and drill down just a bit more is really the Supreme Court and the tariff situation here. Peter, I'm just just picking one of the many topics we could spend hours talking about, but um just pulled up poly market here and the Supreme Court rules in favor of Trump tariffs is only a 26% chance. Personally, like on this channel, we barely talked about a potential fallout of the Supreme Court ruling against the Trump tariffs. And I'm curious what your take is. What will it do to the markets and how do we prepare for it based on what you're saying here? Well, you know, to the extent that the markets already expect the tariffs to be ruled unconstitutional, and they are. So, I mean, if the court rules correctly, they will get thrown out. I think the question is how will the administration respond? How much of the tariffs uh will he be able to continue anyway despite the ruling? Uh that's hard to say. And will the court rule that the funds previously corrected collected need to be returned? Um, so that remains to be seen whether they'll just say, "Look, you can't impose these tariffs prospectively, but I don't know if the court's going to rule that everybody who paid a tariff is entitled to their money back." Now, they should be, uh, but I don't know if it's just going to be confined to the party that sued and that party will get their their money back, uh, and that everybody else would have to file their own lawsuits to get their money back. I I I don't know I don't know how disruptive it would be on the US government to return all that money. >> Um but you know I think that to the extent that the court strikes down the tariffs and there is an economic problem that may have happened anyway even if the tariffs were upheld. It does give the Trump administration a convenient scapegoat because Donald Trump's narrative was the tariffs were great, the tariffs were making us rich, we had a booming economy because of the tariffs. Now, all that is a lie, but that's what Trump's been saying. Now, if the Supreme Court eliminates the tariffs, which is actually a good thing, which actually would make the economy better, right? But let's say the Supreme Court throws out the tariffs and then the economy crashes, which it would have crashed anyway. Now Trump could say, "You see, look, everything was great and look what the court did. The court ruined this great economy that I created." So I I think politically it's actually better for Trump if the Supreme Court, you know, overrules the tariffs because it gives him a scapegoat to blame bad stuff on. That would have happened anyway. >> Excellent point. I didn't even look at it from that angle because I was wondering, okay, what happens? Excessive money printing if everything has to be paid back. inflation might make a return six months down the road, things like that. I was looking >> but that's happening anyway. So, you know, at least, you know, because Trump is g Trump is going to run against at least in the midterms, the Republicans are going to run against the Fed and maybe they'll run against the court. They'll be able to say the Fed screwed it up uh by not cutting rates enough, by being too slow, and the court screwed it up by rejecting my great tariffs. You know, >> absolutely. Maybe la last question, Peter. We're running out of time here, but uh Kevin Walsh, of course, was on nominated. The marketer was quite surprised uh to to see that name because he stands actually for something that doesn't really align with Trump's policies or what Trump's asking for. He's more hawkish. He wants to, you know, reduce the balance sheet of the Fed. What do you make of that nomination? And where where does it take us? >> Well, first of all, I don't know why it was a surprise because he was always one of the front runners. It wasn't like he was like a dark horse. I mean, he was at least like 20 30% probability, you know, and there was only like three or four, you know, top choices. So, and I don't remember people questioning him when he was a top choice, saying, "Why is he at the top of the list? This guy is such a hawk." Right? So, it it was only spun that way after he was nominated. And I think that was deliberate on the part of the Trump administration. I think they they gave out those talking points because that coincided with the raid on gold and silver. I mean, the big drop happened. Gold was down $500 on the day his uh announcement came out. And part of what was motivating the selling was that this was some kind of gamecher that he was a hawk now and he was going to start coming in, you know, guns ablazing, uh, hiking race, shrinking, you know, going back to quantitative tightening or some crazy stuff. And look, I think the the the plan of the administration is to frame this guy as if he's some kind of hawk and independent of Trump so that when he does exactly what Trump wants and slashes interest rates, they'll be able to say, "Well, it must be justified because here you've got this big hawk cutting rates, so it must be okay. It must be uh economically justified. It's clearly not politically motivated. I didn't I didn't appoint one of my flunkies. I went I went and I got this totally independent guy. So, but I think that's all, you know, a charade. I mean, there's no way that Trump would appoint Walsh if he thought Walsh was going to be really tough uh uh and be this hawk because that would make him worse than Pal. And the reason he doesn't like Pal is because Pal wasn't easy enough. So he's not going to appoint somebody that will be less easy or, you know, tight. He wants cheap money. He wants rates slashed. And if you listen to what Walsh is saying now, he's saying we need lower rates. Now, one of the things that Walsh says, which is true, is that growth doesn't cause inflation. It doesn't. You know that. And neither does low unemployment. None of that stuff causes inflation. Inflation is caused by an increase in a supply of money and credit. And what generally brings that about is deficit spending. The more deficits we have, the more money the Fed has to create to cover the cost. Um and and so Trump is running massive deficit spending which is ultimately going to be monetized. The Fed is already doing that. And Trump is doing what he can to expand credit whether through it's the GSC's or the banks. And the credit expansion also fuels inflation because you have more money at chasing the whatever the supply of of of goods are. And in fact, if you look at the big beautiful bill, it is all demand stimulus. It's no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, no tax on social security. None of that leads to increased investment or increased production. It just means that workers and social security recipients have more money to spend to buy stuff. They don't produce anything more. They just spend more. So, it's all going to be putting upward pressure on prices. But when you hear him going out and saying growth doesn't cause inflation, people think, oh, so he's outside the box because, you know, he doesn't believe in the Phillips curve and all this nonsense, which is true. But he's also trying to pretend that we've got this booming economy and we can still cut rates because we don't have to worry about the growth causing inflation. We don't. It's not the growth that's going to cause inflation. It's the inflation. In fact, it's the inflation that's causing the growth because it's not real growth. The US economy isn't really growing, right? we just inflation can can look like growth and yes there is an overinvestment right now in AI almost all the GDP growth comes from this AI spend um but massive amounts of debt are being accumulated to pay for all this and we have no idea if the return on investment is going to be worth it I I don't have any doubt that AI is going to be substantial in its ability to increase uh productivity over time. But who knows if the investments that are being made today uh are really necessary to to to bringing that about. I I don't know. Um a lot of the stuff that they're buying today may be obsolete in four or five years. >> Well, that capex cycle $660 billion is an insane number and uh it it's tough to >> and nobody talks about like what are we not doing? Where's all this money coming from? I mean, what are we not doing? Because we don't have an unlimited amount of capital. And so, if we're spending all this building out this AI infrastructure, what are we not doing? Where's the money coming from? You know, we'll find out. Like, because there's obviously a lot of things where there's been underinvestment to to to pay for all this. >> No, it's all positive for gold. Maybe to summarize the conversation, Peter, and all the macro points that have driven gold higher have not disappeared. They're still here. So, >> yeah, we know none of the it's not like that we're Yeah, we should be spending some of that money mining mining gold and silver, copper, stuff like that. We need more of these mines, you know, where >> I think it's just a matter of time. >> We're still wasting money. We're still wasting money on crypto. We're still coming up with, you know, meme coins and crap like that because the Trump administration still wants to make America the crypto capital of the world. and he and he wants us to be a Bitcoin superpower or whatever. You know, you know, when Bitcoin is down 50% and no end in sight to where it's going, he's still they're trying to push more more money into this thing. >> Well, as long as Pokemon cards still sell for record prices like $13 million. I'm not sure if you've seen that today, but uh >> Oh, no. >> And uh I think Logan Paul, Jake Paul, one of the one of the Pauls sold his uh Pokemon card for a new record price of $13 million. That just tells you there's too much money. who bought it from him. >> I have no idea. I don't I don't even care. I I just know that it's too much money for something that is just like an NFT. >> Yeah. So, >> but you know, I mean, I guess I'd rather have a Pokemon card than a Bitcoin if if those were my two choices. >> You can hold it at least, right? So, >> well, I mean, in theory, I mean, I guess that particular card is rare. Not that all Pokemon cards. There's lots of I mean my kid I've got I've got packages and packages of these Pokemon cards. So there's there's a huge supply of cards, but they do have limited edition cards, individual cards. I don't know what makes them much different than the other cards cuz when you look at them to me, they all look the same, right? They're not that much different. But to the collectors, you know, they're willing to pay this crazy amount of money for, you know, a particular card that's rare. The question is, for how much longer will people be willing to pay that much for a Pokemon card? I mean, how how long are the collectors that think these cards are worth so much, how long are they going to uh believe that >> or even have the money to sustain the prices? Because it doesn't take much to collapse the whole market, you know? >> Yeah. Well, we've seen it with NFTs. They're worthless now, right? They just disappeared like the the board ape or whatever it was just >> Well, most of those. Yeah. Most, in fact, Logan Paul lost a lot of money on some of his NFTts. He had some highprofile buys where he paid a lot of money and they're worth next to nothing. So, you know, at least he's making up for that on his Pokemon card. >> Well, you know, I'm not crying for the Pauls. You know, they're making a ton of Especially Jake, you know, is making all these fights. He's making so much money. They both live here in my my neighborhood in Puerto Rico. So, >> there you go. >> Right right right around the right around the block on the same street. Fantastic, Peter. Really appreciate your time as always. A fascinating conversation. Um, everything points north uh for for gold and silver here. So, really appreciate where do we send our audience to follow more your work if they don't know by now, Peter? >> Well, you know, um, you know, my podcast I do regularly on Shift Radio and on my YouTube channels, both Peter Schiff and Shift Gold. Uh, so subscribe to those channels, follow me on X. I'm constantly uh posting my thoughts, especially debunking a lot of the false narratives out there uh perpetuated by by the Trump administration now, but but also by the Democrats. I mean, the Republicans think Democrats, you know, are are both lying to to to to Americans about pretty much everything. So, um, I try to get the truth out there, not only about economics, but about the markets, about, you know, where you should be investing your money. And for that, you know, you should work with me at Europe Pacific Asset Management, set up an account, you know, call, talk to our advisors about having a portfolio transferred over to for us to manage. Um, go to shift gold. We've got great prices on gold and silver, particularly silver. Now, when I look at a lot of my major competitors, we're a lot cheaper now than we used to be because they've, you know, really jacked up their prices more than we have. Uh, and so, you know, you got to get some physical gold and silver. You could do that right now at at shift gold um.com. And if you're a do-it-yourselfer, I've got five mutual funds that I manage from Europeific Asset Management. You can get information on all the funds, the prospectuses, the ticker symbols on the website, and you can buy them no load if you get the advisor class through Schwab or Fidelity or any of the big online uh discount brokers and just get my strategies uh into your portfolio, including the gold one I mentioned, uh EPGIX, and I mentioned the dividend payer strategy, that's EPDIX, which invests in these foreign dividend paying stocks. I have an emerging market fund, got a foreign bond fund. I've got a lot of uh uh funds that are specifically designed to uh do well in the environment that we have right now. Dd dollarization, stagflation, foreign markets outperforming the US market, money moving out of US assets into foreign assets. You know, all of my portfolios are constructed to take advantage of of of this of this shift. And I think it's still early. I think it's got a long way to go the trend. >> Absolutely. I'm right there with you and we'll enjoy it together, Peter. Can't wait to see you again in person. Um really appreciate your time. Thanks so much for coming on Sore Financially. Always a pleasure and uh I'll see you again soon. Um everybody else, thanks so much for tuning in. Tremendous conversation here with Peter Schiff. Always always a very a great entertainment, but also so valuable in terms of information that he shares with us. Hope you enjoyed this conversation. Hit that like and subscribe button. Helps us out tremendously. As I mentioned before, our goal is to reach 100,000 subscribers by the end of this quarter. Let's see if we can make it happen with your support. So, thanks so much for tuning in. We'll be back with lots more. Take care out there.
GOLD $5,000 Isn’t the Top: The Dollar Exodus Has Started
Summary
Transcript
I mean, what are we not doing? Because we don't have an unlimited amount of capital. And so, if we're spending all this building out this AI infrastructure, what are we not doing? Where's the money coming from? >> It is volatile out there. Gold, silver, moving hundreds of dollars within minutes without notice. They just drop like water. You see waterfall shorts left, right, and center. What is happening in the world of precious metals, but also what's happening in the US economy? We've got a lot of data last week. jobs report, CPI or CPI as some of our guests like to refer to and we need to dig a little deeper. What is happening? Is the economy really doing well? 15% growth was advertised by the president of the United States. Howard Lutnik was a little more uh conservative. He said five 6% is possible, but we all know this is very difficult to achieve. So, I've invited Peter Schiff, founder of Shift Gold, Europe Pacific Asset Management, back to the program. Really looking forward to catching up with him. But before I switch over, hit that like and subscribe button. helps us out tremendously reach our goal of 100,000 subscribers before the end of this quarter. Let's see if we can make it together. So, Peter, thank you so much for joining us again. It's always great to see you. Happy President's Day. >> Yeah, thanks a lot. Market holiday today, but happy to uh participate in your program. >> Yeah, really appreciate it. It's fairly calm outside today, like no not not a lot of news. It's fairly quiet on the mining side as well. It's quite refreshing to be honest. uh given the backdrop that we've had over the last 10 maybe two 10 days 14 days here um help us maybe start high level like help us make sense of the volatility that we're seeing in precious metals right now um what's your general assessment >> well I mean you you can't um look at that volatility without looking at what preceded it so we had a spectacular rise in in gold and silver rally really took place over a more extended period of time. Really, gold broke out in early 2024 and had a slow and steady rise uh to 4,000. Then it kind of had a very quick move from 4,000 to above 5,500. Silver really went nowhere as gold went from 2,000 to 4,000 and then finally moved from 3,000 to 120. And in fact the move from 80 to 120 was like a few days. Uh so I think once silver broke out above 50 that was both a psychological and a technical uh overhead resistance going all the way back to the Hunt brothers and 1980. So I think once that happened a lot of money came into silver came into gold and silver obviously got ahead of itself. The exchanges came in several rounds of uh you know margin hikes and I think some of the speculators got caught and there was you know a lot of volatility. People got forced out of positions. Uh a lot of uh weaker longs might have bailed out. you saw the media talking about a silver bubble uh which you know bubbles don't form over a matter of days or weeks. It's something that forms over a much longer period of time than that. Um but I think a lot of people uh may have been scared out of the market who recently got in. Maybe other people were motivated to take profits hearing all of the talk of a bubble and the bubbles popped and the market's going to go down. But I think the volatility uh makes sense given the move that preceded it. I think it's a huge breakout in silver. I think silver prices are headed substantially higher from here. Uh I I think a lot of this volatility will ultimately uh you know go away and I think we'll see a far more orderly appreciation of silver. maybe something more similar to what was going on with gold up until uh the recent volatility and I think the bull market in gold is going to persist. Uh you know gold is only about 10% off its highs. So you know nothing like silver down 30 40% from its highs. So it's just a normal correction in the a silver in the gold bull market. But I think what happened in silver is a very rare event, but it coincides with something that was also rare, which was this massive breakout in in in silver. Uh so I think, you know, I think it's very bullish for the metals and even more so for the miners. I think the the precious metals mining companies are are even cheaper and uh Wall Street is still not woken up to that reality either. >> Absolutely. Yeah. this SIJ versus silver ratio, for example, has dropped to historic lows here. And we we'll get to the miners later in the conversation here, Peter, because I'm just trying to emphasize like how healthy or unhealthy that correction is. And maybe just summarizing what you just said, it sounds like quite a normal move that we're seeing in in the precious metals right now. Silver obviously more violent um than gold here. Silver crashed per definition. Gold >> Kai, I don't know that I would say a normal move. I'm just saying that given the abnormal rally that we had and breaking out of such massive overhead resistance, it's not to be unexpected. It's not like, oh my god, look how much silver went down. Yes, but you can't look at that in a vacuum. You have to look at how much it went up and you know, right before then. And even when you're talking about, oh, silver crashed. Okay, but where did it crash from and where did it crash to? Because, you know, if it's crashing into the $70 an ounce level, that's not a crash, you know, other than for the people who happen to buy it at 120, which, you know, was only one day. The vast majority of my clients who have been buying silver from me for 20 years, I, you know, I started um selling my clients silver under $5 an ounce. So for my clients, $70, $80 silver doesn't look like a crash. It looks like a really good price. >> Today's sponsors, Stellar Gold, is sitting on three major Canadian projects. Tower and Colac are among the largest undeveloped gold sites in the country. Tower alone could be worth $2.5 billion after tax at $3,200 gold according to a recent study. And if prices go higher, so does its value. Colomax spends over a thousand square kilometers of greenstone and could be Canada's next big gold camp. They also have Hollinger Tailings, a cleanup project that could deliver near-term cash flow. Across all projects, they've trilled over 16 million ounces of gold, which would cost over $2 billion to replicate today. And with a seasoned team and huge upside potential, Stellar Gold is one to watch. Visit stellarold.com to learn more. This message is forformational purposes only. It's not investment advice. Please do your own due diligence before making any investment decisions. Now, let's jump back into the conversation. AB: Absolutely. No, like we're complaining at a very high level here, right? So, just try to put some context around it, of course. Um, Peters, like a lot of trading or a lot of selling has happened actually during US trading hours. Like, we we see gold and silver tick up during Asian trading hours. US opens and the prices close lower. Um, China is closed this week. What do you make of that? Do you expect lower prices and where do you see perhaps a floor um for gold and silver? >> Well, I think it makes sense because obviously gold is under accumulation in the east and the selling has been coming from the west. Uh and I think the the east has it right. I think you know China is correct that buying gold is the right thing to do and that the price is going to go higher. to the extent there are speculators in the US that don't get this uh and that want to short gold and silver or who want to sell the gold and silver they have because they think it's some kind of a bubble. I think they've got it wrong. And I I think the buyers have a lot more dollars that they need to convert into gold and silver than the speculators can short as far as their ability to short and sell gold and silver that they don't own and have no ability to deliver. >> Absolutely. No, it may makes sense and uh we've seen that trend, you know, for for a number of months now. 15 months of Chinese central bank buying, for example, is a constant reminder. >> It's not just Chinese central banks. There's a lot of other central banks that are buying and there's private demand that is growing, not just around the world, but you're now starting to see some private demand in the US. So, it's picking up all over the world. >> 100%. Yeah. People are worried. Uh the debt bubble we can talk about here later as well. Just the macro picture hasn't changed at all for gold and silver, right? But um the question though is like how should serious investors approach this now? Is this a buy the dip opportunity? Should we wait for this to play out? How do you reframe this moving forward? It uh if if you're new to the space, for example, because the recent price hike or explosion has has brought in a lot of eyeballs, how would you handle this now? >> Well, I mean, I think, you know, buying gold anywhere below or close to 5,000 I think still makes sense. I I don't think there's significant downside risk to me. Gold is acting around 5,000 the way it acted around 4,000, the way it acted around 3,000. uh but also buying gold at 5,000 you're getting it 10% below its high. So that is a a decent correction. Does it mean it can't go to 4,900 or 4,800 or 4750? No, it doesn't mean that. But who cares, right? If you're if you're buying gold as a long-term store of value, it doesn't matter if after you buy it, it gets a couple hundred an ounce cheaper. In fact, you could always buy more. Uh, as far as silver, expect more volatility. So, silver as we're talking is just below 76. Yes, it could easily fall below 70 and so you'd be down close to 10% on paper if you bought some here. But again, I wouldn't worry about it. I don't think silver's going back down below 50. In fact, I don't even think it's going to get anywhere near 50. So, I think we're not that far. maybe the upper 60s or you know low7s is maybe about as cheap as you can get it. But the other problem you have is that physical silver is getting harder to procure. So the premiums that people are paying now on silver coins and bars especially low denomination are higher. So even if silver goes down $10, it doesn't mean you'll be able to buy it $10 cheaper if you actually want physical. So you've got two things working there. You've got, you know, the scarcity of the physical metal. Yeah. If you want to buy a futures contract, you may be able to buy it, but buying a futures contract is not the same as getting metal delivered to your door, you know, which is what we're doing at Shift Gold. So I I just tell people just buy whatever we got while we have it in stock because I could tell by what's happening in the market that we're going to run out at some point. it's going to be hard to get silver phys uh because I think there's been a big disconnect between the paper market and and the real market and eventually that's going to resolve itself with the futures moving higher. Uh but in in the short run, you know, the futures price could do whatever it's going to do, but the physical market is limited by the actual supply of deliverable silver and the demand for that silver, which is growing, not just by investors, but by industry that needs silver. So if you if you're, you know, making batteries and the batteries need silver, you can't just buy a silver contract. You you you can't put the contract into your battery. You got to actually have real silver delivered to you. So you have to buy it in a physical market. >> Is that though more a supply chain issue within the precious metal space or is that really a silver shortage? Like people use that word silver squeeze constantly and maybe misuse it as well because you have access and you have insights into what's happening on the physical side in the supply chain. >> Yeah. Supply chain issue or really a squeeze? Well, it's both because I mean a there's a constraint on how much silver can come out of a mine. There's, you know, there's only so much the mines can produce. They just can't turn on a new mine just because silver is higher in price. They just can't say, "Oh, let's let's mine more silver." Uh, most of these miners were already mining as much silver as they could uh at at at the older prices. but also has to do with the refiners. You know, if they run out of inventory that, you know, they can't magically transfer bullion into into into coins and bars, you know, the raw silver. So, if all of a sudden there's a big increase in demand by investors, they just don't have the capacity to immediately supply it all. So, you get a backlog and you get delays. uh so you know then obviously people will start to pay more money for a more immediate delivery of of their metals. So all these things are happening. I mean I could tell you at shift gold business was very slow for the last several years. It just picked up a lot in the last month to the point that we've never been this busy. But to go from a very slow um you know environment to all of a sudden busy well you don't have the the demand power. You don't have the resources. You're not used to it. All of a sudden there's a big increase. Uh and and that's not unique to my company. Obviously it's happening all over the industry. So yeah, we've hired some more people. We're ramping up um to deal with it. But you know that there there's going to be problems throughout the entire distribution channel when all of a sudden there's a lot more demand for for the metal. >> Absolutely. Yeah. As as you said, like you can't ramp up and I hear the US mint is usually not the best producer, especially when it comes to the American Eagle. Um they're lacking behind massively as well. So been hearing those rumors quite quite for quite a while now. Um Peter, you you you touched on the miners and we we need to talk about them. uh a lot big big opportunity here. Um they they have been lagging the precious metals uh for for a while caught up now the the precious metals have dropped. Like what's the situation here for the mining companies? Is there still room to run and what's the opportunity here? >> Yeah, I mean there's a lot of room. Um Wall Street has pretty much been skeptical of the gold rally ever since 2000. So the whole time gold was going up, Wall Street was expecting it to go down. In fact, if you go back to early 2024 when gold was at 2,000, uh major banks that that that cover mining companies were putting seller recommendations on Pneumont and Bareric and the rationale was gold has peaked at 2000. there's no upside. And so why own these miners when all that's going to happen is the price of gold is going to go down? And and so these companies have never never really reassessed that that bad that bad conclusion. Uh and and so they've watched gold prices more than double uh since that that forecast, right? Um, and even though the gold stocks have, you know, let's say they've tripled as gold went from 2,000 to 5,000, and that's a little bit more than the increase in the price of gold. One would have expected a lot more than that given the magnitude that $5,000 gold has on their earnings. the your earnings don't just triple when the price of gold triples. Your earnings move up by a much greater factor than that. You know, if your if your cost of mining gold is 1,500 and the price is 2,000, you're making $500 an ounce. But if the cost goes to 5,000 and you're still at 1,500, right? You're making $3,500 an ounce. seven times the profits on on not not three times. So there should be a lot more leverage because these companies are inherently much more valuable today. But it's not just that gold is at 5,000 today. It's that it's going to be much higher tomorrow. Wall Street still doesn't get that gold prices are going to keep rising. Not only are gold prices not going to fall, they're going to keep going up, which means the earnings that are already not being properly, you know, attributed to these companies and valued are going to go even higher in the future. So, I I think you still have a great opportunity to buy these companies. And in fact, some of the best opportunities are in the juniors, the real juniors that haven't even moved as much as the senior stocks. and and and there, you know, the opportunities are incredible because I think a lot of these small companies are just going to get bought out by the big companies that have massive cash flow. Now, what are they going to do with all their money? I mean, they they could jack up their dividends a lot. They could buy back a bunch of their own stock or they could try to accumulate more reserves so they have more gold to mine. And the way the easiest way to do that is buy up smaller companies that have a lot of reserves. proven, but that don't have the cash to develop them and just buy up those reserves and just, you know, put them on ice or, you know, you don't even have to develop them now. Just hold on to them because you don't have an infinite uh supply of gold. Uh so, you know, just keep them for the future because it's they're only the gold's only going to get more valuable. The longer you wait to mine it, the more it's going to be worth. So, some of these smaller companies may need to mine the gold now because they have obligations. But if the big companies buy them up, they don't need to mine it. They'll just throw it in there and it'll just be valued as part of their reserves. They got more operating cash flow than they know what to do with right now. They they've never been making money like this. So, you know, we've got a lot of these small companies in my gold fund, the Europe Gold Fund. EPGIX is the the ticker or the no-loadad symbol for the fund that you can get at any discount broker. Uh and we're we have uh separately managed accounts at Europe Pacific Asset Management that focus on the mining companies and we have other strategies. You know, just our dividend payer strategy for example, just owning foreign dividend payer stocks was up I think 62% last year. It's up about 13% this year. So crushing the US stock market. But obviously the mining focus strategies have done even better than that. >> Uh but now I think it's still a great time to get into my my fund because of the big position that we have about a third of the portfolio in these really small stocks uh that you know would be hard for any other fund to buy now in that kind of size uh given the type of liquidity. Uh but I think there's some tremendous performance that that we're going to get in the future based on this portfolio that people can take advantage of by buying into it now. >> Absolutely. Yeah. As as you said like gold price for example Q4 average gold price I think I got it right here it was a 4163 per ounce realized price in in Q4 and as we just discussed at Nausea is like we're at close to $5,000. It's almost $1,000 higher within six weeks. >> Yeah. And what people also don't think about is the cost side of this because the costs have been a big problem for the mining companies until very recently. Oil is barely over $60 a barrel. That's cheap, you know, in relationship to where it's been in the past. I mean, oil's been over a hundred when gold prices were a lot lower than they are right now. So, that's the main cost in mining. I mean, you've got uh wages and then you've got energy. And energy is generally number one and maybe wages number two. And the wages are not up that much given, you know, where the dollar is right now. If you look at the Canadian dollar, the Australian dollar, some of these South American currencies, they're still relatively low compared to where they've traded against the US dollar in the past. So the operating costs are low. And another thing that people don't consider is that silver is a byproduct of mining gold. And almost all the gold mining companies mine some silver. They also may mine some platinum and other precious metals. And what the money they get from mining silver doesn't show up as earnings. It just shows up as reducing their costs. So their cost to mine gold goes down if they get more for their silver. So if they're selling their silver at 80 bucks and they used to sell it at 30 bucks, that's a lot of money, you know, you know, so that lowers their cost. So you're going to see not only the top line going up, right, but that the cost going down. So the margins are just exploding for these gold miners. >> 100%. and I'm here for it as well. So, absolutely, I can't wait for that to happen and price price moves have already been fantastic in my portfolio. I can't complain, right? Um pet Peter, you have a lot of confidence that gold will go higher. I think we need to work through that just a little bit. Explain to our audience who might not be following you as closely as others. Um what is driving gold higher right now? Where where where do you get the confidence that even from $5,000 we could be going higher? What what are you seeing out there that that makes you say that? I think it's inflation ddollarization which is a function of a loss of confidence in the US in its ability to honestly repay its debts in the independence of the Federal Reserve in the Fed Fed's commitment to uh maintain the dollar's value or fight inflation. I think, you know, markets are coming to terms with the reality of, you know, $ 38 trillion national debt rising, you know, you know, in perpetuity by two, three, four, five trillion a year. Who knows? Uh, you've got Donald Trump wanting lower interest rates, putting pressure on the Fed to lower rates because we need lower rates because we can't afford to pay the rates because we have so much debt. Uh Donald Trump's main goal is to continue to inflate a bubble. He doesn't want asset prices to go down. He wants the stock market to keep going up. He wants the real estate market to keep going up. The only way to do that is by sacrificing the value of the dollar. And that's what they're doing. And so if we're sacrificing the value of the dollar, why does the world want to hold the dollars? The world doesn't want to be sacrificed. Foreign central banks don't want to hold a currency that's going to depreciate as a reserve. So foreign central banks are moving from dollars to gold. Uh international investors are doing the same thing and you know Americans are going to be doing the same thing. It's going to be a mass exodus out of US dollars into an alternative and gold is the most viable monetary alternative. I mean for banks it's really the only alternative. uh you know, private citizens. Yeah, they could buy stocks, they could buy real estate, they could buy other things, but but gold and silver are going to be a big part of what investors buy when they want to get rid of their dollars and and that is going to continue. There's no end in sight to the deficit spending. Uh the Republicans have no stomach uh to cut government spending. They refuse to do it. They may criticize deficit spending when the Democrats do it, but the minute they have control, they do the exact same thing. Look at the big beautiful bill that the president brags about signing. You know, they criticize all the spending under Biden and say that's why we had inflation under Biden. Yet, when they had an opportunity to cut back on the Biden spending, they not only didn't do that, they preserved all that extra spending and then added to it with extra spending of their own. And then they cut taxes so that we have less revenue than Biden had, but we have more spending. So, we're going to have bigger deficits under under Trump than we had under Biden. and and and so the world can see this and it's like all right well you know we gota we got to get out >> and you know plus we've weaponized the dollar both under Biden and Trump you know we use it you know to to bludgeon people with sanctions >> uh and you know the world doesn't like this and now you know Trump is out there chastising the world criticizing the world you know we we're entitled to low rates you guys you know and you you're taking advantage of us you're ripping us off. So, we're going to put tariffs on everything. You know, we're angering a lot of our allies and then we're, you know, threatening to invade them. You know, Trump was talking about invading Greenland. He eventually backed down, but the fact that he even put that out there and suggested that it was something that we were considering. I mean, why the hell does the world want to subsidize that? If if we've gone from being the protector of the world to being an aggressor to saying we can take whatever we want if we think it's in our interest to invade your country, we're just going to invade it. Uh I don't think that's something the world wants to subsidize. And that's what they do by by holding dollars. >> Absolutely. No. And uh maybe one thing I want to follow up on and drill down just a bit more is really the Supreme Court and the tariff situation here. Peter, I'm just just picking one of the many topics we could spend hours talking about, but um just pulled up poly market here and the Supreme Court rules in favor of Trump tariffs is only a 26% chance. Personally, like on this channel, we barely talked about a potential fallout of the Supreme Court ruling against the Trump tariffs. And I'm curious what your take is. What will it do to the markets and how do we prepare for it based on what you're saying here? Well, you know, to the extent that the markets already expect the tariffs to be ruled unconstitutional, and they are. So, I mean, if the court rules correctly, they will get thrown out. I think the question is how will the administration respond? How much of the tariffs uh will he be able to continue anyway despite the ruling? Uh that's hard to say. And will the court rule that the funds previously corrected collected need to be returned? Um, so that remains to be seen whether they'll just say, "Look, you can't impose these tariffs prospectively, but I don't know if the court's going to rule that everybody who paid a tariff is entitled to their money back." Now, they should be, uh, but I don't know if it's just going to be confined to the party that sued and that party will get their their money back, uh, and that everybody else would have to file their own lawsuits to get their money back. I I I don't know I don't know how disruptive it would be on the US government to return all that money. >> Um but you know I think that to the extent that the court strikes down the tariffs and there is an economic problem that may have happened anyway even if the tariffs were upheld. It does give the Trump administration a convenient scapegoat because Donald Trump's narrative was the tariffs were great, the tariffs were making us rich, we had a booming economy because of the tariffs. Now, all that is a lie, but that's what Trump's been saying. Now, if the Supreme Court eliminates the tariffs, which is actually a good thing, which actually would make the economy better, right? But let's say the Supreme Court throws out the tariffs and then the economy crashes, which it would have crashed anyway. Now Trump could say, "You see, look, everything was great and look what the court did. The court ruined this great economy that I created." So I I think politically it's actually better for Trump if the Supreme Court, you know, overrules the tariffs because it gives him a scapegoat to blame bad stuff on. That would have happened anyway. >> Excellent point. I didn't even look at it from that angle because I was wondering, okay, what happens? Excessive money printing if everything has to be paid back. inflation might make a return six months down the road, things like that. I was looking >> but that's happening anyway. So, you know, at least, you know, because Trump is g Trump is going to run against at least in the midterms, the Republicans are going to run against the Fed and maybe they'll run against the court. They'll be able to say the Fed screwed it up uh by not cutting rates enough, by being too slow, and the court screwed it up by rejecting my great tariffs. You know, >> absolutely. Maybe la last question, Peter. We're running out of time here, but uh Kevin Walsh, of course, was on nominated. The marketer was quite surprised uh to to see that name because he stands actually for something that doesn't really align with Trump's policies or what Trump's asking for. He's more hawkish. He wants to, you know, reduce the balance sheet of the Fed. What do you make of that nomination? And where where does it take us? >> Well, first of all, I don't know why it was a surprise because he was always one of the front runners. It wasn't like he was like a dark horse. I mean, he was at least like 20 30% probability, you know, and there was only like three or four, you know, top choices. So, and I don't remember people questioning him when he was a top choice, saying, "Why is he at the top of the list? This guy is such a hawk." Right? So, it it was only spun that way after he was nominated. And I think that was deliberate on the part of the Trump administration. I think they they gave out those talking points because that coincided with the raid on gold and silver. I mean, the big drop happened. Gold was down $500 on the day his uh announcement came out. And part of what was motivating the selling was that this was some kind of gamecher that he was a hawk now and he was going to start coming in, you know, guns ablazing, uh, hiking race, shrinking, you know, going back to quantitative tightening or some crazy stuff. And look, I think the the the plan of the administration is to frame this guy as if he's some kind of hawk and independent of Trump so that when he does exactly what Trump wants and slashes interest rates, they'll be able to say, "Well, it must be justified because here you've got this big hawk cutting rates, so it must be okay. It must be uh economically justified. It's clearly not politically motivated. I didn't I didn't appoint one of my flunkies. I went I went and I got this totally independent guy. So, but I think that's all, you know, a charade. I mean, there's no way that Trump would appoint Walsh if he thought Walsh was going to be really tough uh uh and be this hawk because that would make him worse than Pal. And the reason he doesn't like Pal is because Pal wasn't easy enough. So he's not going to appoint somebody that will be less easy or, you know, tight. He wants cheap money. He wants rates slashed. And if you listen to what Walsh is saying now, he's saying we need lower rates. Now, one of the things that Walsh says, which is true, is that growth doesn't cause inflation. It doesn't. You know that. And neither does low unemployment. None of that stuff causes inflation. Inflation is caused by an increase in a supply of money and credit. And what generally brings that about is deficit spending. The more deficits we have, the more money the Fed has to create to cover the cost. Um and and so Trump is running massive deficit spending which is ultimately going to be monetized. The Fed is already doing that. And Trump is doing what he can to expand credit whether through it's the GSC's or the banks. And the credit expansion also fuels inflation because you have more money at chasing the whatever the supply of of of goods are. And in fact, if you look at the big beautiful bill, it is all demand stimulus. It's no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, no tax on social security. None of that leads to increased investment or increased production. It just means that workers and social security recipients have more money to spend to buy stuff. They don't produce anything more. They just spend more. So, it's all going to be putting upward pressure on prices. But when you hear him going out and saying growth doesn't cause inflation, people think, oh, so he's outside the box because, you know, he doesn't believe in the Phillips curve and all this nonsense, which is true. But he's also trying to pretend that we've got this booming economy and we can still cut rates because we don't have to worry about the growth causing inflation. We don't. It's not the growth that's going to cause inflation. It's the inflation. In fact, it's the inflation that's causing the growth because it's not real growth. The US economy isn't really growing, right? we just inflation can can look like growth and yes there is an overinvestment right now in AI almost all the GDP growth comes from this AI spend um but massive amounts of debt are being accumulated to pay for all this and we have no idea if the return on investment is going to be worth it I I don't have any doubt that AI is going to be substantial in its ability to increase uh productivity over time. But who knows if the investments that are being made today uh are really necessary to to to bringing that about. I I don't know. Um a lot of the stuff that they're buying today may be obsolete in four or five years. >> Well, that capex cycle $660 billion is an insane number and uh it it's tough to >> and nobody talks about like what are we not doing? Where's all this money coming from? I mean, what are we not doing? Because we don't have an unlimited amount of capital. And so, if we're spending all this building out this AI infrastructure, what are we not doing? Where's the money coming from? You know, we'll find out. Like, because there's obviously a lot of things where there's been underinvestment to to to pay for all this. >> No, it's all positive for gold. Maybe to summarize the conversation, Peter, and all the macro points that have driven gold higher have not disappeared. They're still here. So, >> yeah, we know none of the it's not like that we're Yeah, we should be spending some of that money mining mining gold and silver, copper, stuff like that. We need more of these mines, you know, where >> I think it's just a matter of time. >> We're still wasting money. We're still wasting money on crypto. We're still coming up with, you know, meme coins and crap like that because the Trump administration still wants to make America the crypto capital of the world. and he and he wants us to be a Bitcoin superpower or whatever. You know, you know, when Bitcoin is down 50% and no end in sight to where it's going, he's still they're trying to push more more money into this thing. >> Well, as long as Pokemon cards still sell for record prices like $13 million. I'm not sure if you've seen that today, but uh >> Oh, no. >> And uh I think Logan Paul, Jake Paul, one of the one of the Pauls sold his uh Pokemon card for a new record price of $13 million. That just tells you there's too much money. who bought it from him. >> I have no idea. I don't I don't even care. I I just know that it's too much money for something that is just like an NFT. >> Yeah. So, >> but you know, I mean, I guess I'd rather have a Pokemon card than a Bitcoin if if those were my two choices. >> You can hold it at least, right? So, >> well, I mean, in theory, I mean, I guess that particular card is rare. Not that all Pokemon cards. There's lots of I mean my kid I've got I've got packages and packages of these Pokemon cards. So there's there's a huge supply of cards, but they do have limited edition cards, individual cards. I don't know what makes them much different than the other cards cuz when you look at them to me, they all look the same, right? They're not that much different. But to the collectors, you know, they're willing to pay this crazy amount of money for, you know, a particular card that's rare. The question is, for how much longer will people be willing to pay that much for a Pokemon card? I mean, how how long are the collectors that think these cards are worth so much, how long are they going to uh believe that >> or even have the money to sustain the prices? Because it doesn't take much to collapse the whole market, you know? >> Yeah. Well, we've seen it with NFTs. They're worthless now, right? They just disappeared like the the board ape or whatever it was just >> Well, most of those. Yeah. Most, in fact, Logan Paul lost a lot of money on some of his NFTts. He had some highprofile buys where he paid a lot of money and they're worth next to nothing. So, you know, at least he's making up for that on his Pokemon card. >> Well, you know, I'm not crying for the Pauls. You know, they're making a ton of Especially Jake, you know, is making all these fights. He's making so much money. They both live here in my my neighborhood in Puerto Rico. So, >> there you go. >> Right right right around the right around the block on the same street. Fantastic, Peter. Really appreciate your time as always. A fascinating conversation. Um, everything points north uh for for gold and silver here. So, really appreciate where do we send our audience to follow more your work if they don't know by now, Peter? >> Well, you know, um, you know, my podcast I do regularly on Shift Radio and on my YouTube channels, both Peter Schiff and Shift Gold. Uh, so subscribe to those channels, follow me on X. I'm constantly uh posting my thoughts, especially debunking a lot of the false narratives out there uh perpetuated by by the Trump administration now, but but also by the Democrats. I mean, the Republicans think Democrats, you know, are are both lying to to to to Americans about pretty much everything. So, um, I try to get the truth out there, not only about economics, but about the markets, about, you know, where you should be investing your money. And for that, you know, you should work with me at Europe Pacific Asset Management, set up an account, you know, call, talk to our advisors about having a portfolio transferred over to for us to manage. Um, go to shift gold. We've got great prices on gold and silver, particularly silver. Now, when I look at a lot of my major competitors, we're a lot cheaper now than we used to be because they've, you know, really jacked up their prices more than we have. Uh, and so, you know, you got to get some physical gold and silver. You could do that right now at at shift gold um.com. And if you're a do-it-yourselfer, I've got five mutual funds that I manage from Europeific Asset Management. You can get information on all the funds, the prospectuses, the ticker symbols on the website, and you can buy them no load if you get the advisor class through Schwab or Fidelity or any of the big online uh discount brokers and just get my strategies uh into your portfolio, including the gold one I mentioned, uh EPGIX, and I mentioned the dividend payer strategy, that's EPDIX, which invests in these foreign dividend paying stocks. I have an emerging market fund, got a foreign bond fund. I've got a lot of uh uh funds that are specifically designed to uh do well in the environment that we have right now. Dd dollarization, stagflation, foreign markets outperforming the US market, money moving out of US assets into foreign assets. You know, all of my portfolios are constructed to take advantage of of of this of this shift. And I think it's still early. I think it's got a long way to go the trend. >> Absolutely. I'm right there with you and we'll enjoy it together, Peter. Can't wait to see you again in person. Um really appreciate your time. Thanks so much for coming on Sore Financially. Always a pleasure and uh I'll see you again soon. Um everybody else, thanks so much for tuning in. Tremendous conversation here with Peter Schiff. Always always a very a great entertainment, but also so valuable in terms of information that he shares with us. Hope you enjoyed this conversation. Hit that like and subscribe button. Helps us out tremendously. As I mentioned before, our goal is to reach 100,000 subscribers by the end of this quarter. Let's see if we can make it happen with your support. So, thanks so much for tuning in. We'll be back with lots more. Take care out there.