Peter Schiff: Gold & Silver Are Signaling A Crisis Is Coming
Summary
Macro Outlook: The guest forecasts an inflationary depression driven by a looming dollar crisis, sustained high inflation, and ultimately higher long-term rates.
Precious Metals: Strong bullish case for gold and silver as confidence erodes in the dollar and bonds, with central banks and investors increasing allocations.
Gold Miners: Preference for precious metals mining equities, noting outsized gains year-to-date and room for further upside alongside rising bullion prices.
Foreign Stocks: Emphasis on dividend-paying foreign equities as core holdings to escape dollar risk and inflation, with reported outperformance versus U.S. indices.
Emerging Markets: Expectation that EM and other non-U.S. markets will significantly outperform U.S. equities as capital flows reverse from the U.S. to overseas.
Policy Risks: Warns of continued money printing and low real rates, with potential for future confiscatory taxation as a political response to crisis.
Bonds and Cash: Bearish on U.S. Treasuries and cash as stores of value, citing inadequate yields versus inflation and currency debasement risk.
Portfolio Positioning: Advocates non-dollar assets including physical metals, mining stocks, and international dividend payers to hedge inflation and currency decline.
Transcript
The crash that I see coming and that I've seen coming for years is not a crash in the stock market. It's a crash in the dollar. I've called it a inflationary depression, which is really what we're going to be entering into. It's going to be an elong period elongated period of time with an extreme weak economy that maybe moves in and out of recession but never really grows but all the while has very high inflation. Peter Schiff, chief economist and global strategist at Europacific Asset Management, also founder of Shift Gold. It is so wonderful to welcome you to the show. Really appreciate you taking the time. I am thrilled to have you on for your debut episode. Peter, >> thanks Julia. How are you? >> I'm doing well. I have to say, Peter, you are one of those names that when I put out a request for guest, I ask my audience like, "Who do you all want to see on the show?" I see a lot of Peter Schiff, Peter Schiff, Peter Schiff. a lot of um times you come up in the comments, so they're just going to absolutely love having you on today. There's so much to talk about. And this show, we always start with the big picture, more of that macro view, the framework in which you were looking at the world, the economy, markets, more of your outlook. And one of the things about this show, Peter, is you can take all the time you need to set the table when it comes to that big picture macro view. Well, I mean, from the perspective of of Americans, and the majority of my clients are Americans. They're not all Americans, but I'd say, you know, certainly the majority are are Americans. I assume most of your audience are are Americans as well. And uh so the big picture from from my perspective uh for America is actually pretty bleak, unfortunately. I mean, yeah, I think it's been rather bleak for a while. Uh, and we've managed to kick the can down the road for more years than I than I anticipated, you know, a couple of decades ago. But I knew that eventually, you know, our past would catch up to us and, you know, the chickens would would come home to roost. And, you know, I think the signs are are are pretty clearly there that that that day is that day is close. you know, I I thought it was close uh back in 2008, you know, and I had uh for years forecast that the 2008 financial crisis and you know, when the subprime market blew up in ' 07, which was something that I had anticipated and was actively as short, um I you know, it I thought that maybe we would have had to deal with this issue back then, especially when they they launched the QE program which was again something else that I had uh anticipated but I thought it would have ended a lot better than it did uh or that maybe that's not the word but I had expected a dollar crisis uh to happen a lot sooner you know following the quantitative easing episode but it didn't happen uh and and rather than you know taking our medicine and and and and trying to repair the damage that the Fed had done to the economy uh we were able to do a lot more damage. You know, the Fed got away with QE 1 2 3 even got away with the QE after the pandemic uh for a while anyway before the you know the the effects really became evident on consumer prices. Um but I think now what's what's happening in the precious metals market uh what's happening in gold you know what's happening in silver uh gold now trading above $4,300 silver now above $66 you know it's more than doubled on the year um I think these are signs that confidence is finally being lost uh globally in the dollar you don't see it as much in the bond market although you know the long end of yield curve uh hasn't done what a lot of people would have expected uh despite all the rate cuts. You know, we've had two rounds of now like 75 basis point rate cuts. Uh yet the yield on the 10ear is still north of 4%, you know, almost 4.2. Uh I think it's going a lot higher, but the fact that it hasn't gone lower uh is is is a warning sign. But gold and silver are are are screaming uh that a currency crisis is coming. I think the foreign central banks have been out in front of this now for a year or two. Uh they have been replacing dollars with gold. They've been you know moving towards uh having real real assets as reserve. Uh now uh the gold reserves are now larger than US treasury reserves. A lot of that is not the result of the buying. I mean, some of it is from the buying, but most of it is from the appreciation in the value of their their gold reserves, but that's going to continue. And I think they're going to step up um the the amount of buying. And I think other central banks that weren't buying gold, they're going to start buying gold. And I also think private investors that haven't been active are going to get active. In fact, you know, uh, Morgan Stanley, I guess their analysts came out [clears throat] a couple months ago and tweaked the 6040 portfolio and said we should do 60 2020 and, you know, cutting the bond allocation in half in favor of gold. And that's basically a sell signal on bonds. And it's Morgan Stanley maybe coming to the realization that they're not really a safe haven, that the yields aren't high enough to offset what you lose to inflation. And so people need to hold gold and that's going to be very problematic because we have, you know, out of control deficit spending and if foreign central banks aren't buying our debt and American investors aren't buying our debt, who's going to buy it? That really leaves the Fed as the last man standing. And in fact, you know, one of the predictions that I've made for a while uh was that uh the Fed would return to quantitative easing again. And they basically just effectively did that at the last FOMC meeting announcing this $40 billion uh ongoing purchase of uh of Treasury securities. Yes, they're short-term, but so what? Still QE. I don't care what they want to call it. They're monetizing debt. Uh they're, you know, expanding the money supply. They're buying US government debt. That's, you know, that's QE. And I'm sure it won't be long before they expand the program and extend the duration. Uh and and I think that, you know, we're headed for this this dollar crisis, this currency crisis. Uh the result is going to be an explosion in consumer prices and ultimately long-term interest rates. And it's going to be, you know, a huge problem for the US economy. >> And politically, I think it's going to be a disaster for the Republicans. Uh, I think it's going to mean uh that we're going to have a very radically left uh Democrat in the White House in 2028. >> Wow. >> With probably uh a radical Congress uh that might actually help them get that uh socialist agenda uh you know you know passed. So it's it's it's so unfortunately I don't you know I I see a lot of problems uh coming in in in the near term. >> Peter, there are so many threads I would love to pull on with you. We've had this interview booked for a while. Um you got a lot of attention recently. Um and you know where I'm going to go with this. You were on Fox and Friends on the weekend, the 6 a.m. show and President Trump posted on Truth Social. It got reposted on X. That's how I saw it. But he I'll just read it for folks. I'm sure they've seen it. But why would Fox and Friends Weekend of all things put on a stock broker named Peter Schiff, a Trump-hating loser who has already proven to be wrong. Either the show made a mistake or it is headed heading in a different direction. He thinks prices are going up when in fact they are coming substantially down. Gasoline hit $1.99 a gallon yesterday in certain states and is down big since Biden. Other prices are almost all down. Biden caused the affordability crisis. I'm fixing it along with everything else. Much of it like the border is already fixed. Check out Check out the Booker who put this jerk on. Okay. I take maybe let's start with your reaction to the President Trump exruth social post. >> Well, first of all, yeah, I didn't know about it on Truth Social because like just about everybody else, I don't use Truth Social. It's just the sounding board for Trump and he ought to rename it lie social because he pretty much lies most of the time uh in that echo chamber. Uh but look, there's so many things wrong with the president's remarks. I mean, first of all, if he disagrees with me, he doesn't have to call me a jerk uh and a loser. I mean, you know, and you know, I'm not a Trump hater. you know, you don't have to have a different view on the efficacy of his policies or the direction of inflation uh to hate him. You could still like him. I mean, I actually voted for the guy and I actually encouraged my audience to vote for him because I thought he was the lesser of the two evils. I mean, I wasn't an enthusiastic supporter, but you know, you can't say that I'm a Trump hater. Although I do hate I don't know that's a strong word but I don't like a lot of the things that he's doing as president. I mean there's some things I do like but you know I it's not you know that I hate the man and my comments were not out of hatred and I didn't say anything hateful at all during that interview. It's interesting though that I mean Trump even bothered to post about it because nobody would have known about it. It was 6:00 in the morning, 6:30 in the morning. I did it from my hotel room in Dubai. So to me it was like three in the afternoon so it was no big deal. But you know the west coast of the United States is 3:00 am. I mean if he would have said nothing about it everybody would have forgot about it. But but he he decided to to to rage uh about it on on on his on his platform. But I mean first of all he looks ridiculous apart from having to call me names like you know we're in a playground in elementary school. Um, but he says that prices are coming down. I mean, where are they coming down? I mean, yes, I I'll give him gas prices have come down. I don't think they're going to stay down, but that's just one price. But the price of just about everything. I mean, even the Federal Reserve admits that inflation is higher than they would like it to be. They're cutting rates despite the fact that they're 50% above their target, right? We're at 3%. Not 2%. So, how is Trump saying that prices are coming down? And he's not even saying they're coming down a little. They're coming down substantially. I mean, substantial is like a lot. I mean, they're they're not even coming down a little. They're going up. So, it's ridiculous that Trump claims that I am the jerk for claiming that prices are rising. Of course, they're rising. I mean, that's not even controversial. I mean I mean, this is just a matter of fact that they're rising. In fact, I think they're rising more than the CPI, uh, you know, acknowledges. Um, and it's going to get worse. Um, you know, Trump claims there that, you know, Biden caused this problem and he's going to fix it. Biden didn't cause it. I mean, Biden contributed to it. So did Trump. you know, the the the the worst uh policy that was responsible for the big surge in inflation in 2021, that was the big year, right? That was pretty much all Trump because the the money that was created that led to the price hikes in 2021 was created in 2020. Trump signed on to the COVID stimulus, the PPP, the extended uh unemployment benefits. So the budget deficits skyrocketed in Trump's final year and that's when the Fed, you know, blew up the balance sheet from 4 trillion to 8 trillion. Biden hadn't even taken the oath of office yet and all this inflation was created. There's a lag between the expansion of the money supply and the resulting increase in prices. And if you look at the CPI, and I made this point on Tucker, but if you look at the CPI, um, it really started to go up during the last four or five months of Trump's term. And then it continued during the first several months of Biden's before Biden actually did anything. You know, months before those first stimulus checks got in the mail, we we were seeing these big CPI numbers. That wasn't Biden's fault, right? the the the the inflation that Biden helped create didn't show up in consumer prices until 2022, 2023. But the worst year, the 9.1% year, that's on Trump. That's on the Well, the Fed, of course, too, right? Without the Fed, it wouldn't have worked. But, you know, Trump was a part of that. >> It was baked in the cake. >> Yeah. I mean, so if Trump had been reelected, would have been the same thing, right? It's not because of Biden. was because of what he did. Now, since he's gotten the helm of the ship back, what has he done? He has dramatically increased deficit spending. He's signed off on and encouraged the big, beautiful bill, which uh increased government spending and decreased taxes. And so, we're going to have bigger deficits that the Fed is now going to have to monetize. Meanwhile, he has encouraged the Fed to slash interest rates, which they have cut them. Maybe not as much as he would like, but he has put pressure on the Fed to lower interest rates. Now they've returned to QE. We got massive deficits. These are highly inflationary uh fiscal and monetary policy combination. Maybe not quite as bad as the COVID time, but it's probably worse than anything since or before. Um, and so the numbers are going to get worse. This this the increases in the cost of living during uh Trump's second year, third year are going to be a lot higher. And in fact, I think the worst year probably will be his last year. We could see a double-digit increase easily as measured by the CPI in consumer prices, >> which will be election year too. >> Well, yeah. I mean, look that that the Republicans are in a lot of trouble. As I said, unfortunately, I think they're going to lose >> uh the midterms, which is not, you know, I mean, usually that happens. The whoever has the White House loses Congress. That's kind of par for the course. But the problem the Republicans are going to have is Trump is out there telling everybody that not only is the economy great, it's never been greater. like it's, you know, like it's the greatest in in in all of history and it's the strongest in the world. And that's not even close to the truth. I mean, it we're we could easily be in a recession. The economy is weak. That's why the Fed is cutting rates. Why do you think the Fed is ignoring above target inflation and cutting rates? It's because they're worried about the economy. They wouldn't be worried about it if it was as strong as Trump claimed. But one thing we know that voters don't like, they don't like to be told how great things are when they're not great. That's why they elected Trump the first time. >> Yeah. >> Because, you know, uh Hillary was trying to claim that everything was great under Obama and you should vote for her. >> Well, the voters knew that things weren't good and they they voted for Trump. And then four years later, they got worse, not better, like Trump claims. That's why they voted for Biden. you know, they always want to change the leader when their, you know, their situation is getting worse under their leadership. >> Yeah. >> And so, I think there's going to be a lot of angry uh independents and even some uh Republicans are either going to sit out the elections or they're going to vote Democrat. Uh because you've got the Republican telling them everything is great and then the Democrat is going to be validating. >> But are you going to have a really radical like Democrat? Like do you don't think they will see they'll watch like New York closely and see how that plays out and be like I don't know. >> Well I mean look at you know man obviously the pendulum is swinging left in both parties right despite all this MAGA Republicans Trump is you what a Democrat used to be. I mean he's not like a Ronald Reagan like a real conservative. He's a big government guy. He believes in massive government spending deficits central planning. He doesn't believe in capitalism and the free market. People say he's pro business. Yeah. The businesses that he wants to back, you know, he wants the government to be involved in business. He wants the government to pick winners and losers to decide which businesses should be encouraged uh and which should not. I mean, so this, you know, that's not a a Republican. Plus, he believes in protectionism. He wants tariffs and he's under the delusion that the income from tariffs comes from foreigners that we don't even have to pay those taxes which is completely ridiculous. All of the the tariff tax revenue is paid by Americans. In fact, you know, the only reason we have an income tax today is because people didn't want to pay tariffs and the government was able to sell the American public on the idea that if we have an income tax on the rich, we can eliminate tariffs on the middle class and the poor. and they they went for it. That's you know that that's how we got the 16th amendment because the public didn't want to pay tariffs anymore. They'd rather have the rich people pay income taxes. Now, of course, the the middle class pays much higher income taxes than they ever envisioned for Rockefeller or Carnegie or Melon or any of these any of these guys. Uh and now we got tariffs, too, thanks to Trump. We got the income tax and we got the tariffs. We're getting we're getting it from both ends. It's not, you know, Trump says we're getting rich on tariffs. We're not getting rich on tariffs. We're taxing ourselves. We're not getting rich paying taxes to ourselves. >> This episode is brought to you by Van X Rare Earth and Strategic Metals ETF. Ticker symbol REMX. Rare Earths are the hidden backbone of modern technology and defense. Powering everything from smartphones and electric vehicles to fighter [music] jets and wind turbines. 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He was just on this show around the poverty line in America. He puts it at 100 to 140,000 for an American family just to like cover basic needs like housing. That's where he puts it just by doing No, I want to ask you about it. By just doing the math of like covering child care, >> um more of the basic needs. It sparked a lot of conversation. A lot of people came in the comment section and said, you know, this is my experience um or they feel this every day. So maybe I wanted to get more of your reaction. poverty. >> Poverty might not be the best word for it. I mean, >> or it's like the working poor, the working poor, if you will. >> Not even not even working poor, but I get it. If you live in New York City, you live in San Francisco, um you're paying high taxes, so you make 100, you know, you maybe, you know, you got a W2 type job. So, if you earn $180,000 a year, you might only keep a hundred, right? And between the rent that you have to pay and if you have to hire somebody to watch your kids so you can go to work, right? And maybe that's 180,000. That's two people working. That's not even one person. That's a guy and his wife. >> You know, they're both working and they're bringing that in together. And then they're paying 40% of it in taxes. And then they got to give a big chunk of that to uh uh their uh daycare, you know, their child care. Then they have either, you know, a a high rent to pay or maybe a big mortgage. I don't know. They got, you know, other local taxes. They got insurance. They got health insurance. I mean, after they pay all that stuff, yeah, in certain cities, there might not be that much left over. And so, they may really be cutting corners trying to get by. I mean, they're not poor. I mean, I'm sure they're eating, you know, they're not, you know, but maybe they're not eating, you know, in in restaurants as often as they like. And, you know, I don't know. maybe you know but yeah I mean it's unfortunate that the value of our money has been eviscerated basically by inflation and taxation and inflation is really just another form of taxation. It's a very >> you know insidious form because >> the way the way it's imposed because of course a lot of people don't realize that inflation is a tax but that's basically what it is. It's the government spending new money into circulation and they take your purchasing power >> instead of just taking your money in a more honest way where you realize that that that they took it. >> But, you know, it's going to get a lot worse. You know, they they you know, now they're really focusing on this affordability. Uh the Democrats are calling it an affordability crisis, but you know, they got their fingerprints all over it. It's not like Trump caused it. I mean, Trump is contributing to it, but Democrats in Congress and the White House have been a big factor in why everything is so expensive. And it's because government is so big. >> We have to pay for this huge government. And, you know, we're running $3 trillion a year deficits. Where's that money coming from? I mean, how are we getting all this government? We're not getting it for free. Uh, you know, we're paying for it through higher prices. >> Yeah. And so the reason that we can't afford so much stuff is because we're spending so much on the government. That's what we're getting. We're getting this big government instead of other things that we may prefer, but we can't have them because we have to pay for all this government. >> Well, as you put it, like there's blame on both sides, but Trump is in office. He's at the helm of the ship, as you put it. Is there a way for him to write the ship? Maybe have more of that. I take it just an honest conversation. Well, there's no there is no politically viable way to write the ship. >> I mean, if you're going to go beyond politics, right? If you're going to say, you know, screw it. I'm going to do what's right for the country. You know, I'm going to let the political chips fall where they may. Yeah, there's stuff he could do. But you you can't do anything without causing certain people to lose money, right? I mean, it's going to happen, right? Um and and and that's what he doesn't want. You know, because what what we really need to to fix the problems that the government created is we need aid to dramatically cut government spending. We need to make the government a lot smaller so that we don't need to spend as much money and borrow as much money to pay for it. But the minute you start cutting government right now, you're pissing somebody off who's not getting the money. I mean, look, look how quickly they ran Elon Musk out of town, >> right? uh cuz he was trying to make some cuts to the fat. But we need to cut the bone. We need to make cuts to social security, Medicare, real cuts. >> Yeah. Go into the reforms. Yeah. Like what kind of reforms do we need? >> We We need reforms that reduce what we're spending. We need to cut trillions of dollars a year out of the federal budget. We need to at a minimum balance it, right? And so we have to have massive cuts. But nobody will do that. Trump is not willing to do that. He's he wants to increase government spending. He's not going to cut it. Um but cutting it, you know, would have some short-term problems for the people who benefit from the spending, which is why it continues. But we also need higher interest rates, which, you know, the last thing that Trump wants, they want lower interest rates, but low interest rates have been the problem for decades. Rates have been too low, and that's distorted the economy. that's caused a a excess of consumption and borrowing and speculation and debt and not enough savings and capital investment and production. And so we rely on trillion dollar trade deficits now to import stuff that we don't produce. We live beyond our means. And a lot of that is made possible by artificially low interest rates and asset bubbles that we can lever against. We need to get rid of all that stuff. Mhm. >> Uh and that means higher interest rates, but that means stock prices will come down, real estate prices will come down, companies will go into default, uh borrowers on homes will default on their mortgages, lenders will lose money, banks will fail. It's not a pretty picture. >> Not pretty, but maybe we need >> that's what has to happen. >> Maybe if we let it naturally happen at some point before >> Well, it has to happen. But if it doesn't happen, that means something worse is going to happen. And that's what I think is we're close to the something worse [clears throat] is massive uh inflation uh runaway inflation. And you know that's what is driving my investment thesis is that the government will never do the right thing. They will do the wrong thing until they can't do it anymore. >> Yeah. and and so they will constantly keep interest rates low, print money, uh you know, debase the dollar and and so that's why, you know, I'm not short the stock market, right? Because I recognize that in with that kind of monetary fiscal policy, they can make asset prices go up, but they can't make real asset prices go up, right? So, even though the the Dow Jones uh which was 10,000 in the year 2000 is getting close to 50,000, right? Even though it's up five times, gold was under 300 back then. And now it's over 4,000. So, that tells you that stocks aren't up. The dollar's down. Stocks have lost 70% of their value if you price them in real money, if you price them in gold over those 25 years. Um, and so, you know, I mean, we're killing it. I mean, our investment portfolio, even though I'm bearish, uh, I mean, look at, you know, um, obviously the gold and silver strategy is, you know, is the best. I mean, on physical gold, physical gold is up like 65% this year. >> Physical silver is up about 120%. >> Yeah. >> The mining stocks have more than doubled, right? Some have tripled and quadrupled. They're still cheap. But even my strategies that are not even you know gold and silver my my basic uh dividend payers strategy where I invest in dividend paying foreign stocks uh is up about 60% on the year >> you know which is four times I think the S&P 500 >> um so because some people think oh Peter Schiff you know he's bearish he's a perma bear and he's just missing out on >> I think I think you say that that actually I was reading reading your book um crash proof 2.0 and you were saying that that kind of moniker is not right like the perma bear moniker. >> Well, I mean I've been permanently I've been negative on the US for a long time and I've been accurate right and you know we're in much worse shape now than we were 20 years ago. We have much more debt than we had back then. The problems are much bigger. Um but the stock market has gone up. See, a lot of people want to say, "Oh, well, Peter was wrong to be bearish because the stock market has gone up." But I'm not bearish on the stock market. >> Like you said, you're not shorting the stock market. >> Well, no. I mean, there's there have been time periods where I thought the market could correct. >> Mhm. >> And I think we're in one of those time periods now. >> I'm still not sure. >> Yeah. >> But but I think that we could get a correction, but I think the Fed will, you know, step up. I think you know that that the monetary policy is designed to truncate uh any kind of market decline and to you know move it back up again even though that is destructive economically. >> Yeah. >> Uh they don't care about that. They just want to keep air in the bubble. Now eventually they they won't be able to do it. There's too many holes and this stuff is going to deflate. But the crash that I see coming and that I've seen coming for years is not a crash in the stock market. It's a crash in the dollar. Now, we haven't had the crash in the dollar yet. Certainly not against other fiat currencies. We've had a big decline. I don't know if I'd call it a crash, but it's a major decline in terms of gold and silver, right? We've seen a big drop in how many ounces of gold you can buy for the dollar. And of course, the cost of living has gone up. So, in terms of domestic purchasing power, we've seen a major decline. >> Mhm. But we haven't seen the type of foreign exchange decline that I've been anticipating and that I still anticipate. Yeah. >> And that's also one of the reasons behind my strategy. Like look, I don't sit I have very little cash and I've had very little cash for years. We're pretty much almost fully invested at all times because I don't see the value in cash. There are people that'll say, "Oh, I'm worried so I'm going to hold a lot of US treasuries." Well, why? I'm worried about US treasuries. I don't want to hold those. I'm worried about not only the government's ability to repay them in real money, but you know, inflation is going to destroy the value. Interest rates could rise. I mean, I I I I want I want safety from treasuries. I don't want to I don't want to take refugees in in treasuries. So, that's the last place I'm going to be even even in the short end of the curve. >> Mhm. >> Uh I want to get out of the dollar. So, I have these dividend paying foreign stocks uh and and they've produced uh great returns. This is the first year in many years where they've significantly outperformed the US stock market because the US stock market has been overvalued. And I think that's going to continue. I think that even if the US stock market doesn't crash, I don't see uh that it's going to put up uh impressive returns on the upside even nominally. uh and I think that you're going to see a significant underperformance between the US market and foreign markets and between uh emerging markets. Uh and and and so we're fully invested in dividend paying foreign stocks, emerging markets, uh you know, resource stocks, not just uh precious metals mining, but some industrial metals, energy, agriculture. I mean, I'm basically got the inflation trade, and that's what I've been in uh for decades now because that's what drives our whole economy. It's inflation. They just keep printing money, expanding credit uh and and and this is distorting the economy. But, you know, it is uh you know, ultimately uh going to reward people who anticipate it, who understand it and and and invest the right way. And this has been like a real outstanding year for gains uh for that strategy and I think it's the beginning of a long period of time where this is going to be the case >> and you know a lot of investors have been investing in the US stock market because it has been the best performing market. Uh and this year changed that and now I think a lot of the money that went into US stocks in the prior decade is going to come out of US stocks. a lot of people are going to be looking uh to invest overseas. I mean, first it's the people that are already overseas that are just taking their money back, right? So, Europeans, Asians, you know, South America, you know, they're going to take their money home and invest it. But then you're going to start to see Americans looking abroad and seeing that the returns are so much better uh outside the US than inside and that they're going to want to do that too. And, you know, that's going to be very problematic for for the US. Hey there. I just want to take a quick moment to thank you for watching this video and I would really love for you to subscribe to this channel if you like this content. Over 70% of our viewers are not yet subscribed and we are on a mission to hit 100,000 subscribers. So, if you could just take a quick moment, hit subscribe. Thank you so much for your support. We appreciate you. And back to the video. All right, let me ask you this. You posted on X this week. The US economy is teetering on the brink of the biggest economic crisis of our lifetimes. Gold and silver prices skyrocketing to new highs will ultimately pull the rug out from under the US dollar and treasury, sending consumer prices, bond yields, and unemployment soaring. So my question for you, Peter, is can can you explain how that works or the mechanism like how gold and silver skyrocketing to new highs, how that ultimately pulls the rug out from under the US dollar treasuries and resulting in high prices? Yeah. >> Well, the the gold and the dollar compete. Um, and gold is really again like the canary in the monetary coal mine. And when you're seeing a big increase in the price of gold, it is indicating a loss of confidence in the dollar. That's why uh people are buying gold and they're foregoing the interest that they could otherwise earn on US treasuries. So no, I don't want to earn 4% on a treasury. I'll hold gold and I'll earn nothing. And that says a lot, right? Because you you don't believe that that 4% is worth it. that it's not going to reward you enough to offset what you're risk risking uh by holding dollars or holding treasuries. And as the price of gold goes higher and higher, that results in even more confidence being lost in the dollar and it becomes a self uh perpetuating uh spiral where more dollar holders want to convert them into gold, right? Uh so that they can, you know, stop the bleeding what they're losing by holding dollars. And that's going to push up US interest rates because the only way that uh the US can compete then with gold is by offering a higher rate of interest. Okay, 4%'s not enough. What about 6%. How about 10%. But the problem is we can barely afford four, let alone 6, 8, or 10%. So, we can't really pay our creditors a high enough interest to keep them lending because we can't afford it. the only rates that we could afford are rates that are so low that nobody wants to lend us the money. So the only lender becomes the Fed because the Fed doesn't care about the return and it just prints the money into existence and and and lends us that. But then you know now you have runaway inflation or hyperinflation. So I think we're very close to the collapse of this system. And remember the whole US economy has been built on the dollar being the reserve currency. Um, that's that's how that's how we function. Trump doesn't understand this. He thinks the world is screwing us over. Uh, but it's it's actually the other way around. We've been screwing the world over. U, you know, getting all their stuff for free. But they produce all the stuff that we consume, you know, most of it, and then they lend us the money to buy it. And, you know, they invest the profits in our bond market and our stock market. So, they keep consumer prices down, asset prices up. We think we're rich. We can borrow against those asset prices. And then we get all this stuff. We didn't need factories. We didn't need pollution. We didn't need the workers. We didn't need the raw materials. We just created the money out of thin air and we got all this stuff uh from the rest of the world. And when we get this dollar crisis, that all stops, right? The ride on the glo global gravy train is over. Uh we can't import all this stuff anymore unless we export. and we don't have the capacity to export enough to cover our imports. Uh so a lot of products that we used to be able to have won't be affordable to most Americans anymore. And if foreigners aren't selling us goods and they don't earn dollars, they don't need to buy our bonds. They don't need to buy our stocks. And so uh the price of goods goes up because we don't have as many goods. But the price of stocks really go down bonds because we don't have all the foreign buyers. So, you know, it's the worst situation where the value of what you own goes way down, but the cost of everything you need to buy goes way up. So, you know, you see a significant reduction in the quality of living, the standard of living of of of you know, the vast majority of Americans, which is, you know, why they need to take action now to protect themselves because you don't know. I mean, I don't know when this dollar crisis is going to hit. It could hit any night, you know, when I'm asleep. And I've always thought that it will happen at night because that's when the Asians are up in trading and they're our biggest creditors and that's probably where our fate's going to be determined. And I think a real dollar collapse will probably start in Asian trading hours. Um, and so look, I you know, you don't want to go to sleep knowing that you may wake up broke. So the the way around it is just to have a portfolio of non-dollar assets. You know, own good quality companies that you could buy at a low PE with a good dividend yield. Own precious metals, you know, own these mining stocks. You know, have a portfolio that will not only survive but thrive in an environment where you have a dollar crash and, you know, US economy is in, you know, a massive recession with high inflation. You know, I' I've called it a inflationary depression, which is really what we're going to be entering into. It's going to be an elongated period of time with an extreme weak economy that maybe moves in and out of recession but never really grows, but all the while has very high inflation. I mean, think about the 1970s only way worse. That's that's where we're headed. I mean, the only wild card is maybe AI, but we'll see where that, you know, what could happen there with the productivity increases. But so far I think it's more of a bubble uh than than a gamecher for now. Although the potential is there for the game to change later, but I don't think it's going to change in time to avert this crisis. >> So you also just pointed out it's the could be the biggest economic crisis of our lifetimes. So even bigger than what we saw in the 2008 financial crisis. Like okay, >> is this the most worried you've ever been in your career then? Is contextualize it for us. Is this Yeah. Well, in 2008, things would have been a lot worse had the government not done all the bailouts, right? Bailed out all the banks, bailed out Fanny and Freddy, uh done done the TARP programs, all that stuff cushioned to blow. Now, it was all a mistake because it prevented a real uh cure for the disease. We needed a bigger flush out. We needed uh more bad actors to go bankrupt. You know, we we we actually needed a deeper recession than the one that we had. Even though it would have been painful at the time, it was the constructive pain that that we needed because it would have allowed us to rebuild a solid foundation. Instead, we just reinflated the bubble on the same shaky foundation. In fact, it's even flimsier now than it was then. Uh but the crisis that's coming, which is going to be a dollar crisis, right, and a and a a sub and a sovereign debt crisis, not a subprime crisis, but treasuries, there's no bailout from that, right? The government can't bail us out when it's the government's credit that is no longer accepted. See, when people were just worried about mortgages, the government could backs stop it. And when people wanted the dollar and when foreign central banks wanted dollars, we could print as many as we wanted and there was plenty of demand. But we get to a situation where foreign central banks don't want our dollars anymore. They're getting rid of the dollars that they have. They don't want to buy our debt. Um and uh and the dollar is crashing. The Fed can't bail anybody out. Like in 2008, they created dollars to bail everybody out. Well, if the dollar is already tanking, creating more dollars will just accelerate the decline. So, we're going to be in a situation where we're having an economic crisis, right? We're in a severe recession. People are losing their jobs. You know, prices are going up. And if the government tries to do any of the stimulus that it's tried in the past, like, well, let's let's increase our deficit spending, let's increase unemployment benefits, let's send stimulus checks out, let's, you know, all that's going to make it worse. That's just going to accelerate the decline of the dollar. It's going to put more upward pressure on consumer prices and interest rates. So, this stimulus will act as a sedative. And so, they're they're they're basically out of ammunition. There's nothing they could do. uh to try to you know alleviate the pain. >> Now you know if they do nothing right I mean it's just going to continue the best thing they could do would be in that environment because the budget deficits are going to be skyrocketing at this point um the best thing they could do would be the unthinkable would be to cut government spending in the recession to try to balance the budget to try to take some of the pressure off of skyrocketing interest rates. But of course, you know that they've never even considered doing that, right? Raising or even raising taxes. They might have to do that. I prefer cutting government spending. But they have to do those type of policies, which is they never, you know, that's the opposite of what they always do, right? They want to, oh, the economy is weak. Let's stimulate it. Let's cut taxes. Let's increase government spending. But what they're going to have to do is the opposite. You know, cut government spending, raise taxes in an economy that's already weak with high unemployment and high inflation. So this it they really backed us into this corner here and there's there's no way out of it. That's why they've been kicking the can down the road for so many years because they don't want to deal with it. >> But because we've kicked the can for so long, what they didn't want to deal with is now much worse. And now dealing with it is much harder. But again, a lot of the presidents and the people in Congress who kick that can, they're not in office anymore. So they don't give a damn. It's somebody else's problem. And that's what they're trying to do now. That's all Trump is trying to do. He just wants to get out of dodge. He wants to try to blow this bubble up big enough so that he can leave and and and blame the collapse on whoever follows him. >> Okay. But paint the picture for the everyday American. You mentioned a lot of Americans do watch this channel. It's mostly Americans. Paint the picture for the everyday American watching this this scenario. How would it impact their lives? Like just like a typical everyday person. Well, I mean, it's, you know, I don't know who the typical American is, but a lot of it's going to depend on on, you know, how they've invested their money, um, and what they do for a living. Uh, but, you know, the average American just lives paycheck to paycheck. So, he doesn't have any investments, >> but his life is going to get a lot harder. Uh, because there's a good chance he won't have a job. Uh, and there's an even better chance that whatever he needs to buy with his paycheck is going to cost a lot more. And so people are going to, you know, have a lot less material goods to buy. Uh I think people may have to cut back on their lifestyle. They may have to travel less. They'll won't eat out as often. Uh they won't take vacations. Um they won't buy new clothes as often or, you know, a new phone. uh you know they may not you know keep their homes as warm in the winters as they would like. [clears throat] They may find that they're wearing more sweaters in their houses. Uh and they may rely more on a breeze and a fan than their air conditioning. I mean look, people are going to have to find ways to economize >> because of the high prices, inflationary depression. >> Mhm. things are going to cost more and uh and they're not going to be earning more uh you know and and some people who had you know who are retired depending on what their retirement portfolio looks like uh they may have to find work. They may not be able to survive off their retirement income because it it wasn't in any way hedged to inflation. They had too many bonds, you know, other fixed income. They had a pension. um you know they had something that was you know fixed and the cost of living exploded. >> Which is why people who are retired you know they need to have you know like an account with me they need to be invested in assets that will rise as the dollar falls. They need [clears throat] to have incomeroucing assets where the income will go up as the US cost of living goes up so that they can stay maybe even or ahead of inflation. [clears throat] I mean, I know personally, right? I mean, a as an investor, I'm going to be much better off. I mean, I am much better off. I mean, this this is the most year I've made uh as an investor, you know, maybe ever. Uh because I've had so much of my portfolio in precious metals mining stocks, my personal portfolio. But also, the clients, our assets under management have exploded this year. Not because we've got an influx of new money. In fact, we were getting redemptions all last year. I was getting redemptions. Uh you know, just before we had this incredible year um and uh but no, the but the assets we had just you know, it just exploded because of performance. Uh and I think this is going to continue. So for golden >> early innings, you'd say for gold and silver like where do you see these? Where do you see them headed? >> Well, they're going much higher still. And look, I've been buying when I first started buying gold for my clients, it was under $300. When I bought my first silver for clients, it was $5 or under $5. I think I remember when it hit $5 and I got excited. Oh, $5 silver, you know, now it's 60 $66 and and gold, you know, gold was 260 270. >> Yeah. It's north of 4,300. >> Yeah. I mean, again, gold has done better than the stock market. uh even if you factor in the dividends, right? And it and it's so >> [snorts] >> um but you know uh and so I have a lot of of of those types of investments that I have been buying for myself uh and my clients and and so we're better off now. you know, as an American, I don't I'm not happy about this, but you know, I don't invest money uh based on, you know, what I think would would is good. Like I invest based on what I think is going to happen. And and so, you know, and I don't advocate publicly for policies that I know are bad just because they're going to make me rich. I I oppose those policies. Like everything that the Fed is doing right now, I am a big critic of what the Fed is doing despite the fact that it's making me a lot of money, right? I don't I don't want them to do it, but they're doing it anyway. And since I know they're going to do it anyway, despite everything I say to try to prevent it, well, how am I going to invest my money? How am I going to advise my clients to invest my money? It's well, invest their money rather. Invest their money based on what is going to happen. What is the most likely thing that is going to happen? And that's they're going to continue what they've done in the past, which is print money, keep interest rates artificially low, you know, blow more air into the bubble. And so what does that mean? Gold prices keep going up, silver prices keep going up, commodities, the dollar goes down, foreign stocks are going to outperform. That's that's what it means. And so that's that's how I'm positioned. So, if you position yourself the right way, yes, you know, financially you'll be better off. Now, you know, maybe you'll lose your job, so that could be a problem. Uh, if you're retired, obviously, you know, it's it's not an issue because you were living off your retirement savings. Um, now, you know, the wild card is what does the government do? How high do they raise taxes? You know, because they could take a lot of our gains away if they raise taxes high enough. I live in Puerto Rico, so I'm kind of immune for a while. I have zero capital gains tax by by contract, but who knows? We're going to have a radical left uh president and Congress in, you know, 2029. They can impose very confiscatory uh capital gains taxes. They may say anybody who profited from this, you know, is a is is part of the problem. They might even blame the problem on speculators. The people who bought gold and silver, you guys are the problem. you caused this by buying all this. We're gonna we're going to tax 90% tax on any gains on on gold or gold stock. Who knows what they're going to do? So, you know, that could be an issue uh if there's some confiscatory uh tax regime uh or some kind of unconstitutional wealth tax or something that comes in. But, you know, what are the benefits though I think for Americans if they invest the right way? I don't know. You know, if you have you ever go on a vacation and you go to a country that's relatively poor? Have you done that? >> Yeah. >> Yeah. And when you go to a poor country, your money goes far, right? If you go to a restaurant, you get a pretty nice meal, you know, and it doesn't cost you very much, right? Compared to what it cost you to eat in the US, right? Because they have a a much lower, you know, cost structure. People earn a lot less money and so things cost less, right? Certain things, right? If you want to buy, you know, if you go into, you know, a jewelry store and you want to buy a Rolex, yeah, it's pretty much the same price because for that, you know, it's it's a global price. Maybe it's a little bit less because their rent's a little bit less, but anything that has a global market, you know, you want to buy a Mercedes, yeah, you know, it's still going to be expensive if you buy it in a poor country, there's But if you want to get a meal in a restaurant, if you want to get a haircut, right, if you want to get a massage, if you want to get something that's kind of labor intensive, all that stuff is cheaper when you when you're in a poor country, right? Uh so the good news for a lot of Americans is that they won't have to travel to be in a poor country. They'll just stay home. And so Americans will work cheap. You know, once cuz once the dollar crashes and you know, you've got your assets in gold, silver, foreign currencies, prices are going to come way down for you for stuff like labor. Uh and so, you know, that may make your retirement better, right? You'll be able to hire help. you'll be able to hire maybe a, you know, a nurse, uh, you know, for a lot less money, you know, in terms of what you have, right? It's the same in dollars, maybe even more. But you're like a wealthy tourist in a poor country, except you're not a tourist. You live in the poor country, except you're not poor, right? Because you protected your wealth and you didn't get wiped out uh through inflation, right? you you got your money out of dollars before the bottom dropped out of the dollar and now you preserved your wealth with foreign assets and and precious metals. >> Let me ask you this. >> So th those people could be, you know, in in good shape. >> Let me ask you this. Um because we started this again, we've had this interview booked for weeks and weeks. Um we started this conversation. We referenced the truth social from Trump. I take it probably Tucker. I don't know if you had Tucker booked before or maybe he reached out after the tweet or >> No, Tuck Tucker booked me before. And believe it or not, he didn't even know about the post. I >> You got to bring it up. I was going to say, was there anything that you left unsaid in your conversation with Tucker that you'd like to bring up? >> I wish I'd have talked I didn't talk I didn't do that. I didn't make it like this like this conversation. And there's, you know, we had a conversation which I'm sure people will find interesting, but at the end of the after I was done with it, I was kind of like upset like thinking about it on the plane ride home that yeah, you know, I didn't I should have been more critical of the current fiscal and monetary policy. I should have been more warning of the crisis that's coming and we didn't really get into it that much. And it maybe was just the direction of the conversation. And we talked a lot about gold, but not so much about why I think it's going to go so much higher in the future. We talked kind of about it, you know, as a metal and stuff and we talked about Bitcoin. I spent a lot of time talking about the bank. >> We didn't even do Bitcoin, Peter. >> He asked me about and I wanted I wanted to get the story of the bank out there because I wanted more people to know about the corruption in the US government. Uh but you know what's more germanine to the people is the corruption that's going to destroy their standard of living and all the lies they're being told on a daily basis in the media. uh you know by and by the government by the Trump administration by the Federal Reserve you know because you know Donald Trump's approval ratings on the economy are at a record low I mean and that speaks volumes because that's his strong suit supposedly is he's going to you know be good for the economy and where [clears throat] he's scored lowest is on the economy because even though the the public is getting spoonfed a bunch of lies about the economy economy, they still know that it's bad because they have their own personal experience to go by. So, it doesn't matter what somebody on television is saying. They know what they're confronted with. They know they've got a stack of bills they can't pay, right? They got no savings. Everything is getting more expensive. Uh, and there's no relief in sight. And some people are working two or three part-time jobs to try to hobble together a living. Um, you got kids that, you know, graduate college, they have a mortgage with no house, right? They have student loans, so they can't find a decent job. Um, so, you know, the government has wrecked this economy. The government and the Federal Reserve, >> you know, despite everything that capitalism has done to improve it, the government has done so much to destroy it. >> Mhm. And uh you know so people need to know that especially since you know there there is this you know political wave of socialism that is building in response to these problems that have been created by socialism. But the public has been so dumbed down in government schools that they don't even know what capitalism is. And I guess they shouldn't know because we don't really have it anymore. But we have remnants of it. We have we have a lot of it still but the problems that we have are the result of all the government that has crept into it. All the socialism that has been uh basically injected into the capitalism and poisoned it. Uh but then capitalism gets blamed for the damage that this socialist poison does and then the government uses that damage to say y you see you see how bad this capitalism is. these greedy businessmen wreck the economy. We need more government. You need a government because we're benevolent. We're caring. Uh we're going to make sure, you know, you know, every everybody is equal and everybody is taken care of and and and the public will buy this. They tend to be more susceptible to that when times are bad, right? That's when that strikes a nerve. And and so we're at a dangerous point politically because economically a lot of people are going to be suffering and you're going to see people like, you know, like a Mold Donnie. How do you know? >> Yeah, mommy. >> How do you get elected in New York? Your rent's too high. Your grocery bills are too high. Yes, they are. >> But the government's not going to bring them down. The government's just going to make it go higher. In fact, the government is the reason that everything is so expensive. And if you and if you give government more power, they'll just make stuff even more expensive. >> Peter Schiff, chief economist and global strategist at Europacific Asset Management and founder of Shift Gold. Thank you so much for being so generous with your time, all of your knowledge, helping us all learn. Really, really appreciate you and thanks for making your debut on the show and I hope that we can have you on again. Really appreciate it. >> Yeah. What What took you so long to invite me? I guess you How long you've been doing your podcast? >> How long have we been doing it? um 3 years now. Yeah. >> Yeah. All right. >> You've been on the list. I'm telling you, you've been on the list. [laughter] I actually I did not have your contact info, though. >> You must have a really long list. >> Well, I didn't have your contact and um someone was able to get me in touch, so I really appreciate it. >> I'm I'm not that hard to find. I'm all I'm [laughter] all >> Well, really appreciate it, Peter. >> All right. Well, now you know where I am. yourself.
Peter Schiff: Gold & Silver Are Signaling A Crisis Is Coming
Summary
Transcript
The crash that I see coming and that I've seen coming for years is not a crash in the stock market. It's a crash in the dollar. I've called it a inflationary depression, which is really what we're going to be entering into. It's going to be an elong period elongated period of time with an extreme weak economy that maybe moves in and out of recession but never really grows but all the while has very high inflation. Peter Schiff, chief economist and global strategist at Europacific Asset Management, also founder of Shift Gold. It is so wonderful to welcome you to the show. Really appreciate you taking the time. I am thrilled to have you on for your debut episode. Peter, >> thanks Julia. How are you? >> I'm doing well. I have to say, Peter, you are one of those names that when I put out a request for guest, I ask my audience like, "Who do you all want to see on the show?" I see a lot of Peter Schiff, Peter Schiff, Peter Schiff. a lot of um times you come up in the comments, so they're just going to absolutely love having you on today. There's so much to talk about. And this show, we always start with the big picture, more of that macro view, the framework in which you were looking at the world, the economy, markets, more of your outlook. And one of the things about this show, Peter, is you can take all the time you need to set the table when it comes to that big picture macro view. Well, I mean, from the perspective of of Americans, and the majority of my clients are Americans. They're not all Americans, but I'd say, you know, certainly the majority are are Americans. I assume most of your audience are are Americans as well. And uh so the big picture from from my perspective uh for America is actually pretty bleak, unfortunately. I mean, yeah, I think it's been rather bleak for a while. Uh, and we've managed to kick the can down the road for more years than I than I anticipated, you know, a couple of decades ago. But I knew that eventually, you know, our past would catch up to us and, you know, the chickens would would come home to roost. And, you know, I think the signs are are are pretty clearly there that that that day is that day is close. you know, I I thought it was close uh back in 2008, you know, and I had uh for years forecast that the 2008 financial crisis and you know, when the subprime market blew up in ' 07, which was something that I had anticipated and was actively as short, um I you know, it I thought that maybe we would have had to deal with this issue back then, especially when they they launched the QE program which was again something else that I had uh anticipated but I thought it would have ended a lot better than it did uh or that maybe that's not the word but I had expected a dollar crisis uh to happen a lot sooner you know following the quantitative easing episode but it didn't happen uh and and rather than you know taking our medicine and and and and trying to repair the damage that the Fed had done to the economy uh we were able to do a lot more damage. You know, the Fed got away with QE 1 2 3 even got away with the QE after the pandemic uh for a while anyway before the you know the the effects really became evident on consumer prices. Um but I think now what's what's happening in the precious metals market uh what's happening in gold you know what's happening in silver uh gold now trading above $4,300 silver now above $66 you know it's more than doubled on the year um I think these are signs that confidence is finally being lost uh globally in the dollar you don't see it as much in the bond market although you know the long end of yield curve uh hasn't done what a lot of people would have expected uh despite all the rate cuts. You know, we've had two rounds of now like 75 basis point rate cuts. Uh yet the yield on the 10ear is still north of 4%, you know, almost 4.2. Uh I think it's going a lot higher, but the fact that it hasn't gone lower uh is is is a warning sign. But gold and silver are are are screaming uh that a currency crisis is coming. I think the foreign central banks have been out in front of this now for a year or two. Uh they have been replacing dollars with gold. They've been you know moving towards uh having real real assets as reserve. Uh now uh the gold reserves are now larger than US treasury reserves. A lot of that is not the result of the buying. I mean, some of it is from the buying, but most of it is from the appreciation in the value of their their gold reserves, but that's going to continue. And I think they're going to step up um the the amount of buying. And I think other central banks that weren't buying gold, they're going to start buying gold. And I also think private investors that haven't been active are going to get active. In fact, you know, uh, Morgan Stanley, I guess their analysts came out [clears throat] a couple months ago and tweaked the 6040 portfolio and said we should do 60 2020 and, you know, cutting the bond allocation in half in favor of gold. And that's basically a sell signal on bonds. And it's Morgan Stanley maybe coming to the realization that they're not really a safe haven, that the yields aren't high enough to offset what you lose to inflation. And so people need to hold gold and that's going to be very problematic because we have, you know, out of control deficit spending and if foreign central banks aren't buying our debt and American investors aren't buying our debt, who's going to buy it? That really leaves the Fed as the last man standing. And in fact, you know, one of the predictions that I've made for a while uh was that uh the Fed would return to quantitative easing again. And they basically just effectively did that at the last FOMC meeting announcing this $40 billion uh ongoing purchase of uh of Treasury securities. Yes, they're short-term, but so what? Still QE. I don't care what they want to call it. They're monetizing debt. Uh they're, you know, expanding the money supply. They're buying US government debt. That's, you know, that's QE. And I'm sure it won't be long before they expand the program and extend the duration. Uh and and I think that, you know, we're headed for this this dollar crisis, this currency crisis. Uh the result is going to be an explosion in consumer prices and ultimately long-term interest rates. And it's going to be, you know, a huge problem for the US economy. >> And politically, I think it's going to be a disaster for the Republicans. Uh, I think it's going to mean uh that we're going to have a very radically left uh Democrat in the White House in 2028. >> Wow. >> With probably uh a radical Congress uh that might actually help them get that uh socialist agenda uh you know you know passed. So it's it's it's so unfortunately I don't you know I I see a lot of problems uh coming in in in the near term. >> Peter, there are so many threads I would love to pull on with you. We've had this interview booked for a while. Um you got a lot of attention recently. Um and you know where I'm going to go with this. You were on Fox and Friends on the weekend, the 6 a.m. show and President Trump posted on Truth Social. It got reposted on X. That's how I saw it. But he I'll just read it for folks. I'm sure they've seen it. But why would Fox and Friends Weekend of all things put on a stock broker named Peter Schiff, a Trump-hating loser who has already proven to be wrong. Either the show made a mistake or it is headed heading in a different direction. He thinks prices are going up when in fact they are coming substantially down. Gasoline hit $1.99 a gallon yesterday in certain states and is down big since Biden. Other prices are almost all down. Biden caused the affordability crisis. I'm fixing it along with everything else. Much of it like the border is already fixed. Check out Check out the Booker who put this jerk on. Okay. I take maybe let's start with your reaction to the President Trump exruth social post. >> Well, first of all, yeah, I didn't know about it on Truth Social because like just about everybody else, I don't use Truth Social. It's just the sounding board for Trump and he ought to rename it lie social because he pretty much lies most of the time uh in that echo chamber. Uh but look, there's so many things wrong with the president's remarks. I mean, first of all, if he disagrees with me, he doesn't have to call me a jerk uh and a loser. I mean, you know, and you know, I'm not a Trump hater. you know, you don't have to have a different view on the efficacy of his policies or the direction of inflation uh to hate him. You could still like him. I mean, I actually voted for the guy and I actually encouraged my audience to vote for him because I thought he was the lesser of the two evils. I mean, I wasn't an enthusiastic supporter, but you know, you can't say that I'm a Trump hater. Although I do hate I don't know that's a strong word but I don't like a lot of the things that he's doing as president. I mean there's some things I do like but you know I it's not you know that I hate the man and my comments were not out of hatred and I didn't say anything hateful at all during that interview. It's interesting though that I mean Trump even bothered to post about it because nobody would have known about it. It was 6:00 in the morning, 6:30 in the morning. I did it from my hotel room in Dubai. So to me it was like three in the afternoon so it was no big deal. But you know the west coast of the United States is 3:00 am. I mean if he would have said nothing about it everybody would have forgot about it. But but he he decided to to to rage uh about it on on on his on his platform. But I mean first of all he looks ridiculous apart from having to call me names like you know we're in a playground in elementary school. Um, but he says that prices are coming down. I mean, where are they coming down? I mean, yes, I I'll give him gas prices have come down. I don't think they're going to stay down, but that's just one price. But the price of just about everything. I mean, even the Federal Reserve admits that inflation is higher than they would like it to be. They're cutting rates despite the fact that they're 50% above their target, right? We're at 3%. Not 2%. So, how is Trump saying that prices are coming down? And he's not even saying they're coming down a little. They're coming down substantially. I mean, substantial is like a lot. I mean, they're they're not even coming down a little. They're going up. So, it's ridiculous that Trump claims that I am the jerk for claiming that prices are rising. Of course, they're rising. I mean, that's not even controversial. I mean I mean, this is just a matter of fact that they're rising. In fact, I think they're rising more than the CPI, uh, you know, acknowledges. Um, and it's going to get worse. Um, you know, Trump claims there that, you know, Biden caused this problem and he's going to fix it. Biden didn't cause it. I mean, Biden contributed to it. So did Trump. you know, the the the the worst uh policy that was responsible for the big surge in inflation in 2021, that was the big year, right? That was pretty much all Trump because the the money that was created that led to the price hikes in 2021 was created in 2020. Trump signed on to the COVID stimulus, the PPP, the extended uh unemployment benefits. So the budget deficits skyrocketed in Trump's final year and that's when the Fed, you know, blew up the balance sheet from 4 trillion to 8 trillion. Biden hadn't even taken the oath of office yet and all this inflation was created. There's a lag between the expansion of the money supply and the resulting increase in prices. And if you look at the CPI, and I made this point on Tucker, but if you look at the CPI, um, it really started to go up during the last four or five months of Trump's term. And then it continued during the first several months of Biden's before Biden actually did anything. You know, months before those first stimulus checks got in the mail, we we were seeing these big CPI numbers. That wasn't Biden's fault, right? the the the the inflation that Biden helped create didn't show up in consumer prices until 2022, 2023. But the worst year, the 9.1% year, that's on Trump. That's on the Well, the Fed, of course, too, right? Without the Fed, it wouldn't have worked. But, you know, Trump was a part of that. >> It was baked in the cake. >> Yeah. I mean, so if Trump had been reelected, would have been the same thing, right? It's not because of Biden. was because of what he did. Now, since he's gotten the helm of the ship back, what has he done? He has dramatically increased deficit spending. He's signed off on and encouraged the big, beautiful bill, which uh increased government spending and decreased taxes. And so, we're going to have bigger deficits that the Fed is now going to have to monetize. Meanwhile, he has encouraged the Fed to slash interest rates, which they have cut them. Maybe not as much as he would like, but he has put pressure on the Fed to lower interest rates. Now they've returned to QE. We got massive deficits. These are highly inflationary uh fiscal and monetary policy combination. Maybe not quite as bad as the COVID time, but it's probably worse than anything since or before. Um, and so the numbers are going to get worse. This this the increases in the cost of living during uh Trump's second year, third year are going to be a lot higher. And in fact, I think the worst year probably will be his last year. We could see a double-digit increase easily as measured by the CPI in consumer prices, >> which will be election year too. >> Well, yeah. I mean, look that that the Republicans are in a lot of trouble. As I said, unfortunately, I think they're going to lose >> uh the midterms, which is not, you know, I mean, usually that happens. The whoever has the White House loses Congress. That's kind of par for the course. But the problem the Republicans are going to have is Trump is out there telling everybody that not only is the economy great, it's never been greater. like it's, you know, like it's the greatest in in in all of history and it's the strongest in the world. And that's not even close to the truth. I mean, it we're we could easily be in a recession. The economy is weak. That's why the Fed is cutting rates. Why do you think the Fed is ignoring above target inflation and cutting rates? It's because they're worried about the economy. They wouldn't be worried about it if it was as strong as Trump claimed. But one thing we know that voters don't like, they don't like to be told how great things are when they're not great. That's why they elected Trump the first time. >> Yeah. >> Because, you know, uh Hillary was trying to claim that everything was great under Obama and you should vote for her. >> Well, the voters knew that things weren't good and they they voted for Trump. And then four years later, they got worse, not better, like Trump claims. That's why they voted for Biden. you know, they always want to change the leader when their, you know, their situation is getting worse under their leadership. >> Yeah. >> And so, I think there's going to be a lot of angry uh independents and even some uh Republicans are either going to sit out the elections or they're going to vote Democrat. Uh because you've got the Republican telling them everything is great and then the Democrat is going to be validating. >> But are you going to have a really radical like Democrat? Like do you don't think they will see they'll watch like New York closely and see how that plays out and be like I don't know. >> Well I mean look at you know man obviously the pendulum is swinging left in both parties right despite all this MAGA Republicans Trump is you what a Democrat used to be. I mean he's not like a Ronald Reagan like a real conservative. He's a big government guy. He believes in massive government spending deficits central planning. He doesn't believe in capitalism and the free market. People say he's pro business. Yeah. The businesses that he wants to back, you know, he wants the government to be involved in business. He wants the government to pick winners and losers to decide which businesses should be encouraged uh and which should not. I mean, so this, you know, that's not a a Republican. Plus, he believes in protectionism. He wants tariffs and he's under the delusion that the income from tariffs comes from foreigners that we don't even have to pay those taxes which is completely ridiculous. All of the the tariff tax revenue is paid by Americans. In fact, you know, the only reason we have an income tax today is because people didn't want to pay tariffs and the government was able to sell the American public on the idea that if we have an income tax on the rich, we can eliminate tariffs on the middle class and the poor. and they they went for it. That's you know that that's how we got the 16th amendment because the public didn't want to pay tariffs anymore. They'd rather have the rich people pay income taxes. Now, of course, the the middle class pays much higher income taxes than they ever envisioned for Rockefeller or Carnegie or Melon or any of these any of these guys. Uh and now we got tariffs, too, thanks to Trump. We got the income tax and we got the tariffs. We're getting we're getting it from both ends. It's not, you know, Trump says we're getting rich on tariffs. We're not getting rich on tariffs. We're taxing ourselves. We're not getting rich paying taxes to ourselves. >> This episode is brought to you by Van X Rare Earth and Strategic Metals ETF. Ticker symbol REMX. Rare Earths are the hidden backbone of modern technology and defense. Powering everything from smartphones and electric vehicles to fighter [music] jets and wind turbines. Van Ec recognized this early, launching the rare earth and strategic metals ETF, ticker symbol REMX, 15 years ago. Well before supply chain security became a global priority. Today, China dominates the production and refining capacity of rare earths, [music] creating real challenges for global supply chain security as these materials are essential for technological innovation, clean energy, and national security. That's why countries all around the world are racing to build their own supply chains and reduce reliance on China. As this global shift continues, investment in the rare earth ecosystem is growing rapidly. [music] From mining to advanced manufacturing, investors can gain access to this powerful trend through REMX. Visit vanck.com/remxjiulia to learn more. Speaking of the middle class, Peter, I don't know if you saw this piece come out um from Mike Green, Michael Green from Simplify Asset Management. He wrote a three-part series. He was just on this show around the poverty line in America. He puts it at 100 to 140,000 for an American family just to like cover basic needs like housing. That's where he puts it just by doing No, I want to ask you about it. By just doing the math of like covering child care, >> um more of the basic needs. It sparked a lot of conversation. A lot of people came in the comment section and said, you know, this is my experience um or they feel this every day. So maybe I wanted to get more of your reaction. poverty. >> Poverty might not be the best word for it. I mean, >> or it's like the working poor, the working poor, if you will. >> Not even not even working poor, but I get it. If you live in New York City, you live in San Francisco, um you're paying high taxes, so you make 100, you know, you maybe, you know, you got a W2 type job. So, if you earn $180,000 a year, you might only keep a hundred, right? And between the rent that you have to pay and if you have to hire somebody to watch your kids so you can go to work, right? And maybe that's 180,000. That's two people working. That's not even one person. That's a guy and his wife. >> You know, they're both working and they're bringing that in together. And then they're paying 40% of it in taxes. And then they got to give a big chunk of that to uh uh their uh daycare, you know, their child care. Then they have either, you know, a a high rent to pay or maybe a big mortgage. I don't know. They got, you know, other local taxes. They got insurance. They got health insurance. I mean, after they pay all that stuff, yeah, in certain cities, there might not be that much left over. And so, they may really be cutting corners trying to get by. I mean, they're not poor. I mean, I'm sure they're eating, you know, they're not, you know, but maybe they're not eating, you know, in in restaurants as often as they like. And, you know, I don't know. maybe you know but yeah I mean it's unfortunate that the value of our money has been eviscerated basically by inflation and taxation and inflation is really just another form of taxation. It's a very >> you know insidious form because >> the way the way it's imposed because of course a lot of people don't realize that inflation is a tax but that's basically what it is. It's the government spending new money into circulation and they take your purchasing power >> instead of just taking your money in a more honest way where you realize that that that they took it. >> But, you know, it's going to get a lot worse. You know, they they you know, now they're really focusing on this affordability. Uh the Democrats are calling it an affordability crisis, but you know, they got their fingerprints all over it. It's not like Trump caused it. I mean, Trump is contributing to it, but Democrats in Congress and the White House have been a big factor in why everything is so expensive. And it's because government is so big. >> We have to pay for this huge government. And, you know, we're running $3 trillion a year deficits. Where's that money coming from? I mean, how are we getting all this government? We're not getting it for free. Uh, you know, we're paying for it through higher prices. >> Yeah. And so the reason that we can't afford so much stuff is because we're spending so much on the government. That's what we're getting. We're getting this big government instead of other things that we may prefer, but we can't have them because we have to pay for all this government. >> Well, as you put it, like there's blame on both sides, but Trump is in office. He's at the helm of the ship, as you put it. Is there a way for him to write the ship? Maybe have more of that. I take it just an honest conversation. Well, there's no there is no politically viable way to write the ship. >> I mean, if you're going to go beyond politics, right? If you're going to say, you know, screw it. I'm going to do what's right for the country. You know, I'm going to let the political chips fall where they may. Yeah, there's stuff he could do. But you you can't do anything without causing certain people to lose money, right? I mean, it's going to happen, right? Um and and and that's what he doesn't want. You know, because what what we really need to to fix the problems that the government created is we need aid to dramatically cut government spending. We need to make the government a lot smaller so that we don't need to spend as much money and borrow as much money to pay for it. But the minute you start cutting government right now, you're pissing somebody off who's not getting the money. I mean, look, look how quickly they ran Elon Musk out of town, >> right? uh cuz he was trying to make some cuts to the fat. But we need to cut the bone. We need to make cuts to social security, Medicare, real cuts. >> Yeah. Go into the reforms. Yeah. Like what kind of reforms do we need? >> We We need reforms that reduce what we're spending. We need to cut trillions of dollars a year out of the federal budget. We need to at a minimum balance it, right? And so we have to have massive cuts. But nobody will do that. Trump is not willing to do that. He's he wants to increase government spending. He's not going to cut it. Um but cutting it, you know, would have some short-term problems for the people who benefit from the spending, which is why it continues. But we also need higher interest rates, which, you know, the last thing that Trump wants, they want lower interest rates, but low interest rates have been the problem for decades. Rates have been too low, and that's distorted the economy. that's caused a a excess of consumption and borrowing and speculation and debt and not enough savings and capital investment and production. And so we rely on trillion dollar trade deficits now to import stuff that we don't produce. We live beyond our means. And a lot of that is made possible by artificially low interest rates and asset bubbles that we can lever against. We need to get rid of all that stuff. Mhm. >> Uh and that means higher interest rates, but that means stock prices will come down, real estate prices will come down, companies will go into default, uh borrowers on homes will default on their mortgages, lenders will lose money, banks will fail. It's not a pretty picture. >> Not pretty, but maybe we need >> that's what has to happen. >> Maybe if we let it naturally happen at some point before >> Well, it has to happen. But if it doesn't happen, that means something worse is going to happen. And that's what I think is we're close to the something worse [clears throat] is massive uh inflation uh runaway inflation. And you know that's what is driving my investment thesis is that the government will never do the right thing. They will do the wrong thing until they can't do it anymore. >> Yeah. and and so they will constantly keep interest rates low, print money, uh you know, debase the dollar and and so that's why, you know, I'm not short the stock market, right? Because I recognize that in with that kind of monetary fiscal policy, they can make asset prices go up, but they can't make real asset prices go up, right? So, even though the the Dow Jones uh which was 10,000 in the year 2000 is getting close to 50,000, right? Even though it's up five times, gold was under 300 back then. And now it's over 4,000. So, that tells you that stocks aren't up. The dollar's down. Stocks have lost 70% of their value if you price them in real money, if you price them in gold over those 25 years. Um, and so, you know, I mean, we're killing it. I mean, our investment portfolio, even though I'm bearish, uh, I mean, look at, you know, um, obviously the gold and silver strategy is, you know, is the best. I mean, on physical gold, physical gold is up like 65% this year. >> Physical silver is up about 120%. >> Yeah. >> The mining stocks have more than doubled, right? Some have tripled and quadrupled. They're still cheap. But even my strategies that are not even you know gold and silver my my basic uh dividend payers strategy where I invest in dividend paying foreign stocks uh is up about 60% on the year >> you know which is four times I think the S&P 500 >> um so because some people think oh Peter Schiff you know he's bearish he's a perma bear and he's just missing out on >> I think I think you say that that actually I was reading reading your book um crash proof 2.0 and you were saying that that kind of moniker is not right like the perma bear moniker. >> Well, I mean I've been permanently I've been negative on the US for a long time and I've been accurate right and you know we're in much worse shape now than we were 20 years ago. We have much more debt than we had back then. The problems are much bigger. Um but the stock market has gone up. See, a lot of people want to say, "Oh, well, Peter was wrong to be bearish because the stock market has gone up." But I'm not bearish on the stock market. >> Like you said, you're not shorting the stock market. >> Well, no. I mean, there's there have been time periods where I thought the market could correct. >> Mhm. >> And I think we're in one of those time periods now. >> I'm still not sure. >> Yeah. >> But but I think that we could get a correction, but I think the Fed will, you know, step up. I think you know that that the monetary policy is designed to truncate uh any kind of market decline and to you know move it back up again even though that is destructive economically. >> Yeah. >> Uh they don't care about that. They just want to keep air in the bubble. Now eventually they they won't be able to do it. There's too many holes and this stuff is going to deflate. But the crash that I see coming and that I've seen coming for years is not a crash in the stock market. It's a crash in the dollar. Now, we haven't had the crash in the dollar yet. Certainly not against other fiat currencies. We've had a big decline. I don't know if I'd call it a crash, but it's a major decline in terms of gold and silver, right? We've seen a big drop in how many ounces of gold you can buy for the dollar. And of course, the cost of living has gone up. So, in terms of domestic purchasing power, we've seen a major decline. >> Mhm. But we haven't seen the type of foreign exchange decline that I've been anticipating and that I still anticipate. Yeah. >> And that's also one of the reasons behind my strategy. Like look, I don't sit I have very little cash and I've had very little cash for years. We're pretty much almost fully invested at all times because I don't see the value in cash. There are people that'll say, "Oh, I'm worried so I'm going to hold a lot of US treasuries." Well, why? I'm worried about US treasuries. I don't want to hold those. I'm worried about not only the government's ability to repay them in real money, but you know, inflation is going to destroy the value. Interest rates could rise. I mean, I I I I want I want safety from treasuries. I don't want to I don't want to take refugees in in treasuries. So, that's the last place I'm going to be even even in the short end of the curve. >> Mhm. >> Uh I want to get out of the dollar. So, I have these dividend paying foreign stocks uh and and they've produced uh great returns. This is the first year in many years where they've significantly outperformed the US stock market because the US stock market has been overvalued. And I think that's going to continue. I think that even if the US stock market doesn't crash, I don't see uh that it's going to put up uh impressive returns on the upside even nominally. uh and I think that you're going to see a significant underperformance between the US market and foreign markets and between uh emerging markets. Uh and and and so we're fully invested in dividend paying foreign stocks, emerging markets, uh you know, resource stocks, not just uh precious metals mining, but some industrial metals, energy, agriculture. I mean, I'm basically got the inflation trade, and that's what I've been in uh for decades now because that's what drives our whole economy. It's inflation. They just keep printing money, expanding credit uh and and and this is distorting the economy. But, you know, it is uh you know, ultimately uh going to reward people who anticipate it, who understand it and and and invest the right way. And this has been like a real outstanding year for gains uh for that strategy and I think it's the beginning of a long period of time where this is going to be the case >> and you know a lot of investors have been investing in the US stock market because it has been the best performing market. Uh and this year changed that and now I think a lot of the money that went into US stocks in the prior decade is going to come out of US stocks. a lot of people are going to be looking uh to invest overseas. I mean, first it's the people that are already overseas that are just taking their money back, right? So, Europeans, Asians, you know, South America, you know, they're going to take their money home and invest it. But then you're going to start to see Americans looking abroad and seeing that the returns are so much better uh outside the US than inside and that they're going to want to do that too. And, you know, that's going to be very problematic for for the US. Hey there. I just want to take a quick moment to thank you for watching this video and I would really love for you to subscribe to this channel if you like this content. Over 70% of our viewers are not yet subscribed and we are on a mission to hit 100,000 subscribers. So, if you could just take a quick moment, hit subscribe. Thank you so much for your support. We appreciate you. And back to the video. All right, let me ask you this. You posted on X this week. The US economy is teetering on the brink of the biggest economic crisis of our lifetimes. Gold and silver prices skyrocketing to new highs will ultimately pull the rug out from under the US dollar and treasury, sending consumer prices, bond yields, and unemployment soaring. So my question for you, Peter, is can can you explain how that works or the mechanism like how gold and silver skyrocketing to new highs, how that ultimately pulls the rug out from under the US dollar treasuries and resulting in high prices? Yeah. >> Well, the the gold and the dollar compete. Um, and gold is really again like the canary in the monetary coal mine. And when you're seeing a big increase in the price of gold, it is indicating a loss of confidence in the dollar. That's why uh people are buying gold and they're foregoing the interest that they could otherwise earn on US treasuries. So no, I don't want to earn 4% on a treasury. I'll hold gold and I'll earn nothing. And that says a lot, right? Because you you don't believe that that 4% is worth it. that it's not going to reward you enough to offset what you're risk risking uh by holding dollars or holding treasuries. And as the price of gold goes higher and higher, that results in even more confidence being lost in the dollar and it becomes a self uh perpetuating uh spiral where more dollar holders want to convert them into gold, right? Uh so that they can, you know, stop the bleeding what they're losing by holding dollars. And that's going to push up US interest rates because the only way that uh the US can compete then with gold is by offering a higher rate of interest. Okay, 4%'s not enough. What about 6%. How about 10%. But the problem is we can barely afford four, let alone 6, 8, or 10%. So, we can't really pay our creditors a high enough interest to keep them lending because we can't afford it. the only rates that we could afford are rates that are so low that nobody wants to lend us the money. So the only lender becomes the Fed because the Fed doesn't care about the return and it just prints the money into existence and and and lends us that. But then you know now you have runaway inflation or hyperinflation. So I think we're very close to the collapse of this system. And remember the whole US economy has been built on the dollar being the reserve currency. Um, that's that's how that's how we function. Trump doesn't understand this. He thinks the world is screwing us over. Uh, but it's it's actually the other way around. We've been screwing the world over. U, you know, getting all their stuff for free. But they produce all the stuff that we consume, you know, most of it, and then they lend us the money to buy it. And, you know, they invest the profits in our bond market and our stock market. So, they keep consumer prices down, asset prices up. We think we're rich. We can borrow against those asset prices. And then we get all this stuff. We didn't need factories. We didn't need pollution. We didn't need the workers. We didn't need the raw materials. We just created the money out of thin air and we got all this stuff uh from the rest of the world. And when we get this dollar crisis, that all stops, right? The ride on the glo global gravy train is over. Uh we can't import all this stuff anymore unless we export. and we don't have the capacity to export enough to cover our imports. Uh so a lot of products that we used to be able to have won't be affordable to most Americans anymore. And if foreigners aren't selling us goods and they don't earn dollars, they don't need to buy our bonds. They don't need to buy our stocks. And so uh the price of goods goes up because we don't have as many goods. But the price of stocks really go down bonds because we don't have all the foreign buyers. So, you know, it's the worst situation where the value of what you own goes way down, but the cost of everything you need to buy goes way up. So, you know, you see a significant reduction in the quality of living, the standard of living of of of you know, the vast majority of Americans, which is, you know, why they need to take action now to protect themselves because you don't know. I mean, I don't know when this dollar crisis is going to hit. It could hit any night, you know, when I'm asleep. And I've always thought that it will happen at night because that's when the Asians are up in trading and they're our biggest creditors and that's probably where our fate's going to be determined. And I think a real dollar collapse will probably start in Asian trading hours. Um, and so look, I you know, you don't want to go to sleep knowing that you may wake up broke. So the the way around it is just to have a portfolio of non-dollar assets. You know, own good quality companies that you could buy at a low PE with a good dividend yield. Own precious metals, you know, own these mining stocks. You know, have a portfolio that will not only survive but thrive in an environment where you have a dollar crash and, you know, US economy is in, you know, a massive recession with high inflation. You know, I' I've called it a inflationary depression, which is really what we're going to be entering into. It's going to be an elongated period of time with an extreme weak economy that maybe moves in and out of recession but never really grows, but all the while has very high inflation. I mean, think about the 1970s only way worse. That's that's where we're headed. I mean, the only wild card is maybe AI, but we'll see where that, you know, what could happen there with the productivity increases. But so far I think it's more of a bubble uh than than a gamecher for now. Although the potential is there for the game to change later, but I don't think it's going to change in time to avert this crisis. >> So you also just pointed out it's the could be the biggest economic crisis of our lifetimes. So even bigger than what we saw in the 2008 financial crisis. Like okay, >> is this the most worried you've ever been in your career then? Is contextualize it for us. Is this Yeah. Well, in 2008, things would have been a lot worse had the government not done all the bailouts, right? Bailed out all the banks, bailed out Fanny and Freddy, uh done done the TARP programs, all that stuff cushioned to blow. Now, it was all a mistake because it prevented a real uh cure for the disease. We needed a bigger flush out. We needed uh more bad actors to go bankrupt. You know, we we we actually needed a deeper recession than the one that we had. Even though it would have been painful at the time, it was the constructive pain that that we needed because it would have allowed us to rebuild a solid foundation. Instead, we just reinflated the bubble on the same shaky foundation. In fact, it's even flimsier now than it was then. Uh but the crisis that's coming, which is going to be a dollar crisis, right, and a and a a sub and a sovereign debt crisis, not a subprime crisis, but treasuries, there's no bailout from that, right? The government can't bail us out when it's the government's credit that is no longer accepted. See, when people were just worried about mortgages, the government could backs stop it. And when people wanted the dollar and when foreign central banks wanted dollars, we could print as many as we wanted and there was plenty of demand. But we get to a situation where foreign central banks don't want our dollars anymore. They're getting rid of the dollars that they have. They don't want to buy our debt. Um and uh and the dollar is crashing. The Fed can't bail anybody out. Like in 2008, they created dollars to bail everybody out. Well, if the dollar is already tanking, creating more dollars will just accelerate the decline. So, we're going to be in a situation where we're having an economic crisis, right? We're in a severe recession. People are losing their jobs. You know, prices are going up. And if the government tries to do any of the stimulus that it's tried in the past, like, well, let's let's increase our deficit spending, let's increase unemployment benefits, let's send stimulus checks out, let's, you know, all that's going to make it worse. That's just going to accelerate the decline of the dollar. It's going to put more upward pressure on consumer prices and interest rates. So, this stimulus will act as a sedative. And so, they're they're they're basically out of ammunition. There's nothing they could do. uh to try to you know alleviate the pain. >> Now you know if they do nothing right I mean it's just going to continue the best thing they could do would be in that environment because the budget deficits are going to be skyrocketing at this point um the best thing they could do would be the unthinkable would be to cut government spending in the recession to try to balance the budget to try to take some of the pressure off of skyrocketing interest rates. But of course, you know that they've never even considered doing that, right? Raising or even raising taxes. They might have to do that. I prefer cutting government spending. But they have to do those type of policies, which is they never, you know, that's the opposite of what they always do, right? They want to, oh, the economy is weak. Let's stimulate it. Let's cut taxes. Let's increase government spending. But what they're going to have to do is the opposite. You know, cut government spending, raise taxes in an economy that's already weak with high unemployment and high inflation. So this it they really backed us into this corner here and there's there's no way out of it. That's why they've been kicking the can down the road for so many years because they don't want to deal with it. >> But because we've kicked the can for so long, what they didn't want to deal with is now much worse. And now dealing with it is much harder. But again, a lot of the presidents and the people in Congress who kick that can, they're not in office anymore. So they don't give a damn. It's somebody else's problem. And that's what they're trying to do now. That's all Trump is trying to do. He just wants to get out of dodge. He wants to try to blow this bubble up big enough so that he can leave and and and blame the collapse on whoever follows him. >> Okay. But paint the picture for the everyday American. You mentioned a lot of Americans do watch this channel. It's mostly Americans. Paint the picture for the everyday American watching this this scenario. How would it impact their lives? Like just like a typical everyday person. Well, I mean, it's, you know, I don't know who the typical American is, but a lot of it's going to depend on on, you know, how they've invested their money, um, and what they do for a living. Uh, but, you know, the average American just lives paycheck to paycheck. So, he doesn't have any investments, >> but his life is going to get a lot harder. Uh, because there's a good chance he won't have a job. Uh, and there's an even better chance that whatever he needs to buy with his paycheck is going to cost a lot more. And so people are going to, you know, have a lot less material goods to buy. Uh I think people may have to cut back on their lifestyle. They may have to travel less. They'll won't eat out as often. Uh they won't take vacations. Um they won't buy new clothes as often or, you know, a new phone. uh you know they may not you know keep their homes as warm in the winters as they would like. [clears throat] They may find that they're wearing more sweaters in their houses. Uh and they may rely more on a breeze and a fan than their air conditioning. I mean look, people are going to have to find ways to economize >> because of the high prices, inflationary depression. >> Mhm. things are going to cost more and uh and they're not going to be earning more uh you know and and some people who had you know who are retired depending on what their retirement portfolio looks like uh they may have to find work. They may not be able to survive off their retirement income because it it wasn't in any way hedged to inflation. They had too many bonds, you know, other fixed income. They had a pension. um you know they had something that was you know fixed and the cost of living exploded. >> Which is why people who are retired you know they need to have you know like an account with me they need to be invested in assets that will rise as the dollar falls. They need [clears throat] to have incomeroucing assets where the income will go up as the US cost of living goes up so that they can stay maybe even or ahead of inflation. [clears throat] I mean, I know personally, right? I mean, a as an investor, I'm going to be much better off. I mean, I am much better off. I mean, this this is the most year I've made uh as an investor, you know, maybe ever. Uh because I've had so much of my portfolio in precious metals mining stocks, my personal portfolio. But also, the clients, our assets under management have exploded this year. Not because we've got an influx of new money. In fact, we were getting redemptions all last year. I was getting redemptions. Uh you know, just before we had this incredible year um and uh but no, the but the assets we had just you know, it just exploded because of performance. Uh and I think this is going to continue. So for golden >> early innings, you'd say for gold and silver like where do you see these? Where do you see them headed? >> Well, they're going much higher still. And look, I've been buying when I first started buying gold for my clients, it was under $300. When I bought my first silver for clients, it was $5 or under $5. I think I remember when it hit $5 and I got excited. Oh, $5 silver, you know, now it's 60 $66 and and gold, you know, gold was 260 270. >> Yeah. It's north of 4,300. >> Yeah. I mean, again, gold has done better than the stock market. uh even if you factor in the dividends, right? And it and it's so >> [snorts] >> um but you know uh and so I have a lot of of of those types of investments that I have been buying for myself uh and my clients and and so we're better off now. you know, as an American, I don't I'm not happy about this, but you know, I don't invest money uh based on, you know, what I think would would is good. Like I invest based on what I think is going to happen. And and so, you know, and I don't advocate publicly for policies that I know are bad just because they're going to make me rich. I I oppose those policies. Like everything that the Fed is doing right now, I am a big critic of what the Fed is doing despite the fact that it's making me a lot of money, right? I don't I don't want them to do it, but they're doing it anyway. And since I know they're going to do it anyway, despite everything I say to try to prevent it, well, how am I going to invest my money? How am I going to advise my clients to invest my money? It's well, invest their money rather. Invest their money based on what is going to happen. What is the most likely thing that is going to happen? And that's they're going to continue what they've done in the past, which is print money, keep interest rates artificially low, you know, blow more air into the bubble. And so what does that mean? Gold prices keep going up, silver prices keep going up, commodities, the dollar goes down, foreign stocks are going to outperform. That's that's what it means. And so that's that's how I'm positioned. So, if you position yourself the right way, yes, you know, financially you'll be better off. Now, you know, maybe you'll lose your job, so that could be a problem. Uh, if you're retired, obviously, you know, it's it's not an issue because you were living off your retirement savings. Um, now, you know, the wild card is what does the government do? How high do they raise taxes? You know, because they could take a lot of our gains away if they raise taxes high enough. I live in Puerto Rico, so I'm kind of immune for a while. I have zero capital gains tax by by contract, but who knows? We're going to have a radical left uh president and Congress in, you know, 2029. They can impose very confiscatory uh capital gains taxes. They may say anybody who profited from this, you know, is a is is part of the problem. They might even blame the problem on speculators. The people who bought gold and silver, you guys are the problem. you caused this by buying all this. We're gonna we're going to tax 90% tax on any gains on on gold or gold stock. Who knows what they're going to do? So, you know, that could be an issue uh if there's some confiscatory uh tax regime uh or some kind of unconstitutional wealth tax or something that comes in. But, you know, what are the benefits though I think for Americans if they invest the right way? I don't know. You know, if you have you ever go on a vacation and you go to a country that's relatively poor? Have you done that? >> Yeah. >> Yeah. And when you go to a poor country, your money goes far, right? If you go to a restaurant, you get a pretty nice meal, you know, and it doesn't cost you very much, right? Compared to what it cost you to eat in the US, right? Because they have a a much lower, you know, cost structure. People earn a lot less money and so things cost less, right? Certain things, right? If you want to buy, you know, if you go into, you know, a jewelry store and you want to buy a Rolex, yeah, it's pretty much the same price because for that, you know, it's it's a global price. Maybe it's a little bit less because their rent's a little bit less, but anything that has a global market, you know, you want to buy a Mercedes, yeah, you know, it's still going to be expensive if you buy it in a poor country, there's But if you want to get a meal in a restaurant, if you want to get a haircut, right, if you want to get a massage, if you want to get something that's kind of labor intensive, all that stuff is cheaper when you when you're in a poor country, right? Uh so the good news for a lot of Americans is that they won't have to travel to be in a poor country. They'll just stay home. And so Americans will work cheap. You know, once cuz once the dollar crashes and you know, you've got your assets in gold, silver, foreign currencies, prices are going to come way down for you for stuff like labor. Uh and so, you know, that may make your retirement better, right? You'll be able to hire help. you'll be able to hire maybe a, you know, a nurse, uh, you know, for a lot less money, you know, in terms of what you have, right? It's the same in dollars, maybe even more. But you're like a wealthy tourist in a poor country, except you're not a tourist. You live in the poor country, except you're not poor, right? Because you protected your wealth and you didn't get wiped out uh through inflation, right? you you got your money out of dollars before the bottom dropped out of the dollar and now you preserved your wealth with foreign assets and and precious metals. >> Let me ask you this. >> So th those people could be, you know, in in good shape. >> Let me ask you this. Um because we started this again, we've had this interview booked for weeks and weeks. Um we started this conversation. We referenced the truth social from Trump. I take it probably Tucker. I don't know if you had Tucker booked before or maybe he reached out after the tweet or >> No, Tuck Tucker booked me before. And believe it or not, he didn't even know about the post. I >> You got to bring it up. I was going to say, was there anything that you left unsaid in your conversation with Tucker that you'd like to bring up? >> I wish I'd have talked I didn't talk I didn't do that. I didn't make it like this like this conversation. And there's, you know, we had a conversation which I'm sure people will find interesting, but at the end of the after I was done with it, I was kind of like upset like thinking about it on the plane ride home that yeah, you know, I didn't I should have been more critical of the current fiscal and monetary policy. I should have been more warning of the crisis that's coming and we didn't really get into it that much. And it maybe was just the direction of the conversation. And we talked a lot about gold, but not so much about why I think it's going to go so much higher in the future. We talked kind of about it, you know, as a metal and stuff and we talked about Bitcoin. I spent a lot of time talking about the bank. >> We didn't even do Bitcoin, Peter. >> He asked me about and I wanted I wanted to get the story of the bank out there because I wanted more people to know about the corruption in the US government. Uh but you know what's more germanine to the people is the corruption that's going to destroy their standard of living and all the lies they're being told on a daily basis in the media. uh you know by and by the government by the Trump administration by the Federal Reserve you know because you know Donald Trump's approval ratings on the economy are at a record low I mean and that speaks volumes because that's his strong suit supposedly is he's going to you know be good for the economy and where [clears throat] he's scored lowest is on the economy because even though the the public is getting spoonfed a bunch of lies about the economy economy, they still know that it's bad because they have their own personal experience to go by. So, it doesn't matter what somebody on television is saying. They know what they're confronted with. They know they've got a stack of bills they can't pay, right? They got no savings. Everything is getting more expensive. Uh, and there's no relief in sight. And some people are working two or three part-time jobs to try to hobble together a living. Um, you got kids that, you know, graduate college, they have a mortgage with no house, right? They have student loans, so they can't find a decent job. Um, so, you know, the government has wrecked this economy. The government and the Federal Reserve, >> you know, despite everything that capitalism has done to improve it, the government has done so much to destroy it. >> Mhm. And uh you know so people need to know that especially since you know there there is this you know political wave of socialism that is building in response to these problems that have been created by socialism. But the public has been so dumbed down in government schools that they don't even know what capitalism is. And I guess they shouldn't know because we don't really have it anymore. But we have remnants of it. We have we have a lot of it still but the problems that we have are the result of all the government that has crept into it. All the socialism that has been uh basically injected into the capitalism and poisoned it. Uh but then capitalism gets blamed for the damage that this socialist poison does and then the government uses that damage to say y you see you see how bad this capitalism is. these greedy businessmen wreck the economy. We need more government. You need a government because we're benevolent. We're caring. Uh we're going to make sure, you know, you know, every everybody is equal and everybody is taken care of and and and the public will buy this. They tend to be more susceptible to that when times are bad, right? That's when that strikes a nerve. And and so we're at a dangerous point politically because economically a lot of people are going to be suffering and you're going to see people like, you know, like a Mold Donnie. How do you know? >> Yeah, mommy. >> How do you get elected in New York? Your rent's too high. Your grocery bills are too high. Yes, they are. >> But the government's not going to bring them down. The government's just going to make it go higher. In fact, the government is the reason that everything is so expensive. And if you and if you give government more power, they'll just make stuff even more expensive. >> Peter Schiff, chief economist and global strategist at Europacific Asset Management and founder of Shift Gold. Thank you so much for being so generous with your time, all of your knowledge, helping us all learn. Really, really appreciate you and thanks for making your debut on the show and I hope that we can have you on again. Really appreciate it. >> Yeah. What What took you so long to invite me? I guess you How long you've been doing your podcast? >> How long have we been doing it? um 3 years now. Yeah. >> Yeah. All right. >> You've been on the list. I'm telling you, you've been on the list. [laughter] I actually I did not have your contact info, though. >> You must have a really long list. >> Well, I didn't have your contact and um someone was able to get me in touch, so I really appreciate it. >> I'm I'm not that hard to find. I'm all I'm [laughter] all >> Well, really appreciate it, Peter. >> All right. Well, now you know where I am. yourself.