Peter's Blog

The Fed Will Need More than Words to Keep the Bubble Inflated

Bond yields spiked. The stock market threw a tantrum. Reuters analyst Dhara Ranasinghe called it “a tussle over borrowing costs.” The Fed won round 1, thanks to a little help from the Aussies. But even the mainstream seems to have noticed that this wrestling match isn’t over and the Fed may be forced to take […]

The Federal Government Has No Constitutional Authority to Impose a Minimum Wage

Talk of hiking the minimum wage at the national level has ramped up in recent weeks. With the Democrats controlling the House and the Senate, and Joe Biden in the White House, it seems increasingly likely that we’ll soon see a federal $15 per hour minimum. In other words, it may soon be illegal to […]

Peter Schiff: Ugly Ducklings Became the Darlings of Wall Street

The tale of GameStop has much more to say about the current state of investing.” The central idea in the classic Mel Brooks comedy “The Producers” is that unscrupulous Broadway impresarios could succeed fabulously by creating a play so uniquely awful that it would close on its first day.  Their idea was to oversubscribe shares […]

Reddit Raiders Eyeball Silver

If you’re following the markets at all, you know that the price of GameStop stock skyrocketed this week. As the story goes, it was primarily driven up by retail investors on platforms such as Robinhood, and pushed by social media posts, particularly on Reddit. Now, these so-called Reddit-Raiders have set their eyes on silver.

Nixon Closed the Gold Window and All I Got Was This Lousy National Debt

This year will mark the 50th anniversary of President Richard Nixon severing America – and the world – from its last tie to the gold standard. The rapid devaluing of the dollar is the most obvious result. But another consequence has been an enormous national debt that continues to grow at a staggering pace. Most […]

Janet Yellen Talking Out of Both Sides of Her Mouth

During testimony before the Senate Finance Committee, Treasury Secretary-nominee Janet Yellen talked out of both sides of her mouth. She acknowledged that too much debt is problematic, but in the same sentence, insisted we need to “act big” to rescue the economy.

Three Records Broken in 2020 That Were Less Than Ideal

With the coronavirus pandemic serving as a backdrop, 2020 was a record-breaking year in many ways. And some of the economic records that fell were, shall we say, less than ideal. In fact, the impacts of these records will almost certainly ripple through the economy as we move into 2021. Here are three records that […]

How Will the Next President Impact Gold?

How will the outcome of the US election impact the price of gold moving forward? Of course, there is no way to know for sure. US politics is just one of the myriad factors that influence the gold market and you never know how things will play out. But there are reasons to believe the […]

A Black Swan With Teeth

For years, I have been warning that during the age of permanent stimulus (which began in earnest with the Federal Reserve’s reaction to the dotcom crash of 2000), each successive economic contraction would have to be met with ever larger, increasingly ineffective, doses of monetary and fiscal stimulus to keep the economy from spiraling into […]

Fed Chair Powell’s Solution Is the Root of the Problem

Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell went negative in a webcast speech on Wednesday, May 13. I’m not talking about negative interest rates, although that could be coming down the pike as well. Powell went negative on the prospects of a quick economic recovery. He’s right about the prospects for the economy, but he’s wrong about the […]