Peter's Blog

Fun on Friday: My Love-Hate Relationship With Social Media

I have a love-hate relationship with social media. On the one hand, I now have a number of really close friends that I would have never met without Facebook. I’m talking people I connected with on the social media platform and now hang out with in real life. It’s pretty amazing to be able to […]

People Should Know Better: SchiffGold Friday Gold Wrap May 29, 2020

The Dow Jones is back of 25,000 and despite increasing tensions with China, people seem pretty optimistic about the economic future as states begin to open back up. SchiffGold Friday Gold Wrap host Mike Maharrey says people should know better. He makes his case by digging into some of the long-term ramifications of the economic […]

Nearly Half of Small Business Owners Expect to Close Down Permanently

The economy was booming. The stock market was setting records. Then coronavirus came along and governments shut things down to minimize the pandemic. That led to massive layoffs and a nasty recession. But once states open up, things will spring back to life and the economy will go back to being great again. That’s the […]

Peter Schiff: We’re on a Fed-Induced Sugar High

Sometimes you need to look back at where we come from to understand where you’re going. Peter Schiff does just that in his May 27 podcast. He analyzes the stock market surge of last year and concludes the mainstream might be a little over-optimistic on where we’re heading. The recent surge in stocks isn’t based […]

Fed’s Extreme Measures Are a Very Bad Thing

During a recent 60 Minutes interview, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said there is “no limit” to what the Fed can do. Indeed, the central bank has pulled out all the stops. But while the actions of the central bank are extreme, we’ve seen them operate out of this playbook before, if not at this level. […]

Over-Leveraged Zombie Companies Threaten Economic Recovery

There seems to be mounting optimism that the US economy will rebound relatively quickly as states begin opening up and there is progress toward a coronavirus vaccine. But the optimism ignores deep problems in the US economy that existed before the pandemic  – chief among them staggering levels of debt and the proliferation of zombie […]

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 […]

Peter Schiff: The Fed Won’t Get Away With It This Time

The Federal Reserve and the US government are rerunning the exact same policies they turned to in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, but on a much grander scale. We have bigger QE, more money printing, more government spending and bigger deficits. During his podcast, Peter Schiff said it was a mistake then, but […]

Fun on Friday: At Least the Lockdowns Were Good for Somebody

For most of us, these government-enforced coronavirus economic shutdowns have been pretty miserable. I don’t think too many of us feel like we’re overall better off today than we were a couple of months ago – unless maybe you’re in the toilet paper business. Even if they haven’t impacted our pocketbooks, the lockdowns have taken […]

The Economy Isn’t Just Dollars: Friday Gold Wrap May 22, 2020

Jerome Powell went on 60 Minutes last week and said there was “no limit” to what the Fed could do to support the economy. Of course, that’s not really true. All the central bank can really do is print more dollars. And the economy isn’t just about dollars. It’s about stuff. In this episode of […]