We jump right in. Schiff speaks at 58:30 about the stock market and the capricious role the FED plays and played in assets getting more expensive in general because of inflation.
But in people’s lives … inflation in predominantly a tax on the middle class. The rich have more levers to pull to keep the dough coming in and inflation doesn’t cause a dent in their spending habits.
The FED’s role should be to operate as an independent central bank, but it operated as a facilitator of the government inflating big spending by monetizing debt with quantitative easing. The FED should have raised interest rates various times over the last 20-30 years high enough to force goevernment to cut spending. But it didn’t.
Schiff thinks that at some point the dollar will decrease in value enormously. He explains (1:01:18). Gold is making a come back. Back in the 1970s the Japanese Yen was 360 for $1. Today it’s about a 150. He gives an example that five decades ago the Swiss Frank was 0.23 for $1, today it’s 0.91.
The dollar in Schiff’s purview will get knocked off its pedestal as the reserve currency of the world. But it’ll only happen when inflation peaks so high that normal life will be stopped. Only when society gets nigh to a situation tantamount to riots, looting and shortages politicians only then will go back to the Gold Standard. While gold grew between 2003-2011 and definitely dislodged itself from the $400 marker since 1979, the Dollar (index) in that same period decreased from $115 to $71. Schiff thinks the Dollar was saved because of the 08 financial crisis.
Schiff is of the understanding that
- (1:01:10) gold will at a certain point become the reserve currency again bc the wolrd will reject the Dollar
- back in the day when Gold was decoupled from the Dollar, the Dollar was still redeemable from gold. The Dollar was defined as a way to Gold
- central banks are buying gold as a way to back their currencies
Schiff notes (1:03:20) that the former chair if the FED Alan Greenspan was in favor of going back to the Gold Standard, but the estimate was that the public didn’t want that and till this day doesn’t want a Gold Standard. Because this would mean no more free money doled out by the various institutions!
- a Gold Standard would keep politicians (more) honest and it would deter governments to run big deficits
- promising certain policies as a politician would of course cost money which can either be paid by taxes … or by the fiat-system running big deficits paid by free money by more and bigger loans
Schiff speaks (1:10:29) about the government being the catalyst of college tuition fees exploding since Obama was president.
- college used to be inexpensive, even the Ivy League colleges
- then the voting age was lowered from 21 to 18
- it used to be that students paid off their tuition by working summer jobs and graduating with no debt
- post voting age 18 politicians sold a message akin to why work while you can loan the money for college and pay it off later when you earn lots of money.
- government guaranteed student loans (to certain limits) and this made the universities the main recipient of these policies; they increased tuition fees more and more and more. The higher the fees got, the higher the government guarentees were manifested
- the students were given aid by making it possible to inflate their student loans more and more, while the universities were given the chance to invest in ways that never seemed possible before the government stepped in
- the Biden administration are making things worse; from the White House website (Public Service Loan Forgiveness) when you have worked in public service (federal, state, local, tribal government or a non-profit organization) for 10 years or more (even if not consecutively), you may be eligible to have all your student debt canceled.
- Mr. Schiff speaks in an exaggerating way lumping everyone public and private schools together … but private schools are not eligible
- the point where a person between the ages of 18-25 years old which has never worked a day in his/her life (which is in this decade more prevalent than let’s say 30 or 50 years ago) should have hte right to vote seems utterly unwise
- Schiff notes that the U.S. is a republic, not a democracy and therfore the act of voting should is a privelage in lieu of a right
- Schiff adds (1:19:32) that if voting would be a right … then why would a voting right be assigned at birth?
- a convicted fellon has no voting privelage. Governments can take away privelages, not rights like freedom of speech or religion
- Schiff notes that the U.S. is a republic, not a democracy and therfore the act of voting should is a privelage in lieu of a right
Patrick Bet-David asks at 1:23:35 Mr. Schiff about his opinion on having wars and focus from an economic side
- Even though Schiff could make a good guess that the following will garner lots of flak. This opinion is fully unadulterated, unabated and summing up undeniable facts. While Schiff also incurs the idea that this is a naïve stance knowing the U.S. was egging on Ukraine to join the West since 2013
- but we continue with Schiff, when the U.S. in 2022 would have not be so generous with financial aid to Ukraine Zelensky would have no other option then to negotiate immediately with Putin
- Schiff apparently is not under the impression of all the talk on tv and newspapers that Putin would want to invade other countries too … the media for more eyball’s sake inflates/exaggerates war situations very easily
- now Zelensky has the means to fight Putin and starts an endless and bloody war with so many people on either side losing their lives
- the U.S. creates more inflation with funding aid to Ukraine