Peter Schiff Economy Warning : ‘Enjoy The Calm Before The Storm’

Financial analyst Peter Schiff is warning to “enjoy the calm before the storm.” Schiff, who predicted the 2008 recession says that inflation and interest rates are about to go up much more than expected.

In his most recent podcast, Schiff basically said to enjoy things now, because the storm will eventually hit. With the United States missile strike in Syria, rumblings of a trade war and a generally weak dollar, gold briefly flirted with $1,365 last week. But the anticipation of Federal Reserve rate hikes continues to create strong headwinds against the yellow metal. Many people now think the Fed will nudge interest rates up again in June, leaving six months to get in the much-anticipated third hike of the year, and possibly even get in a fourth.

The Fed is not going to be able to deliver the rate hikes the Fed is expecting, and again, it’s the expectation of more rate hikes that is what is keeping the lid on the price of gold. But it’s only a matter of time before the market blows the lid off and the price of gold goes up. –Peter Schiff

Peter said gold is basically trading sideways right now, in advance of a breakout. Meanwhile, the dollar is doing the same thing in the other direction. The greenback is weak but not breaking down. On the other hand, it isn’t recovering any of its losses. Peter thinks it’s treading water right now before it heads lower again, according to Seeking Alpha. 

Of course, the economic growth was supposed to help “pay for” the tax cuts and the massive amounts of deficit spending. If the economic growth doesn’t materialize, the deficits will be even bigger and they are already going sky-high. On top of that, rising interest rates are going to increase the annual payments on the debt.

So, these deficits are blowing through the roof and this is going to be the driving force in moving the dollar substantially lower and moving gold substantially higher.

We are in the perfect storm, I think, of massive explosion in deficits, not just the budget deficit but the trade deficit, these tariffs or a trade war is only going to compound the problem. We’ve got the economy weakening. We’ve got the dollar teetering on the brink of collapse. We’ve got gold about to break out and the bond market is in the same thing.

Right now, everything seems pretty calm on the horizon, but we are in the calm before the storm.

The three major markets – bonds, gold, and the dollar – are all moving sideways, getting ready to continue their most recent moves, which for gold is up, for the dollar is down, and for bonds are down, which means interest rates are up – and it’s one, two, three strikes and you’re out.

Peter Schiff: We Are In A Bear Market, All News Is Bad News

After rallying on Friday, stocks tanked on Monday, dropping over 450 points. In fact, it was the worst first day of the second quarter since the Great Depression.

Stocks dove Wednesday as well on the heels of China’s announcement that they will intensify the trade war with more tariffs, according to most analysts.  But Peter Schiff, the financial guru who accurately predicted the 2008 recession has a different take.

According to Schiff’s blog, Schiff Gold, most analysts blamed the plunge on the escalating trade war, but Peter Schiff sees it quite a bit differently. He said it was just another bad day in a bear market. In fact, he said the market could have rallied because the Chinese response wasn’t as bad as it could have been. But when you’re in a bear market, all news is bad news.

Schiff says that the media’s talking heads are simply using the tariffs as an excuse. The real truth is that most people are in a selling mood. “Stocks are expensive. The bull market is over. It’s now a bear market. People want to get out. People are allocating out. Growth is slowing whether people want to acknowledge it or not,” said Schiff.

The media pundits are optimistic too; just like they were before the 2008 recession, said Schiff. “That’s what’s going on now. Nobody thinks there’s a problem. Everybody is optimistic. Everybody is bullish. So, when you see these classic signs that something is going wrong, you just ignore it.”

The bottom line is Schiff thinks the economy is going to tank (although he isn’t sure how soon that will occur) and the stock market is going to continue its bear run. But the Fed is not going to be able to come to the rescue this time around because of inflation. If it does try to launch more QE to bail out the stock market, it will completely tank the dollar.

When we do all that, the dollar is going to implode because everybody is going to know that the experiment failed. Everybody is going to know there is no way out of this box. There is no normalization of rates that is ever going to happen. Their balance sheet is never going to shrink. The balance sheet is going to grow permanently, which means this banana republic debt monetization. They can no longer pretend that they’re not doing the same things as South American banana republics. It’s a pure ‘we just print money to finance government spending,’ which is going to explode.

The national debt is an often overlooked aspect of the economy, but in truth, it will play a big role in an economic collapse and Schiff is sounding the alarms.

Peter Schiff: ‘The Price Of Gold Is Going To Soar’ And ‘The Dollar WILL Collapse’

Peter Schiff recently attended the Vancouver Resource Investment Conference. While he was there, he did an interview with Daniela Cambone of Kitco News and Schiff said gold is going to soar.

But Schiff (who predicted the 2008 recession) also explains why he believes now may be a good opportunity to invest in physical gold. Schiff said that the standard sentiment shared by many is that once the Federal Reserve jacks up interest rates, gold will stay level and unaffected. But that didn’t happen. Schiff said that the yellow metal has surprised the initial expectations that it would fall when the Fed raised rates; gold has climbed 9% since the Fed hiked last month.

Gold has not really rallied. It’s been going up, right? But it’s been creeping higher. Now, everybody expected it to fall. Everybody believed that as soon as the Fed hiked rates, gold’s gonna tank. And it didn’t tank. It rallied. -Peter Schiff

Investors tend to sell the rumor of rate hikes and buy the fact when in reality, the higher interest rates are not bearish for gold. But as Peter points out, that mindset still exists in the market.

But you know, the Fed keeps raising rates a little bit, every once in a while, and everybody still believes that, well, the Fed is raising rates, so that’s bearish for gold. So, everybody expects gold to fall, yet it continues to creep higher. But I think once it overcomes some of this resistance –  it has a lot of resistance around $1,350 – and I think if we can decisively move above that and then get above $1,400, just to make sure it’s cleared out, then I think it’s off to the races.

Schiff also touched on the optimism in the markets, as he so often does, claiming still that the tax cuts won’t help much because the size of government hasn’t shrunk.  He also says the rising interest rates will suck up the benefits of those tax cuts either way.

 These tax cuts are not going to provide the economic boos that everybody believes.

I think the impact of rising interest rates and rising consumer prices will more than offset whatever benefits are to be had from the tax cuts. So, I think the economy is going to be weaker despite the tax cuts. I still think we’re heading into recession.

It’s rare to have this much optimism, but there are more problems now than there’s probably ever been, yet everybody is overlooking that. So, at some point, people are going to rush into gold, and the problem is there’s no one that’s going to rush out. So the price, I think, is just going to soar. I think you’re going to see 50 or 100 dollar moves per day up in the price of gold, once we break out.

Schiff holds firm that the consequence of the Federal Reserve manipulating the economy will be the crash of the dollar.

They actually made the bubbles bigger than the ones that popped. So now, the dollar’s collapse is going to be that much bigger, because it’s now a bigger bubble with more air to come out of it. And I think they have no more tricks up their sleeves. When this happens – it’s over.”