Chicken Little (Peter Schiff) Called The Looming Recession

Posted December 1, 2008

I finished reading Peter Schiff’s first book Crash Proof about two weeks ago. I got it on a Friday and couldn’t put it down until I had finished it. I only wish I knew about it when it was first published in early 2007. Although it would have been hard to believe the predictions that Schiff makes and actually take action at that time, reading it with recent hind sight proved invaluable. I will definitely take action now and I will trust the government a whole lot less…

Peter Schiff’s Online Star Turn

by: Gregg Greenberg

Money manager Peter Schiff was right about the falling economy. Now he is a rising star on YouTube.

More than a half a million people so far have tuned into a video montage called “Peter Schiff Was Right 2006-2007” on Google’s (GOOG Quote – Cramer on GOOG – Stock Picks) YouTube, turning Schiff, the president of Euro Pacific Capital, into something of a video celebrity.

The video traces a series of Schiff’s prescient calls on America’s economic woes, starting in August 2006, when Schiff told CNBC that the coming recession “is going to be pretty bad … and it’s going to last not just for quarters but for years.”

It also shows rosy forecasts, now proven incorrect, by economists and pundits including Ben Stein, Mike Norman and Arthur Laffer.

A week prior to the video’s Nov. 2 release, Schiff offered his views on the economy, gold and the tax plans of then Sen. Obama in a TheStreet.comTV video titled, “If Obama Wins, Economy’s Doomed.”

“They are trying to get Americans borrowing and spending even more money when what we need is the opposite of that,” Schiff said in the video. “We have no more savings left and I think the government can turn the next decade into something worse than the depression.”

Peter Schiff was on TheStreet.comTV promoting his book The Little Book of Bull Moves in Bear Markets. He originally called the economic collapse in his first book Crash Proof.

In a Nov. 1 video on TheStreet.comTV called, “Beat the Bear With Gold,” Schiff predicted the government’s response to the crisis would be to “print money” and socialize losses. As evidenced this week by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson’s $200 billion plan to bail out student and credit card loans, Schiff is looking prophetic once again.

“The government is trying to solve all these economic problems or at least prevent the crisis through creating inflation by printing a lot of money. And ultimately that’s going to lead to a major collapse in the value of the dollar,” Schiff said. Check out this video…

Schiff advocates buying gold bullion to beat the bear market. Gold has pulled 20% off its highs to around $800 an ounce, but the money manager says the yellow metal has “held up a lot better than other assets” and ultimately thinks it’s the only “real store of value.”

Economic commentator and television personality Ben Stein attacks Schiff’s gloom and down scenario in the YouTube video, insisting that the subprime crisis is “a tiny problem.” Stein has since apologized to Schiff in a New York Times editorial.

To the victor, goes the spoils. Even in a downturn.

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