My Joe Rogan Experience – Ep 592

* Today I really want to talk more about Donald Trump, in particular, the firestorm that I think I lit with respect to Trump comments with respect to defaulting on the National Debt * Now I really believe that I am the first guy to have picked up on that because, when he originally talked about that on CNBC, and Becky Quick said, "Wait a minute, are you talking about compromising  our credit rating?" * That's when Donald Trump said, "No, no, no, I'm not talking about defaulting I'm talking about refinancing and Becky Quick let it go, she accepted the explanation, and nobody else on CNBC at the time said anything * Later that day, I was contacted by CNBC - I had already agreed to do Futures Now on CNBC.com in reaction to the article I had written at the end of last week on Donald Trump and I said, "Hey, wait a minute, why don't we also talk about his comments today about defaulting on the debt * And the producer said, "What are you talking about?" * I described his comments and said, go get the clip and we'll talk about it on the program * She had no idea that Trump had said anything like that and nobody was talking about it, but I had tweeted about it in real time as soon as I heard Trump say that, as he was still in the studio talking * I heard nothing about it until after my CNBC interview took place and then there were articles about it - even the New York Times wrote a big article about it * In fact, so much was written about it that Donald Trump had to officially respond to the idea that he said he wanted to default on the debt * Which of course he never actually did - he never actually said it, but it's clear to me that that is exactly what he meant - he wasn't just implying it, that's what he was thinking * But Donald Trump is not a career politician, so he's not always thinking about the political ramifications of just speaking off the cuff, and talking honestly, which is what he was doing * All of a sudden, when he put his presidential candidate hat back on, when Becky Quick called him out and all of a sudden he had to process what he let slip, then he back tracked * I think he would have died right there, had it not been for me * Of course Donald Trump doesn't want to be the candidate advocating default * Even though we can't possibly repay this debt, I guess there are some truths that even Donald Trump is afraid to utter when you're running for President, so he immediately started to back track * But I wanted to talk about why his explanation makes no sense at all and it shows that I was 100% right about what he was thinking, and all he's doing now is spin, he doesn't want to deal with the genie that he just let out of the bottle * I think the press, in general will probably accept his explanation, because they don't really know very much, but let's go into it * First of all, he said, "Of course we're not going to default on the debt - why would we default? We print the money! * Now, when he was talking about the debt, he wasn't talking about printing money, not at all * In fact, if anything, he acknowledged that printing money would be a problem, because he said, "We have to keep interest rates low but if inflation picks up we have a real problem * Our Sponsors: * Check out Aeropress and use my code GOLD for a great deal: https://aeropress.com * Check out Boll & Branch: https://boilandbranch.com/SCHIFF * Check out Boll & Branch: https://boilandbranch.com/SCHIFF * Check out Infinite Epigenetics: https://infiniteepigenetics.com/GOLD * Check out Justin Wine and use my code SCHIFF20 for a great deal: https://www.justinwine.com Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

10 Maj 201626min

* Today we got the government's Non-Farm Payroll report, otherwise known as the Jobs Report, for the month of April and pretty much all the mainstream Wall Street guys were looking for another strong report * In fact, earlier in the week Goldman Sachs was out saying that the 200,000 consensus estimate was too low! * The optimism was unfazed by the much weaker than expected ADP report I spoke about on my last podcast on Wednesday, which came in much lighter than expected * So, people didn't care, they said, "That's a one-off event, we're still looking for a good number, and we got a weak report * Instead of 200,000 jobs we only got 160,000 jobs * And they actually revised down the last couple of months * But let's get into some of the details, because it gets worse, the further beneath the surface you look * The unemployment rate held steady at 5%; they were expecting it to notch down to 4.9% - that did not happen * Private payrolls also much lighter than expected; they were looking for 195,000; they got 171,000 and they revised down last month's from 195K to 184K * They did get the .3% increase in average hourly earnings, but they forgot to point out that they revised month's .3% increase down to .2% so you can chalk that one up as a miss, despite the fact that nobody was talking about it * The bigger miss was in the Labor Force Participation Rate * Last month it was 63%, which was a move up, but in April it came back down to 62.8% * 562,000 people left the labor force during the month of April * A massive exodus led by young people * A breakdown in the Household Survey for ages 20-24 reported 155,000 job losses in April * For ages 25 - 54 -  284,000 jobs losses * For ages over the age of 55 - this is the highest it has ever been * Janet Yellen still wants to pretend that the reason the Labor Force Participation Rate is declining is because the Baby Boom is retiring - how much longer is she going to get away with that lie? * The Baby Boom is too broke to retire * The people leaving the workforce are young people in their 20's and 30's * A breakdown of job gains by sector shows the biggest sector is professional business and temporary services - 56,000 gains * Healthcare and education was high, and leisure and hospitality came in third * Manufacturing barely gained any jobs after a huge loss the prior month * Wholesale trade barely gained any * Construction, after a big jump last month - only 1,000 jobs * Retail trade lost 3,000 jobs * Mining and logging continues to lose jobs * On a good note, government actually lost jobs * That's a good thing - we don't need so many people working for government - they're not productive * Rick Santelli made a very good point today on CNBC, talking about all the jobs created at the TSA * We're not better off with those jobs - they decrease our productivity * As I mentioned on my last podcast, we've now had 2 consecutive quarters of losses in productivity * Despite this bad jobs report, the market shrugged it off * The stock market rallied because bad news is good news - the odds of a Fed rate hike are now the lowest they've ever been * If you look at the Foreign Exchange markets, the dollar was broadly higher today * It was up big against the Australian dollar because the Reserve Bank of Australia lowered their inflation forecast * They lowered it from 2-3% to 1-2% * You would think that's good news, because it means the cost of living will rise only 1-2% * Back in the day, news of low inflation sent a currency higher, because it was not losing purchasing power * The news sent the Australian dollar tumbling because the market now expects the Australian Reserve will have to c... Our Sponsors: * Check out Aeropress and use my code GOLD for a great deal: https://aeropress.com * Check out Boll & Branch: https://boilandbranch.com/SCHIFF * Check out Boll & Branch: https://boilandbranch.com/SCHIFF * Check out Infinite Epigenetics: https://infiniteepigenetics.com/GOLD * Check out Justin Wine and use my code SCHIFF20 for a great deal: https://www.justinwine.com Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

7 Maj 201631min

* And then there was one; Donald Trump is now the presumptive Republican Presidential nominee for 2016 * I remember when this Republican Primary started and the field was very wide * They had to split the debates up between the main event and the under card because there were so many candidates * Nobody in the mainstream really gave Donald Trump a shot * Even though I wasn't supporting, Trump - I was supporting Rand Paul and more recently Ted Cruz as the candidates who were ideologically closest to me * I always thought that Donald Trump was a very serious candidate and thought that he had the best odds of winning and that's what happened * I always recognized the appeal of his message * I know the economy is much worse than is generally perceived and, for the typical American, living in a rotten economy, Trump seems to be the candidate that is going to appeal to them * He's not talking about cutting social security or taking away government benefits, he's trying to be all things to all people * It's a populist message - Everybody's going to win, just elect me and I'm going to make all your problems go away * How am I going to make them go away? Because I'm different * I'm not your typical politician, I'm a billionaire businessman who knows what I'm doing and everybody in government are incompetent fools * He's right about that part - everybody in government is incompetent * But that does not mean that Trump is a panacea to immediately make these problems go away * But you know what? Why not take a shot at it? * I knew that his message is powerful and would resonate * Everybody is writing him off, saying he will lose to Hillary Clinton * I don't believe so * I think the media is still underestimating Donald Trump, despite the fact that they completely surprised them by winning the Republican nomination * He might surprise them again by winning the General Election and being our next President * Because, if you are anti-establishment, why would you vote for Hillary Clinton, even if you are a Democrat * Why do you think Bernie Sanders continues to get so much support? * He beat Hillary again in Indiana yesterday * But of course Hillary has such a massive lead, thanks to all these super delegates, it doesn't even matter how many primaries he wins - he can win all the primaries from now until the election and Hillary is still going to be the nominee * Unless Bernie Sanders can flip the super delegates * Maybe if she gets indicted between now and the convention, well maybe that will do the trick * But Hillary Clinton couldn't win in Indiana because there weren't enough minorities there * When you just look your basic Democratic American, they're overwhelmingly going for Bernie Sanders * The reason they're doing that is for the same reason that Republicans are going for Donald Trump * I said many times I think Donald Trump will be able to tailor his message specifically to appeal to the Bernie Sanders Democrats * He's not going to get all of the Bernie Sanders Democrats - the far left Socialists * But there are a lot of people who are voting for Bernie Sanders because they can't stand Hillary Clinton * Trump has a good shot at getting those people, in fact I think Donald Trump can do better with the Democrats than Ronald Regan * And it was those Regan Democrats that really put Ronald Regan in the White House * Many people are too young to remember, but when Ronald Regan first got the nomination, the media said, well that's it, he's going to lose in a landslide * Nobody thought he could beat Jimmy Carter, an incumbent President and Ronald Regan was so far to the right, he was even more to the right than Barry Goldwater, Our Sponsors: * Check out Aeropress and use my code GOLD for a great deal: https://aeropress.com * Check out Boll & Branch: https://boilandbranch.com/SCHIFF * Check out Boll & Branch: https://boilandbranch.com/SCHIFF * Check out Infinite Epigenetics: https://infiniteepigenetics.com/GOLD * Check out Justin Wine and use my code SCHIFF20 for a great deal: https://www.justinwine.com Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

5 Maj 201632min

* Gold finally traded about $1300 this morning; it was the first time since January of 2015 that the price of gold traded above $1300 * But by the time the U.S. Stock market opened, the price of gold started to sell off, and it couldn't hold $1300, in fact, it ended negative on the day - we closed about $1291 * When gold failed to hold $1300, there was a lot of selling in gold stocks; in fact gold stocks were way up in the pre-market, up from 2-7% * Some of them opened with new 52-week highs, but then the selling commenced and gold stocks went down, silver stocks went down - GDX ended down about 1.7% on the day - not a very big move * There will be some people out there who will say, "It's a reversal" * We didn't hold $1200 either, the first time we got above it, but the next time we went to $1200, we got to $1260 * I think something similar might happen with $1300 * If I were a bear, I would cover, I'd be buying back * I think it would be smart to buy the dip * Especially when you look at the weakness in the U.S. dollar with continued today, in fact the dollar index traded down to about 92.50 * This is the first time since January of 2015 that the dollar index has been below 93 * The euro is above 115, that, too, is the first time since January of 2015 * But the dollar is weak across the board, and it's going to continue to get weak especially if we keep getting the weak data points like the data that came out today Our Sponsors: * Check out Aeropress and use my code GOLD for a great deal: https://aeropress.com * Check out Boll & Branch: https://boilandbranch.com/SCHIFF * Check out Boll & Branch: https://boilandbranch.com/SCHIFF * Check out Infinite Epigenetics: https://infiniteepigenetics.com/GOLD * Check out Justin Wine and use my code SCHIFF20 for a great deal: https://www.justinwine.com Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

3 Maj 201631min

* Friday April 29, 2016 was the final trading day for the month of April and I think this will turn out to be a pivotal month for the month of April and I will talk more about that later in this report * I wanted start by talking about the Federal Reserve's decision on Wednesday not to raise interest rates * Few people really believed they would, but earlier in the year it was widely believed that by April the Fed would have raised interest rates at least one more time, given the fact that they began the tightening cycle in December with the first .25 rate hike * What's more important than the failure to raise rates again was what they wrote in their statement with respect to the idea that future rate hikes are forthcoming * The Fed is still clinging to the false narrative that this recovery that is basically already ended is on track, and that they will be raising interest rates at some point later in the year maybe 2 or 3 more times; they just decided not to do it in April * The only acknowledgement that the Fed made with respect to the economy was that growth was slowing * That is a dramatic understatement to say that growth has slowed * If you go back to December, when the Fed confidently announced their first rate hike, they were forecasting that the economy would grow by about 3% in the first quarter of 2016 * Yesterday we got the government's first estimate for Q1 growth rate and it came in at just .5% * You can hardly refer to that as a slowdown, when pretty much all of the growth that the Federal Reserve believed was going to materialize evaporated * I don't know how they can simply say growth is slowing - growth is non-existent * As a matter of fact, the New York, Fed, which recently began issuing its own GDP Now Forecast, are now forecasting that Q2 will be just .8% * Averaging the two quarters out, you barely have any economic growth * I think the New York Fed is still overly optimistic * I think the Q1 report of .5% will be negative after final revisions * I also believe Q2 is going to be worse than Q1 * Even if Q1 .5% holds, that represents the third consecutive quarter where GDP has declined * In fact 2015 Q4 was 1.4%, so .5% is less than half of the most recent quarter * I think that trend is going to continue * There are still a lot of people who believe we'll get a rebound in Q2, because we got a Q2 rebound in the prior 2 years. * But the New York Fed is already throwing cold water on the idea that there is going to be a rebound * What nobody is talking about is that the main reason for the Q2 rebound in the previous 2 years was because we had unseasonably cold winters * We just had the warmest winter in 120 years, so we're not going to bounce back from anything * In fact, I believe the winter was so warm, that we probably pulled forward some of the economic activity that might otherwise have happened in Q2, so I think Q2 is going to suffer * Additionally, we had big builds in inventories in the prior 2 second quarters - that's not going to happen this quarter * Our trade deficits are even bigger now than they used to be Our Sponsors: * Check out Aeropress and use my code GOLD for a great deal: https://aeropress.com * Check out Boll & Branch: https://boilandbranch.com/SCHIFF * Check out Boll & Branch: https://boilandbranch.com/SCHIFF * Check out Infinite Epigenetics: https://infiniteepigenetics.com/GOLD * Check out Justin Wine and use my code SCHIFF20 for a great deal: https://www.justinwine.com Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

30 Apr 201631min

* Earlier today the Federal Reserve Open Market Committee, (FOMC) began their 2-day meeting * It concludes tomorrow and at 2:00 they will announce their decision on interest rates * Nobody is anxiously awaiting that announcement * Although there were plenty of fools a few months ago who actually believed the Federal Reserve would be raising interest rates, in fact they thought they were going to raise them in March and then, when they didn't there were a lot of people who still thought they might do it in April * But some of these fools still believe the Fed is going to hike rates later in the year - maybe June * Maybe June, September and December * There are still people, like Goldman Sachs, who are looking for 3 rate hikes this year * I was on a panel months ago with Jim Rickards, whom I have a lot of respect for, and back then he argued with me, because he believed the Fed would raise rates 2 if not 3 times in 2016 * I said the Fed would not raise rates at all * Today I posted an interview that he gave on Bloomberg - now Jim Rickards says Janet Yellen has gone super-dove and she is not going to raise rates * The reason Jim Rickards disagreed with me on the panel a couple of months ago is that, although he agrees with my thoughts on the economy, is that he thought the Fed would not recognize that the economy is very weak, rather that it believes the economy is still recovering * He thought the Fed would raise rates anyway, which would cause a recession, cause the Fed to abort the increases, go back to zero and to QE4 * I said, I think we are going to skip all the rate hikes and go directly to rate cuts and QE4 * And now I think Jim has joined me in that perspective * The question is: Will the Federal Reserve actually admit that the economy is that weak, or just not raise rates, which is tantamount to an admission of weakness * We are going to get the first official look at Q1 GDP on Thursday * There's a good chance that we will print a negative number * And even if we don't print a negative number, it will be a single digit number less than 1 * And by the time they revise it the following month to incorporate all the bad news that comes after Thursday, I think they will revise it negative * Which means we're in a recession * If Q1 is negative, and I don't believe we will get a bounce-back in Q2 * I think Q1 is the high water mark and it's down hill from here * I think Q2 will be weaker regardless of how weak Q1 is, because we borrowed growth from Q2 because we had the warmest winter in 120 years * Companies are now winding down their bloated inventories that they built up the last couple of years * And because the trade deficits are getting bigger and not smaller * So we have a lot weighing down GDP in Q2 in an already weak economy * By the way, the Atlanta Fed revised up their Q1 GDP number from .3 to .4 * Why did they do that?  This is the second time the Atlanta Fed has upwardly revised their estimate, despite the fact that the economic data has gotten worse since their last estimate * If the data gets worse, why would you revise your forecast up? * To me something's going on, maybe it's the boys at the New York Fed putting pressure on Atlanta to be more optimistic, but we'll see, because we will get the first official numbers on Thursday * Let me go over some of the economic data that has come out just since my last podcast * On Friday last week, we got the PMI Flash Index for April - not a Q1 number * One of the first numbers for Q2 and it ain't pretty - the consensus was for an improvement * March was 51.4, and 52 was expected - we got 50.8 - much weaker than the Atlanta Fed thought * New Home Sales missed; they were looking for 522,000, Our Sponsors: * Check out Aeropress and use my code GOLD for a great deal: https://aeropress.com * Check out Boll & Branch: https://boilandbranch.com/SCHIFF * Check out Boll & Branch: https://boilandbranch.com/SCHIFF * Check out Infinite Epigenetics: https://infiniteepigenetics.com/GOLD * Check out Justin Wine and use my code SCHIFF20 for a great deal: https://www.justinwine.com Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

26 Apr 201630min

* I recorded my last podcast on the afternoon of April 19, and I wanted to announce that later that evening, my first daughter was born - we named her Lilyan Ruth after both of our maternal grandmothers - so we now have Lilyan Ruth Schiff, she was 7 lbs 2 oz. of pure cuteness! * If you just looked at the close of the gold and silver market, you wouldn't know that much went on, gold closed up under $5 - silver was up about .04, but you wouldn't know that earlier in the morning gold was up better than $25, we did trade back above $1270 * Silver made a new high for the year - silver was up about 75¢ early in the morning, in fact I think it made its peak during the Draghi press conference * We were above $1760 and then, just around 9am or so, there was a huge seller in the gold and the silver market and the whole complex went negative and we managed to close slightly positive on the day, but we had a huge sell-off intra-day following a big rally * That doesn't mean the top is in - I think it's interesting; we just got a huge correction out of the way and the price went up - we flushed out a big seller and now that seller is out of the market and this market is still going a lot higher * I put an article on my Facebook page about how gold stocks are way up this year, and they are way up this year, but the article basically said, "Don't buy", because gold is going to sell off. * I'm seeing a log of mainstream articles now about why you should not jump on this bandwagon, how dangerous the gold market is * And all this is just music to my ears.  If you are bullish on gold, this is exactly what you want.  You want everybody to be skeptical. * You want this wall of worry, that gold and silver are going to climb, and we're going to climb with it while everybody else is worried about the crash, because they still don't get it. * They're still talking about how the Fed is going to raise rates, and how that's bad for gold * It's not bad for gold - it all depends on how the Fed raises rates * If the Fed raises rates Paul Volker style, really jacks them up there, yeah, that will be bad for gold * But they're not going to do that.  If they raise rates, slowly, which is the only way they can do that if they even raise them, they will be slower than Greenspan was * When Greenspan raised rates, that was great for gold, because he was very slow * Well, Yellen is going to be even slower * So if gold did well under Greenspan, it will do even better under Yellen hikes, if we even get hikes * If we even get hikes.  We could get cuts, QE4, negative rates * If the Fed raises rates a little bit, that's bullish for gold; if they don't raise rates at all, even more bullish for gold, or they cut rates, and gold goes ballistic * Either way, gold stocks are going up * Meanwhile Wall Street is looking at amazement at the rally and it wouldn't dawn on them to participate * The mainstream investment world is not on board.  The train has left - there's nobody on it * Eventually they're going to buy, just like they piled in to the gold trade when it was 17-18-1900, that's when the big firms started finally noticing it * Eventually they are going to realize... I think it is going to take Yellen admitting the economy is weak, of the Fed actually cutting rates, but by then the prices are going to be much higher than they are now and we keep getting bad economic news * But I want to talk first about the Draghi press conference * Mario Draghi of the ECB, leaving interest rates unchanged, and continuing their QE program * The euro initially rallied, even during the Q&A, but then at the end, the euro turned around with the gold market, and the euro ended up unchanged Our Sponsors: * Check out Aeropress and use my code GOLD for a great deal: https://aeropress.com * Check out Boll & Branch: https://boilandbranch.com/SCHIFF * Check out Boll & Branch: https://boilandbranch.com/SCHIFF * Check out Infinite Epigenetics: https://infiniteepigenetics.com/GOLD * Check out Justin Wine and use my code SCHIFF20 for a great deal: https://www.justinwine.com Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

21 Apr 201628min

* Hi-Ho Silver! Seems to be the rallying cry for the day * The last podcast I recorded I talked about the breakout in silver and I actually regretted the fact that I didn't get a chance to talk about silver during my CNBC interview * On my last podcast I mentioned how strong silver had been looking and it held up extremely well in the gold selloff during the prior few days * Sure enough, we had a big breakout again today * Silver was above $17 earlier today, the first time it has been that high all year * Gold is still well below the highs, it needs to rally about $30 to get back to its high for this move * I mentioned on the last podcast that I though the strength in silver was a good leading indicator for both gold and silver * And I talked about all the traders who have been shorting silver, that had been a popular trade when the gold and silver ratio was breaking down, I thought that it made no sense to short silver * To me it was a much better trade to buy silver when it's as cheap as it's ever been relative to gold * This is good constructive action, in fact, the gold stocks are at new highs for the year * The GDX, as I speak, is up 4% on the day; it's above $23 - this is the high for the year * The juniors, GDXJ, that index is up over 6% -  today! This is a new 52-week high Our Sponsors: * Check out Aeropress and use my code GOLD for a great deal: https://aeropress.com * Check out Boll & Branch: https://boilandbranch.com/SCHIFF * Check out Boll & Branch: https://boilandbranch.com/SCHIFF * Check out Infinite Epigenetics: https://infiniteepigenetics.com/GOLD * Check out Justin Wine and use my code SCHIFF20 for a great deal: https://www.justinwine.com Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

19 Apr 201621min