Bitcoin Tops $100K on Expected Government Bailout - Ep 997

* The carnage in global stock and bond markets continues; it really got started last night in Japan * The JGB (Japanese Government Bonds) dropped for the 3rd consecutive day * The biggest 3-day drop in bond prices in Japan in over 3 years, so yields surging, along with the Japanese yen * Of course, this is not supposed to be happening because they're doing more stimulus and they've got negative interest rates, yet the Japanese yen is appreciating anyway * The Reserve Bank of Australia also came out last night and cut interest rates to 1.5% * That is an all-time record low * Why did they do that? Is it because there's not enough economic growth in Australia? * Are they trying to revive a slumping property market * They've got a bubble in the real estate market - there's no valid reason for cutting interest rates from already low levels * The actual reason that the Reserve Bank of Australia gave for the rate cut was that inflation was not high enough * It's about 1%, the way they measure it, and their goal is to have it between 2 and 3% * In other words, the cost of living is going up by 1% a year and the Reserve Bank of Australia says, "That's horrible! We need to make sure that things get at least 2-3% more expensive this year and we're going to slash interest rates to make sure that happens." * Of course, when you do that, you have all sorts of risks, and what is the payoff? * Why is the cost of living going up 2-3% better than it going up 1%? * What's wrong with the cost of living not going up at all? * How about if it actually went down?  What if people could actually buy the things they need for less money? * What's horrible about the standard of living actually going up? * Of course, the real risk is, what if inflation goes from 1% (at least the way they measure it) to 4 or 5%? * Was it worth it? Now you have an inflation problem on your hands * If you've got 1% and you want 2% - You're close enough! * Obviously this has got nothing to do with inflation, they're simply trying to stop the rise in the Australian dollar * But the Australian dollar went up anyway! * They're trying to keep it down because they have this Keynesian world view that a weak currency is good and a strong currency is bad * But we've got to an inflection point where the central banks are losing this battle * The yen is rising despite the efforts to suppress it * The Aussie dollar went up, despite efforts to suppress it * The problem is, the U.S. economy is a disaster * We got the terrible GDP numbers, and we got a lot of other bad economic news today * We've got a lot more bad news coming out later in the week * We might get a horrific report on non-farm payrolls * We got that surprise good number last month, but who knows? We might revise that down and come up with another disappointing number on Friday * But the Fed, instead of acknowledging this, are still talking about rate hikes * In fact a Fed official just yesterday said the market should not rule out the possibility of a rate hike in September * First of all, if the economy comes roaring back (no chance that's going to happen) * Even if it comes back, they didn't say they WOULD raise interest rates, they said they might * Which also means they might not * It doesn't matter what happens to the economy, they can't raise rates * The economy is not getting better * We are either in recession or on the cusp of one * And the data continues to prove that, but the Fed continues to talk as if they're thinking about raising rates * That is part of the problem, because if the market doesn't believe that the Fed is coming to the rescue... Our Sponsors: * Check out Avocado Green Mattress: https://avocadogreenmattress.com * Check out Boll & Branch: https://boilandbranch.com/SCHIFF * Check out Fast Growing Trees and use my code GOLD for a great deal: https://www.fast-growing-trees.com Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

3 Aug 201632min

*  Today the Federal Reserve concluded its 2-day FOMC meeting and it announced - surprise, surprise - that interest rates are not going up * But of course the statement was much more important than their actions because these days, it doesn't matter what the Fed does; all that matters is what they say they're going to do, or more accurately, what they will pretend to do * It really doesn't matter what they say, they're not going to do anything * I explained that on my last podcast; I explained it again on CNBC Futures Now * People obviously still don't get it and I continue to use the analogy of Teddy Roosevelt's "Speak softly and carry a big stick." but if you have no stick, which is the situation with the Fed, then you have to speak loudly, and if you speak loudly enough, nobody will notice that you have no stick at all * That's what the Fed did today when they did not raise rates, but released their somewhat hawkish statement, saying that the near-term risks to the economic outlook have diminished * What does that mean? * We think the economy looks better, and therefore a rate hike might be appropriate * The Fed said that the job market had strengthened, which it did for one month - we had one strong month, but it is a low bar * But that is only superficial - when you look beneath the surface, it is worse * According to the Fed, the job market strengthened and the economy is expanding at a moderate rate * If we have an strengthening job market and the economy is expanding moderately, why are interest rates still practically zero? * The Fed mentioned that household spending is growing, but again the bar is set pretty low * The continued to say that they believe the economy is evolving in a way that will warrant gradual rate hikes * By gradual they mean, "No more rate hikes." * They raised rates once in January and they haven't raised them since * I think the tightening cycle ended when they raised rates, and began when they started to talk about tapering * We are now in an easing cycle * Despite some general better-than-expected economic data, we got some very weak news this morning * We got the number for June Durable Goods and they were looking for a decline of 1.3% * We got triple that decline: 4% decline and in fact they took the may number down from -2.2% to -2.8% * Year over year we're down 6.4% - that's a huge decline * The biggest decline in 2 years * If you look at the core capital goods, down again 3.7% * This is a massive streak - we've now seen the year-over-year core number down 18 months in a row * The longest losing streak in history when the U.S. economy was not in recession * I believe that this streak will continue and ultimately it will be longest losing streak ever - including recessions * Which would mean that year-over-year core durable goods would have been weaker during this "recovery" than in any prior recession on record * What does that tell you about the character about the so-called recovery, if is produces data that is even worse than during an official recession? Our Sponsors: * Check out Avocado Green Mattress: https://avocadogreenmattress.com * Check out Boll & Branch: https://boilandbranch.com/SCHIFF * Check out Fast Growing Trees and use my code GOLD for a great deal: https://www.fast-growing-trees.com Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

28 Juli 201629min

* It's official. The unthinkable, according to the status quo earlier in the campaign, Donald Trump is the Republican Nominee * Although many wrote him off as a candidate, I never did; I always said he was being underestimated * I believed his message would resonate given how horrible the economy actually is and what is really happening beneath the headlines * Everybody was proclaiming recovery and that we're on the right track and I knew that that wasn't the case * I knew there would be a lot of dissatisfaction among the electorate on both sides of the aisle * Even after Donald Trump locked up the Republican nomination, everybody was still writing him off * The idea was, "He's going to lose in a landslide" * Republican establishment said, "Abandon ship!", distancing themselves from Trump to maintain the House and the Senate, writing off the White House * Maybe run against Hillary in 4 years * That was the general consensus * Again, I kept saying the the media and the political establishment on both sides were underestimating Donald Trump and the potential appeal of a Trump presidency * I think that the speech he gave at the convention really proves that point * I thought his speech was brilliant. * When I say brilliant, I don't necessarily agree with everything he said; I clearly don't * I'm talking about the political perspective * Was this an effective speech to set the tone of the campaign? * In that respect, I think he hit the ball out of the park * The most clever thing about his speech is he didn't go after the Republicans * He went after the Democrats * He went after their base; their core constituency * He is bringing the fight to their turf * He went for the women, he went for the minorities * Not just African Americans and Latinos, but the LGBTQ and the blue collar workers * Donald Trump did not go after the entrepreneur * He didn't promise to get government off your back and free up the businessman from red tape * That's a typical Republican acceptance speech * He said, "I'm going to be the champion of the little guy." * The downtrodden, the forgotten voter * "I'm your guy! The system has been rigged against you and because I have been part of the problem, I'm the only one who can deliver the solution" * I think this is a very powerful strategy * Because the Democrats have been taking their constituency for granted * What Donald Trump says is, "Why are you blindly supporting the Democratic nominee?" * What have they done for you? Nothing. * He will bring up the shocking statistics that have been getting worse under 7 years of Barack Obama * The horrible unemployment in the African American community * The inner city crime * The government dependency.  The despair. * Why are African Americans handing their votes to a Democrat? * The Democrats have let them down and failed them * Donald Trump will say, "I won't do that.  Trust me." * "I will deliver on the broken promises of generations of Democrats." * What about women? * Instead of denying the gender gap, he just accepted it. Our Sponsors: * Check out Avocado Green Mattress: https://avocadogreenmattress.com * Check out Boll & Branch: https://boilandbranch.com/SCHIFF * Check out Fast Growing Trees and use my code GOLD for a great deal: https://www.fast-growing-trees.com Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

23 Juli 201642min

* I was in Las Vegas for the Freedom Fest and following that I went to Vancouver for a one-day gold conference * One of the things I wanted to discuss was some discussion about me on the www.kitco.com website and I think it was prompted by my itnterview with kitco, which you can see on my YouTube Channel * Whenever there is a discussion about me an argument develops between those who want to believe I never get anything right and those with believe I get a lot of things right * I thought one part of the discussion was quite amusing * Of course, I never claim to be infallible; when you make a lot of projections they don't all turn out to be right * Nobody is 100% right on anything that they say * The key is, are you right more often than you are wrong * And when you're wrong, do you change your mind, when the facts change, which is something that I do * But people will always go back and focus on a quote from years ago and say, "Look here's a quote from Peter Schiff saying interest rates would go up, and Look! now they're down" * I did not expect the bond bubble to get this big * Who thought we'd have half of the sovereign debt trading for negative yields? * Very few people envisioned that, but it happened * For the last several years I have said nothing about higher interest rates * I do believe that when the bond bubble bursts rates will spike up * But I don't know when that is going to happen * If you've made enough forecasts, one can always find things that have not panned out * But these people overlook the overwhelming number of forecasts I've gotten right * One of the forecasts people used to make fun of me about was a forecast I made on a show called, "Southland Today" * I put that up on the internet years ago, it's a 2002 interview and if you watch that clip, you'll recognize that a lot of the things I said in that interview were used to form the introduction to the old, "Wall Street Unspun" the precursor to the Peter Schiff Show * The intro for that show included many quotes that were lifted from the "Southland Today" interview * During that interview, I said I thought the Dow would go down to 4000 * Of course a lot happened between 2002 and now * What did happen is that after I did that interview the market fell precipitously; the Dow did drop another 25-30% * The NASDAQ maybe even more * What happened between that interview and the market falling is that Alan Greenspan slashed interest rates down to 1%, and at the time of the interview I did not know he was going to do that * I thought Alan Greenspan would be smarter than that * If Alan Greenspan had not slashed interest rates, my forecast would have been correct * Once Greenspan lowered interest rates, of course, I changed my forecast and became bullish on the market when it was still quite a bit lower * 6yyj6e69 Our Sponsors: * Check out Avocado Green Mattress: https://avocadogreenmattress.com * Check out Boll & Branch: https://boilandbranch.com/SCHIFF * Check out Fast Growing Trees and use my code GOLD for a great deal: https://www.fast-growing-trees.com Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

20 Juli 201637min

* I'm sitting with Josh Crumb, the co-founder of a company that was originally called BitGold but following the acquisition of James Turk's GoldMoney they rebranded their company as GoldMoney * I agree with that decision because I think GoldMoney is more descriptive of what they are really doing with gold, than is BitGold * But the reason we're sitting here today is because I was so impressed with their company after having lengthy conversations with the other co-founder, Roy Sebag, that I really agreed with Roy and I thought that the best thing for us to do was to join forces and to combine both companies to the mutual benefit of both investors and, more importantly customers of both my company SchiffGold, and GoldMoney * So we've agreed on a merger and we've formed a joint venture between the two companies * What I wanted to announce today is what this new joint venture means for current customers of my company, SchiffGold * One of the things customers might be thinking is: "Does this mean that my experience is going to change?" * GoldMoney (BitGold) is much more of an internet-based program where people are not interacting with live representatives * The answer to that question is no. * Nothing is going to change regarding the our customers' relationships with SchiffGold * In fact, what we're hoping to achieve is to bring some of that personal service to the current GoldMoney customers Our Sponsors: * Check out Avocado Green Mattress: https://avocadogreenmattress.com * Check out Boll & Branch: https://boilandbranch.com/SCHIFF * Check out Fast Growing Trees and use my code GOLD for a great deal: https://www.fast-growing-trees.com Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

9 Juli 201659min

* Today we got the Non-Farm Payroll report for the month of June * Remember the last 2 reports were quite weak and everybody was hoping for a rebound in June to prove that April and May were a fluke and not a new trend * In fact the Fed talked about that in their last FOMC meeting minutes * The consensus was for 180,000 jobs to be created and the range went from a low of 130,000 to as high as 235,000 * The consensus average of that range was 180,000 * The actual number came in at 287,000, over 100,000 jobs above the consensus * Now we did revise down the really bad number from May, and made it even worse * Initially that number was 38,000 jobs and now we know it was just 11,000 jobs * So about 70% of the jobs disappeared * I have a good feeling that the reason June's number is so high is that it's just wrong, and we'll see what kind of revision we get to it next month * Remember, a good chunk of these numbers are jobs that the government assumes were created without evidence, based on the birth-death model * I would suggest that far fewer businesses are actually being formed than the government believes * In fact, its possible that more business are shutting down than are hiring * Given the economy and the minimum wage, those business that are starting up are hiring fewer people than start-up historically hire * I think these guesstimates are wildly optimistic and skewing all the numbers * Unemployment rate, which was 4.7 last month and expected to notch up to 4.8, instead notched up higher to 4.9 * Private payrolls which were expected to rise by $170,000 jumped by $265,000 * But last month they revised a $25,000 gain to a $6,000 loss * Why did unemployment move up? Because the labor force participation rate notched up from 62.6 to 62.7 * Obviously not all the people who re-joined the labor force could find jobs * Average hourly earnings were expected to rise by .2% * Again they disappointed; they rose by just .1% * Overall, a mixed picture, but the headline number, the 287,000 vs 180,000 consensus * That's normally the number the market trades off * And that is exactly what happened - as soon as the report came out we had a big jump in the dollar index and we had a big selloff in Gold * Gold started out largely unchanged, went down about $22 on the news * Silver sold off, it was down about 40-50 cents * That was the knee-jerk reaction: strong dollar, weak gold, weak silver * Why? * A strong jobs number means the Fed is more likely to raise rates, right? * Rate hike is coming, good for the dollar, bad for gold * But what did I say on Wednesday's podcast? * I said that it didn't matter what the jobs number was * That gold was not going to go down, and if it was a weak number, I expected a big rally in gold * But I also said that a strong number would not hurt gold * Earlier in the year, a strong number would crush gold * I said that what's going on, and based on the latest FOMC minutes, I don't care what the jobs number is * The Fed is not going to raise rates * Jobs have nothing to do with it, Jobs are the excuse * The Fed can't raise rates now because of the fragility in the banking system, all the things that were revealed by Brexit * The market is sensing that and that's why within the first hour gold reversed all of its losses and finished the day up about $5.60 at $1365.40 * The highest close of the year on a day when we had a huge beat in the Non-Farm Payrolls * Silver had an even more impressive reversal; it rallied over $1 * Stocks really broke out; the GDX was up over 30% today to close at $30.54 * Not quite the highest close of the year Our Sponsors: * Check out Avocado Green Mattress: https://avocadogreenmattress.com * Check out Boll & Branch: https://boilandbranch.com/SCHIFF * Check out Fast Growing Trees and use my code GOLD for a great deal: https://www.fast-growing-trees.com Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

9 Juli 201624min

* Gold and silver prices continue to march higher * Gold was up another $7 today; it closed at $1363.20 - that is the high for the year * Silver was up .15 at $20.06 * Silver is now going up relative to the price of gold which is very for the precious metals complex * Gold stocks are on fire; the XAU index, a gold stock index was up 3.27% today * It's now up better than 135% on the year and well over 150% from the lows on the third week in January * But do you think that any major players on Wall Street have recommended gold stocks? * Do any of the big hedge funds have positions in gold? * No! They are clueless * What is happening, as I have said before, is that there is a picture, that's kind of blurry, but it's coming into focus, still not clear, but it's a game changer * The perception is that we had this great recovery and that the Fed was going to be able to unwind its balance sheet, normalize interest rates and everything was going to be great * So the whole investment world was preparing for higher rates, a stronger dollar and a stronger U.S. economy * But what is the actual picture? * The actual picture is an economic recovery that is over, if it ever even happened, * The Fed is finished tightening and they're about to start a new easing campaign * We're not done with QE; we're just getting started - QE3 is closer to the beginning than the end * Rather than shrinking the balance sheet, it's about to explode * This picture is getting clearer and now you see the markets re-pricing * Gold is going up every day * Gold stocks are going up * The banks are getting crushed * The European banks hit new lows again today * FOMC minutes came out for June and what did the minutes reveal? * The members were concerned about weakening employment number and they wanted more data before raising rates * They wanted to make sure the weakening numbers were an aberration rather than a new trend * Who didn't see that coming? * Also they wanted to see what happened with the Brexit vote * We knew about the Brexit vote all year - why did the Fed ever pretend that they would raise rates in June? * Because they wanted the market to believe that a rate hike was possible because it validates the phony recovery * So now the instead of raising rates, they spoke about raising them and they are going to cut rates by just talking about reducing them * They can do a lot by adjusting their rhetoric before they actually cut rates * They are already cutting by backtracking their rhetoric, because that's all they've got * Teddy Roosevelt said, "Walk softly but carry a big stick." * The Fed has to speak loudly because it has no stick Our Sponsors: * Check out Avocado Green Mattress: https://avocadogreenmattress.com * Check out Boll & Branch: https://boilandbranch.com/SCHIFF * Check out Fast Growing Trees and use my code GOLD for a great deal: https://www.fast-growing-trees.com Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

7 Juli 201632min

* I wish everybody a happy July 4th weekend; U.S. markets will be closed * It's unfortunate that we can't really celebrate all the traditions that we're supposed to be honoring were lost generations ago * The values our founding fathers risked their lives for have all been lost * I wanted to comment on what is going on in the markets particularly today * Today was the capper on the week * You had silver prices up about a dollar an ounce * Gold closed up about $19, so gold closed above $1340 * Maybe by the time the market opens on Tuesday silver will be over $20/ounce * Who knows, maybe gold will be over $1400? * This is a powerful rally - gold finished at three year highs today * GDX was up about 5% on the day * The stock market didn't do that much today, but the real story, other than the gold market is in the bond market * U.S. Treasury yield plunging again - these are the lowest yields ever * Certainly below the crash lows * The yield on the 10-year treasury is below 1.5% * The yield on the 10-year treasury is 2.24% * So yields are plunging, bond prices are surging * What is going on? * The answer is money printing; Quantitative Easing * The most recent catalyst being the Brexit vote, which scared the hell out of everybody because of the collapse, particularly of the European banks * Now the central bankers are rushing to the rescue all around the world Our Sponsors: * Check out Avocado Green Mattress: https://avocadogreenmattress.com * Check out Boll & Branch: https://boilandbranch.com/SCHIFF * Check out Fast Growing Trees and use my code GOLD for a great deal: https://www.fast-growing-trees.com Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

1 Juli 201626min