Euro Pacific Capital CEO Peter Schiff says all signs are pointing to a catastrophic stock market crash and that the U.S. dollar and the average American’s standard of living will be the “biggest casualties.”
Schiff, a financial broker and economist who correctly predicted the housing bubble and market crash of 2008, says it’s time to prepare for a global stock market crash after watching October’s market volatility that has seen the S&P 500 plunge 9.4 percent in three weeks.
Per a recent interview with RT America, Schiff says the market is looking more and more bearish:
“All the signs are already there. Look at what’s happening out there. The stock market is falling, 40 percent of the S&P is already in a bear market. Look at homebuilders, the housing stocks, the financials, the retailers – all these are the same things that were happening in 2007 leading to that crisis,“ Schiff, who accurately predicted the 2008 recession, told RT America. We don’t have much time left in this economic bubble if Schiff is correct.
Schiff urged people to be prepared for not only an economic crisis, but also a political crisis that will come with the fallout after the U.S. dollar plunges.
“So, what you’ve got to do is get out of US dollar assets. The dollar is going to be the biggest casualty along with the American standard of living,” he said, adding that foreign stock markets, especially emerging markets, currently depressed by the strong dollar would see a strong rise.
“They are going to see a boom, when the dollar weakens,” Schiff said.
“Look at the price of gold up another eight bucks, but it’s still about $1,230, gold’s going to new highs, it was at $1,900 in 2011, it’s going to go much higher this time,” the analyst added.
According to Schiff, American’s standard of living could take a huge hit because U.S. household debt is about $15 trillion.
“Everybody is loaded up with debt, and it’s not like we began this monetary experiment without much debt. We had a lot of debt in 2008. In fact, the financial crisis was about debt, it was about our inability to pay the debt that we had,” Schiff said.
“But instead of addressing the problem and allowing the debt to be paid down, the Federal Reserve led us down the primrose path into much deeper debt by keeping interest rates at zero and holding them for so long. The Federal Reserve actually encouraged an overly indebted nation to borrow even more money.”
And rising interest rates are only going to make matters worse, Schiff said.
“So, everybody is loaded up with debt. And guess what? Interest rates are now finally rising, and that means the cost of servicing that debt is going up, and this is going [to] be a problem just like adjustable rate mortgage was a big problem in 2008, when these things were resetting,” he said. “People couldn’t afford to pay. Well, the same thing is going to happen on a national scale. Rates are growing up, and we are too broke to pay.”
And there’s nothing we can do about it because politicians act like everything is rosy and we have the best economy of all time.
It’s impossible, because in fact we kept it going so long that collapse is going to be that much bigger, and sooner we face that reality the better. But no politician wants to face that reality, they want to pretend everything is great.”
The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act enacted by the Trump administration is going to get a lot of the blame, Schiff said, for blowing up the national debt.
If the government is collecting less revenue, then the deficits are getting bigger and so the government has to borrow even more money, and that becomes an even bigger problem,” he said. “What we need is smaller government, but nobody wants to shrink government, including Donald Trump, who is now the defender of Social Security and Medicare.
“He wants to launch another nuclear arms race and start the space race, so it’s all about spending more money, so Trump wants to spend more money and cut taxes at the same time. That’s completely reckless.”
Editor’s note: What are your thought’s on Schiff’s prognostication, too much gloom and doom or does it sound about right? In a worst-case scenario, do you trust the Trump administration to get things turned around quickly? Share your thoughts below.