Peter Schiff was a guest on the Quoth the Raven podcast on Friday last week, where he covered topics ranging from crypto, to the VA governor race results, to China and, of course, the Fed’s decision to taper this past week.
He first talks about why he thinks bitcoin’s latest run up is irrelevant and why he still sees bitcoin going to zero. Schiff starts out the interview by railing on Microstrategy CEO Michael Saylor for his take on bitcoin and for what Schiff calls “encouraging reckless buying” of bitcoin from the general public.
“You only make money if you succeed in convincing other people to buy,” Schiff says about bitcoin, before challenging Saylor to a debate on the topic.
When asked about whether or not he thinks crypto could wind up becoming a systemic threat to the global financial system, Schiff responds: “I think it’s just another manifestation of the everything bubble.”
The topic then turns to whether or not Peter believes that China could make a run at the U.S. for the world’s top economic superpower. Schiff says that the country would have to go back to a gold standard in order to do so. The country would have to convert its forex reserves to gold, Schiff says. He also comments that the coming digital Yuan would have to be backed by gold if it’s going to have “any real value” as a global reserve currency.
He also predicts that the Chinese are going to “look real smart” for getting out of bitcoin and that the U.S. is going to “look like idiots” for going all in on crypto.
“There’s a lot of people in the crypto community that think bitcoin will be the instrument of the dollar’s destruction. If China’s goal is to dethrone the dollar and they thought bitcoin could do that, then they would be supporting bitcoin. So I don’t think they see bitcoin as a threat against the dollar at all,” Schiff says.
Peter also offered his take on the Fed’s decision to taper, but hold off on raising rates.
“Powell said ‘No way, we’re in no danger of falling behind the curve. It would be completely inappropriate to raise rates at this point’, which to me has got to be a lie because he just talked about how strong the economy was. Yet, it’s inappropriate for rates to be below zero?” Schiff rages.
When asked about what forces the move with rates, Schiff responds: “I think it’s going to be the dollar that forces the move because the Fed will keep printing dollars and buying bonds to stop bond prices from falling. There’s an unlimited number of dollars the Fed will print. To the extent that the Fed will draw some line in the sand on rates, the Fed can just print whatever it takes. So, the breaking point is the dollar.”
“The dollar crash creates a whole new set of problems,” he continues. “When does the money printing to suppress rates become a big problem for the dollar?”
Schiff also discusses whether or not he has looked at uranium and/or taken a position in the market and his take on the recent VA governor’s race and what he believes has catalyzed a sentiment shift among voters in Virginia in such a short amount of time following the recent Presidential election
You can listen to the full hour long audio podcast interview here.