- This is the first podcast I’ve been able to record since the death of my father, Irwin Schiff, who passed away on Friday
- If you’re interested in learning more about him and the circumstances surrounding his death, I would encourage you to read my commentary, “The Death of a Patriot“
- There also links to many other articles written about him on my Facebook page
- You can also find on my YouTube channel, my father’s debate for the 1996 Libertarian Nomination for President
- You can also find on the internet a video he created called, “The Secrets of a Tax Free Life“
- He died in jail because of his political beliefs and for standing up for his Constitutional rights
- While in prison, my father got insufficient medical care, he lost all his teeth, lost his eyesight and eventually died of cancer
- In my father’s case, even if he were wrong, the penalty should have been a civil case
- My father was steadfast in his beliefs, and did not want to be released unless he won his appeals
- The Dow was up more than 300 points today
- The strength came from the ECB, as Draghi suggested that the ECB was considering expanding QE
- The ECB is trying to talk the euro down
- The ECB did not actually do anything, they just jaw-boned the markets with the idea of more QE
- This was a euro story – the dollar was only up against the euro
- The New Zealand dollar was up 1.3% against the U.S. dollar
- Gold was up 2% in terms of euros
- Silver was up .15 in dollars despite the big jump in the dollar index
- This lays more foundation for the Fed not to raise rates
- At some point, I think the Fed will another round of QE
- The reason Draghi suggested QE was over fears that inflation is too low
- It is running at .9%, but according the ECB, the holy grail is 1.9%
- Draghi was asked why he is spending so much money to raise inflation when he earlier said that low inflation is good for purchasing power
- How does the ECB think they can pinpoint inflation to exactly 1.9%?
- Draghi’s answer was that low inflation makes debt harder to repay
- What Draghi is saying is that it doesn’t reduce debt enough
- Why is it good to transfer wealth from creditors to debtors?
- He also said that with low inflation, real wages will rise
- Why is this a problem? Because the government artificially boosted wages in the first place expecting inflation to mitigate their true effect in the economy
- What’s really too high is not so much wages as labor costs, due to government mandates
- We want workers to have higher wages in a free market based on their productivity
- All that is undermined in the ECB’s quest to generate inflation
- Draghi also questions the accuracy of is numbers
- Central bankers are trying to prop up the stock market and the government
- The real debt the central banks want to wipe out is government debt
- This is not what central banks are supposed t do, they’re supposed to be independent
- Another reason the U.S. market might have been strong is because of all the weak economic data that came out
- Housing was stronger than expected, but everything else was pretty weak
- The Chicago Fed National Activity Index, which was -.41 came in at -.37 – back to back bad months
- Also leading economic indicators experience their biggest drop in almost 3 years to -.2
- Last month was also revised down
- Also the Kansas City Fed Manufacturing Index negative again
- Bloomberg’s economic expectations index is at its lowest level since 2013
- All these indicators suggest recession on the horizon
- This is music to the ears of Wall Street traders because it means the Fed will continue to play the cheap money tune
- I don’t think the smaller countries that don’t have debt problem will follow the Pied Pipers of inflation down the primrose path
- I think you are going to see a big drop in the dollar
- There are currencies that are gaining strength and will continue to gain strength especially with the Fed has to come clean
- The Fed is still bluffing that they can raise rates, but eventually the markets are going to call that bluff
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