The conflict between dueling schools of Economics among dissenters has cost us dearly, I blame the influence of Peter Schiff on Ron Paul!
My recent trip to the Money Show in Las Vegas brought me in spitting distance of the granddaddy of modern conservative economics, Mr. Austrian School himself, Peter Schiff…and I almost wish I had tested that measure of distance.
I was there, in Vegas at Ceasers’s Palace, in the convention space, walking around the various vendors. One caught my eye, it was the booth of Al Yegenah, promoting the Original Soup Man Line that is his way of marketing his nationally famous soup and proving that there is no such thing as bad publicity (How would you like to be famous as a Seinfield character called a Nazi?). They served the soup in a line all the while observing the same rules Mr. Yeganeh had at his restaurant in New York. Major difference, in New York, the company was not being pitched as an investment to you by a leggy chick when you had to have your money ready, state which soup you want and then step aside like in the Sienfeld episode
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So I got my Broccoli Cheese Soup, stepped aside, and continued to make my way down the various aisles of software vendors, gold coin dealers, and people who wished an investor would take notice of what they were pitching. As a bit of delicious soup made its way down my mouth, I noticed this sign.
In wandering the aisles of the Money Show, I had come to both ends of certain spectrum of entrepreneurs. On one end we had an intelligent talented man who had worked hard for his achievements, who had emerged victorious from a brutal national spotlight, who had mastered the concepts of Free Market competition and I was drinking his soup! On the other end we had Peter Schiff!
The same Peter Schiff who described himself as a sympathetic 1%er to the Occupy crowd when he tried to turn the anger at the crony capitalism that screwed us all over into anger at the government.
The same Peter Schiff who arrogantly demanded that Congress eliminate the minimum wage as a cure to unemployment. (Brilliant, Peter, brilliant, everyone will have a job but the paychecks won’t be worth anything)
The same Peter Schiff who has been appearing as an expert in front of one our worst Congresses ever and giving them the ammunition they need for austerity at a time of high unemployment.
Approximately 15% of the workforce of the United States is unemployed according to the U6, the measure of real unemployment. It is a single statistic that measures a lot of misery. It’s serious. Callously using the term "job creator" of "job killer" to advance your agenda is insulting in it’s manipulative avarice. People who do this should be shunned not having their ass kissed.
In fairness to Mr. Schiff, at least he talked to the Occupy protesters. The morons at the Chicago Board of Trade who dropped McDonalds job applications on those outraged at the ill effects of Crony Capitalism either ignored or didn’t care about the fact that although McDonalds had 50K job openings they had over a million job applicants.
There he was sitting in the "bookstore" section of the Money Show…and me with some Soup Man soup left in my cup! I thought about tossing it over the top of the line of adoring sycophants lined up to get his signature. But really, I didn’t want to exit the Money Show in that manner nor did I want to give up my soup.
History will be far unkinder to him than anything I can do anyway. For those who don’t know, Mr Schiff is the economic advisor to Ron Paul. I’ve felt that there is enough common ground between the Libertarian Party and the Green Party, between elements of the "far left" and "far right" that conceivably some common ground might be found and some good may have been accomplished. Both are aware of the negative effect the Military Industrial Complex has on our nation and our world. Both want an end to the "War on Drugs". Both were outraged at the Crony Capitalism that has devastated this economy.
Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich had reached across the aisle on more than one occasion to do some good.
The real disagreement between the two sides has always been the difference in the warring Schools of Economics being advocated. A New New Deal under a new president could have put people back to work immediately, repaired our infrastructure so it will be able to handle the commerce of the near future (something we still desperately need to do), and not decreased the police, fire, education on the State level. All that was needed was for Libertarians to stand down, agree to disagree, and save the debate for another day when unemployment wasn’t as bad.
Unfortunately, you can always depend on conservatives to rationalize selfishness!
Peter Schiff as an influence on Ron Paul in 2008 would have none of that. In fact he actively encouraged economic action in the opposite direction, i.e. Austerity at a time of high unemployment. That is the main reason I dislike the man.
Peter Schiff, it is claimed, accurately, foresaw the collapse of the HousingBubble in 2008. And we have the big sign at Euro Pacific Capital at the Money Show to remind everyone of that. Of course he also predicted Hyperinflation, that the rest of the world would be immune to the US implosion and that there would be decoupling, and that foreign equities and commodities would be worth more than the dollar. I didn’t expect to see that on the big trade show sign nor was I surprised when it wasn’t there.
Of course, Peter Schiff is always predicting things of this nature. If you count your hits and forget your misses, you have zero credibility. But not Peter Schiff, as the principal of Euro Pacific Capital, he gets easy access to the media to promote doom and gloom.
But how is his credibility as an expert in international markets?
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