Peter Schiff quotes
There are no checks and balances if the gov is wrong, if a private entrepreneur makes a mistake, he goes bankrupt, the losses are cut, if he bets wrong, he loses, if the gov bets wrong, they just get bigger, they just appropriate more money, it's a bottomless pit, because they either get it from the tax payers or run it off a printing press.
Peter Schiff
Borrowing to build factories is not the economic equivalent of borrowing to buy television sets, and it's amazing just how few modern economists can see the difference...Borrowing to produce is the way poor countries become rich. Borrowing to consume is the way rich countries become poor. A vivid example of the latter is the stream of container ships unloading at U. S. ports and going back empty because we have nothing to ship.
Peter Schiff
Gold has intrinsic value. The problem with the dollar is it has no intrinsic value. And if the Federal Reserve is going to spend trillions of them to buy up all these bad mortgages and all other kinds of bad debt, the dollar is going to lose all of its value. Gold will store its value, and you'll always be able to buy more food with your gold.
Peter Schiff
Here's why I would recommend against [selling the U. S. stock markets short].... Retail brokers normally require investors to hold any short-sale proceeds in U. S. dollars, usually earning no interest. The dollar, seen through my famously jaundiced eye, could lose more purchasing power than the security you sold short lost value.... I've got a much better idea, which is to borrow dollars and spend them to acquire foreign income-producing assets, using the income to pay the interest.
Peter Schiff
Think about all the rules and regulations American businesses have to deal with. How can we compete with nations that don't impose those excessive burdens? Does anyone think that the United States could ever have become a great power with all the rules, regulations, and taxation that exist today?
Peter Schiff
Existing regulators had all the powers they needed, and more, and they failed miserably to foresee and prevent this crisis. Chris Dodd is now asking us to put all our eggs in one basket and trust a "super regulatory agency." He should know better than to centralize power in the hands of Washington bureaucrats - it's precisely the arrangement that caused our current problems. I think most Connecticut voters know that we need fewer czars in Washington, not more. As long as Fannie and Freddie and Congress are meddling with the economy, changing the structure of the regulators is basically rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.
Peter Schiff
Nobody is entitled to someone else's money, that is the bottom line. People think they are entitled to it because they think they paid into it, nobody paid into anything, it was a fraud. Every single dollar that the gov collected in social security taxes, has already been spent, there is nothing there, there is no money, so the only money the government gets to make current payment is the money it can take from people who are still working. Its a transfer from the working poor in many cases to the retired rich. We don't have the money, I feel bad for the fact people made promises we can't keep, I feel bad for the people that invested with Bernie Madoff and lost their money, but its the same principle, its the same Ponzi scheme. We have to put an end to it, we have to find real solution to these problems because if we keep on denying that they exist and keep on spending money, we're going to destroy the value of everyone's benefits.
Peter Schiff