As we wrap up the year and celebrate the festive season, we wanted to share some of our favorite moments from one of your favorite Wealthion interviews from 2024: Peter Schiff with Anthony Scaramucci. Enjoy!
All the best for a happy, healthy, and prosperous New Year!
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Original interview aired, Dec 6, 2024: https://youtu.be/6hJtEWTUfhU
Andrew Brill 0:00
Happy Holidays from all of us here at wealthion. To all of you, I’m one of your hosts here at wealthion. Andrew brill, we took a look back at this year, and hope you enjoy these favorite guest moments from one of our best interviews of 2024
Anthony Scaramucci 0:18
let’s talk specifically. What do you think the Federal Reserve does in the year 2025
Peter Schiff 0:24
Well, you know, I’ve been arguing for quite some time now that the economic data did not tell the true story. And in fact, that’s why I believe Trump was elected. I mean, if the economy was as great as Powell claims it is, you know, as the media claimed it was, as Biden claimed it was how you know Harris would be the next president. All the exit polls showed that it was a pocketbook election that people were voting for change because the economy and inflation were the number one issues, and the economy and inflation are only the number one issues when they’re bad, if they’re good, nobody cares about it, and they vote for other things. So I think we’re going to continue to get weaker economic data. Like all the data we got today was extremely weak, from the ADP numbers to the ISM numbers, factory orders. I mean, I think we’re going to keep getting more downward revisions to a lot of the numbers. We’ve gotten multiple downward revisions now to the Non Farm Payroll numbers over the past year, year, year and a half, I think it’s very possible that we’ve been in a recession for most of 2024 and I think that will continue into 2025 and so as the data gets stronger to support that, you know the Fed is going to try To continue with its rate cuts, but I am expecting a return to quantitative easing. Now I was on a panel down in New Orleans, like a couple weeks ago, and on that panel, Danielle Demartini Booth was there, and she I mentioned that I thought we were going to have a return to QE. And what she told me is, no, they can’t do that unless they go to zero first, that somehow they can’t launch quantitative easing unless they have a zero bound. Now, I had never heard of that before, but it’s my bet that if that’s what the rule is, they’re going to violate that. I because I don’t think they’re gonna be able to get back down to zero, but I do think they’re gonna restart the QE engine, because I think that they’ve already lost control of the long end of the bond market, is one of the forecasts that I made that I got right recently. I was saying that when the Fed cuts rates, that was going to be the bottom of the long term rates and that they would go up. And that’s exactly what they’ve done. Ever since the Fed cut rates, long term rates have gone the other way, and I think that’s going to continue, and that’s going to be very problematic for the Fed, because it’s going to be harmful to the economy, to the housing market, and when we’re in a recession, or when the recession gets worse, I think the Fed is going to be pressured to try to lower long term rates, and the only way it would be able to do that is by buying the Long term bonds, and the only way to get the money to do that is to print it. So I think we’re going to have a resurgence of inflation. We’re going to have a weaker economy, stagflation. That’s the one thing that, of course, the Fed has no plan for. I thought it was, you know, almost humorous, and even it got a laugh out of Powell, a reporter asked him at the last press conference, what’s your plan for stagflation? And he laughed and said, our plan for Stagflation is the is that we’re not going to have it, and so they’re just hoping that there is no stagflation, but that unfortunately, where we’re going here
Anthony Scaramucci 3:35
on wealthion, give us an update on where you are. I saw you at actually one point, express some regret. Typical trader in you, you were like, you know, hey, I regret not buying some right, because it went up. But I’m really want to talk about the fundamentals and the risks associated with cryptocurrency. From your opinion. Give us that update from your mouth to our network listeners,
Peter Schiff 4:00
yeah, I get a kick out of, like, some of the crypto people trying to make something out of the fact that I say, Oh, I regret not buying Bitcoin, as if I’ve changed my opinion. I mean, obviously, when I first learned about it, and I don’t remember exactly what the price was, I forget if it was above or below $1 I mean, I really can’t say, but it was around $1 when I learned about it and I had money, wasn’t like I was poor back then. I had money. So I could have, I could have put 10 grand, 100 grand, you know, I could have put something into it, and I’d be a multi billionaire today, assuming I hadn’t sold it. But, you know, I don’t know what I would have done had I bought it back then, how much I would still have. I mean, I have no idea, so it’s hard to say, but clearly, you know, I should have taken a chance on it. I didn’t do it. But that doesn’t mean that I, you know, I believe in it. I mean, just like I have underestimated how big the bubble can grow with us debt, right? How much money the world would lend us before we had a debt crisis. I. I overestimated, I guess, the intelligence of individuals, you know, and now companies, with respect to understanding Bitcoin. And, you know, I had no idea that the bubble could could get this big. I think what’s really happened recently, you had two things. You had the introduction of the ETFs and Wall Street coming in and buying up Bitcoin that pushed up the price. I mean, obviously nobody is buying Bitcoin in an ETF because they want to use it for anything. No, they’re not using it as a currency. They’re just gambling on appreciation. And I think that kind of started to, you know, to wear off. And then, of course, you have MicroStrategy Michael Saylor, single handedly, I think he’s bought in the last month, 11 and a half billion more of Bitcoin. A lot of it was borrowed money, but the rest of the money he raises just by, you know, selling shares of stock. So he’s just been this crazed buyer that not only has pushed up the price, but has caused a lot of other people to buy it, to front run his buying, to try to, you know, make money off of the mine, and now you have, you know, Senator Loomis introduced this ridiculous bill that create a strategic Bitcoin reserve, which there’s nothing strategic about Bitcoin, and we certainly don’t need to have a reserve of it. But I think that the potential for this, and you had all these guys down at the Bitcoin Conference in Nashville, RFK Junior and Trump, you know, paying homage to the Bitcoin crowd, really pandering to that community, promising them this Bitcoin reserve, which is really a payback for their donations and their support. But I think that the prospect of the US government buying, you know, a million Bitcoin, regardless of the price, just buying every single month and never selling. You know, the Loomis bill says you can’t sell that Bitcoin for 20 years. I mean, what kind of reserve is it if you can’t use it? But so, but, you know, with all this stuff happening, I mean, that’s really what’s what’s pushed up the price of Bitcoin, but I still think it’s a bubble. I still think it’s not digital gold. I mean, Powell got that wrong today. He was asked about Bitcoin, and he said he doesn’t see it as a competition to the dollar. He doesn’t see it as a currency. He said it’s just like gold, which it’s nothing like gold. So he doesn’t understand gold either. That’s another thing Powell. Powell doesn’t get but I do think it’s going to collapse. Yes, a lot of people made money on Bitcoin. A lot of my neighbors have made a ton of money on Bitcoin here in Puerto Rico. You probably know some of them, and they, they always like to tease me about, about the I didn’t get all
Anthony Scaramucci 7:30
damn Moorhead. So, you know, not, not to be self promotion. But yeah, Dan, I wrote this book. Dan came to the book party last night here in New York. Yeah, he’s here, you know, I guess I would say something to you that I would ask you to consider and get you to respond to. And I guess, you know, and there are people out there say that there’s more uses for gold and just jewelry, and there’s some industrial uses, and I accept all of that. But is there a database a bank is a database. A bank is a spreadsheet. It’s a regulated spreadsheet. You have your assets on that spreadsheet. I have my assets on a spreadsheet. I move assets to you. There’s a spreadsheet. Is there a case to be made that this is an impregnable, fully distributed, fully decentralized spreadsheet, and that there’s value in that network. And as as 10s of millions, if not now, hundreds of millions of people are on that network, that there’s value in that network. And so, yeah, that would be the Robert Metcalf explanation of the network effect. We say there’s no value in that network. So, so bid bitcoins value is zero
Peter Schiff 8:45
