Peter Schiff’s Latest Comments About Gold and Gold Stocks

With the dismal performance of gold stocks testing the patience of even hardcore gold bugs, Euro Pacific Capital CEO Peter Schiff believes investors should not panic and sell, but hold on, the bottom in the gold mining stocks is probably in.
And if the bottom is not in, hold on anyway.
“We could see another 10% pop in a week or two in the mining shares,” Schiff told King World News on May 23.  “There’s a very good chance that the bottom is in, especially if we can get a rally in gold.”

At this time, it may be worth repeating a famous quote from economist John Maynard Keynes: “The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent.”  On the way up and on the way down, markets can mis-price assets to ridiculous levels for longer periods of time than appears rational.  Today, it’s the U.S. dollar, U.S. Treasury market and gold, which have been mis-priced for so long. “Right now the U.S. dollar has been rising because of worries about Europe, but the dollar is sicker than the euro,” Schiff said.  “So both currencies should be falling against gold and gold should be taking off here.”
To put into better context how “sick” the U.S. dollar really is, consider an article penned by USA Today journalist Dennis Cauchon, who outlined in his May 23^rd piece the horrific fiscal shortfalls in Washington—a fiscal debacle so large that economist John Williams of ShadowStats.com expects hyperinflation in America some time in 2014 as global investors might eventually witness 100 percent Fed monetization of fresh U.S. Treasury debt.
Under the Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) rules of reporting financial disclosures, “the [U.S. budget] deficit was $5 trillion last year under those rules,” stated Cauchon.  “The official number was $1.3 trillion. Liabilities for Social Security, Medicare and other retirement programs rose by $3.7 trillion in 2011, according to government actuaries, but the amount was not registered on the government’s books.”
Whether investors are aware of the fraudulent U.S. Office of Management and Budget (OMB) accounting, or not, the reality of millions of baby boomers retiring each year and the growing budget deficits that come with an aging population will reach an inflection point, whereby investors of all stripes come to expect money printing as a way of life and begin trotting, then running, to gold and the gold shares in an effort to protect from a Greece-like financial collapse.
And the quick-fix to Washington deficits through Fed ‘stimulus’ and the higher tax receipts that result from a U.S. “bubble economy” has finally reached that ‘Minsky Moment’, according to Schiff.  After trillions of dollars of Fed stimulus since 2009, the economy just isn’t responding like it had for nearly 70 years of Fed intervention—a prediction made by 20^th century economists Hyman Minsky and Ludwig von Mises, among others, of the ramifications of chronic central bank money supply injections.
“The market is just rolling over, as it’s coming to grips with the fact that the fantasy they believed in is just that: fantasy,” Schiff said in an earlier KWN interview of May 18^th, referring to the recently reported poor economic numbers from Washington and private sources.  “It’s not reality.”
Schiff went on to say that gold—and by extension gold shares—will rise “as investors realize that QE3 [quantitative easing] is coming, because the Fed has already said that.  If the economy needs it, it’s going to get it.  And the economy is addicted to it [stimulus].  I mean, this economy needs QE like a heroin addict needs another fix.”
Back to the May 23^rd interview:  Schiff suggested that the relative strength of the HUI index of mining shares to the gold price so far this week indicates to him a bottom is in and a buying opportunity is at hand.   As far as the gold mining shares, “we could have a pretty serious up-move in the gold stocks in a very short period of time.”