Peter Schiff: ‘We’re Already Bankrupt’

U.S. financial affairs have fallen into extreme disrepair, says Peter Schiff, CEO of Euro Pacific Capital.

"We're already bankrupt,” he tells Yahoo. “It’s better to acknowledge that than to pretend we're not."

The fact that our country is “so broke” has led the Federal Reserve to push interest rates to record lows, Schiff says. The 10-year Treasury yield hit a new trough of 1.61 percent Wednesday.



“If interest rates were allowed to rise, the federal government would have no choice but to restructure debt,” he says.

“A lot of our banks would fail. We’d have a bigger drop in our real estate mark. We’d be right back in recession.”

But the Fed’s insistence on keeping interest rates near zero is “creating even bigger problems,” Schiff says. Monetary policy is making us save too little, invest too little, produce too little, borrow too much, and spend too much.

"We can't have real economic growth until interest rates go up," he says.

"If we admit we're bankrupt and at least restructure, we can start repairing the damage and preparing the economy for real growth."

Schiff will undoubtedly be pleased to learn that New York Fed President William Dudley and Dallas Fed President Richard Fisher recommended against further easing Wednesday.

"My argument has been that we have done enough, in fact, we've done too much," Fisher told reporters, according to Reuters. “I don't see what we would accomplish with further accommodation."