Peter Schiff: Let The Economy Fail

The nature often provides us with examples that can be very instructive to the people in every area in their life. For example, it is not uncommon for birds to push their infants out of the nest in order to teach them to fly. That is exactly what Peter Schiff is proposing and according to his opinion, the only way to fix the economy is to let it fail. In other words, push it from the nest, let it learn how to fly.

This might sound strange to some of the market analysts, but Mr. Schiff is very well known about his rather unorthodox views, like for example, his prediction of gold hitting $5,000 per ounce. He also is follower of the ideas that U.S. must return to a gold standard. Peter Schiff has an opinion and he is not afraid to share it with ones that are willing to listen.

Schiff stated in recent article that U.S. economy’s growth has been sluggish at best since the recession began. According to him, current policies and plans to help put it on the right track are actually hurting Americans in the long run. All of the money printing and quantitative easing is doing more harm than good according to the investing expert.

"There is an ongoing three way debate between those who believe the Fed should do more to strengthen the recovery, those who believe that the recovery is strong enough to continue on its own, and those who believe that the economy has been so fundamentally altered by the recession that no amount of stimulus can succeed in pushing unemployment down to pre-crash levels. As usual, they all have it wrong (although some are more wrong than others)", believes Peter Schiff.

He debunks the theory that the recovery is on the way or the least bit sustainable, and also combats the idea that the Fed is able to do anything more with its asset purchasing programs and printing. "The simple truth however, is that our economy has a disease that all the quantitative easing in the world can’t cure. And while the wrong medicine may make us appear healthier in the short term, we will continue to deteriorate beneath the surface", he says.

Schiff believes that the Fed should not only not implement a third round, but it should remove whatever actions are already in place, rather than continue with QE programs. That, of course, would result a big dip in the economy and likely a sizable drop in stock markets, but Schiff feels that the market needs to naturally recover from the misallocations that have been made in an effort to keep our country afloat.

That road, if taken, will be a very difficult one and will likely be more painful than the 2008 recession given our high debt levels and the amount of borrowing that consumers have been encouraged to participate in via zero interest rates. While monetary stimuli may create jobs or wealth in the short term, Schiff points out that "any jobs created as a result of cheap monetary stimulus are jobs that won’t be able to survive absent that support". He compares the Fed actions to a construction crew continually building skyscrapers on bad supports.