The Peter Schiff Show Podcast

Bitcoin Week I'm going to devote today's podcast to bitcoin; I might as well just talk about bitcoin because that's all anybody else is talking about.  On CNBC that's pretty much all they are talking about; they said it is "BitCoin Week".  It sure sounds like it.  I think they should just rename the network: Crypto News BitCoin Network.  I would be a good guest on that network because I know eithe...

A Nonfarm Payroll Beat Today the labor department released the November jobs report -  Nonfarm Payroll -  of course Wall Street always highly anticipates this number; all the politicians, Donald Trump was ready to tweet as soon as the data was released.  The expectation was for 190,000 jobs and we beat, with 228,000 jobs. An Even Bigger Hoax The unemployment rate held steady at 4.1%, which prompte...

Trade Deficit Moving Higher as Economy Slows Down Yesterday we got the release of the October monthly Trade Deficit and we got a trade deficit of $48.7 billion dollars.  That was a little bit North of the $47.4 billion expected in the consensus forecast.  In fact, the prior month, which was $43.5 billion was revised upwards to $44.9 billion. The larger number did cause the Atlanta Fed to shave dow...

Market Rallies on News of Passing Tax Cuts Act Late Friday night, or I guess early Saturday morning, the Senate passed its version of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.  Last week the market, as it became more apparent that the Senate was in fact going to pass the bill, the market was rallying, and continued to rally and, in fact rallied again today.  This was the first chance the market had to react to t...

Buy the Rumor Sell the Fact One of the things that could de-rail Wall Street enthusiasm is if Republicans are not able to deliver on the promised tax cuts.  Of course, even if they are able to deliver, it will be a, "buy the rumor, sell the fact".  Especially since the fact is not going to deliver the promises of the rumor, which is more economic growth. These tax cuts are not going to grow the ec...

Fed Fears Inflation Is Not High Enough Fed statements drove the markets today; particularly the foreign exchange markets and the precious metals markets. First we got a quote from Janet Yellen early this morning in which she was talking about inflation. Her concern is that inflation isn't high enough.  Here's and exact quote from Janet Yellen: “It can be quite dangerous to allow inflation to drift...

Financial Conditions Are Loosest Since 1994 I was reading an article today that the Chicago Fed released their National Financial Conditions Index (NFCI)   and according to their research, financial conditions in the United States are the loosest since January of 1994.  Of course, that was early on in the dot com bubble, before it even "bubbled up", it was just at the beginning of that bull market...

Faltering Expectations The U.S. dollar and the stock market continued to be a little bit under pressure this week as anxieties are rising over the fate of the tax cuts with so many investors are putting so much expectation into the proposed tax cuts. Tax Cuts Do Not Reflect Smaller Government I have gone over many times on this podcast why I do not believe the tax cuts are going to help the econom...

No Real Tax Relief Yesterday the Senate released their version of the Tax Cut and Jobs Act, and it is not that different from the House version.  There are some differences, some of which I will get into, but the main problem is not the difference, but the similarity.  The plans don't deliver any kind of substantial tax relief, in the manner that President Trump refers to as, "the biggest tax cuts...

Conventional Media Was Surprised It's hard to believe has been a year since Donald Trump shocked everybody, at least everybody in the conventional media, Wall Street, all the pundits, professional politicians, anybody who has anything to do with Saturday Night Live... Nobody believed that Trump a snowball's chance in Hell of winning the White House. Hillary Clinton had already picked out her china...

High Expectations for Jobs Numbers This morning we got the release of the October jobs report, and it followed the hurricane-related very weak report that we got in September. This time, the reason actually was weather-related. Remember, they originally reported a decline of 33,000 in September.  No one cared, though, because it was all about the hurricane. This month everybody was very optimistic...

No Change in the Fed Swamp The announcement of the new Fed Chair, Jerome Powell, represents a commitment to the status quo at the Fed.  President Trump has nominated the person most likely to do exactly what Janet Yellen did for President Obama. Powell has voted in lock step with Janet Yellen for the entire time she has chaired the Fed.  The only real difference between the two is that Yellen is a...

Trial Balloon #1: Backpedaling on State and Local Tax Deductions All this talk about tax cuts is all a fraud, because government is getting more expensive and the taxpayers are going to be stuck paying the bill one way or another.  They keep on launching these "trial balloons. I was reading over the weekend that they are backpedaling, talking about the idea of eliminating the deduction for state a...

We're getting a tax cut! There is one thing now that that has the potential to cause a short-term decline of more than 3% in the stock market, and that would be: no tax cut.  If the Republicans announce that they're at a deadlock, and we're not going to have any tax reform or tax cuts, it seems to me the stock market will get hit.  Washington and Wall Street both agree that if we don't get this ta...

Black Monday 1987 Today marks the 30th anniversary of the 1987 stock market crash.  It's hard to believe that it's been 30 years.  I still remember where I was when the crash happened and my reaction to it. It happened just after I had graduated from the University of California at Berkeley. By the time the crash happened, I had already accepted a job in Newport Beach, California.  I was going to...

Inflation Higher Than Expected Today we got the hotter than expected news on prices - on inflation.  We got the import/export prices.  Import prices were supposed to be up 0.5%, which in and of itself is a pretty big jump, but they were up 0.7. Export were also up; (we would want export prices to go up, because that means we are getting more for what we export) they were expected to rise 0,4%, and...

Optimism Rules the Day Friday the 13th was not an unlucky day for the U.S. stock market; all three of the major stock market averages closing at all time record highs. Optimism is ruling the day. In fact, there was a consumer confidence number that came out today revealing confidence in the economy - the University of Michigan Consumer Confidence - and this is a measure of the belief that the U.S...

Congress May Not Deliver Promised Economic Growth I think part of the renewed weakness in the dollar may be due to the feeling that all the tax cuts are not going to pass.  The Trump/Republican plan outlined some days ago will be difficult to to get through Congress. Even if it does get through Congress it is not going to deliver the economic growth that is being advertised. Tax Cuts Masquerading...

Government Is Not Measured by What It Taxes, It Is Measured by What It Spends Democrats promise free stuff; Republicans promise free tax cuts.  What's a free tax cut?  That's a tax cut that happens even though you don't reduce government spending. In a recent panel discussion with Steve Forbes, I made the point that government is not measured by what it taxes, it is measured by what it spends. So,...

Gun Laws Do Not Prevent Crime The answer to preventing mass killings is not more gun control; Stephen Paddock would have been able to get those guns regardless of whether or not owning them was illegal. He would have found a way to get those guns. Heroine is illegal, cocaine is illegal - there are all kinds of things that are illegal - it doesn't stop people from getting them. Criminals Will Break...

Record Highs in the Markets This is the last day of the third quarter; S&P 500 and NASDAQ ended at record highs.  I am not sure what made the Dow miss an all-time record - it was close but no cigar.  Other broader measures did hit record highs to close out the quarter, in fact, Donald Trump was tweeting about the record highs in the stock market earlier this morning.  Of course, when we were h...

Estate Tax is Out Today President Trump announced some of the details of his highly-anticipated tax reform, which is really not tax reform, it's more of a tax cut masquerading as a reform. I would say the best part about it is the elimination of the estate tax.  That, in and of itself is a very substantial improvement. That tax should not be there;  it raises very little revenue but does tremendou...

Yellen Putting On an Optimistic Front Everybody is watching Janet Yellen this week; the Federal Reserve met and did not raise interest rates - no one expected them to raise interest rates.  But Yellen did offer a more optimistic assessment on the economy than most people were expecting. In fact, she shrugged off all these hurricanes and did not mentioned all the money that will have to be borrowed...

Market Anticipates Quantitative Tightening The market continues to rise; people are excited about the Fed meeting that start tomorrow and concludes on Wednesday.  Nobody expects a rate hike and there's not going to be a rate hike, but what everybody is looking forward to is the Fed outlining its strategy for quantitative tightening. Shrinking the Balance Sheet The Fed hasn't actually used those wo...

President Trump Courts Dems on Tax Reform I think the catalyst for the rise in the stock market today is enthusiasm over President Trump's announcement that he is working with the Democrats and is close to a deal on tax cuts. So that if he can't get something done with the Republicans, he will get it done with the Democrats and, one way or another, he's going to accomplish this major tax reform. M...