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Peter David Schiff
200x
Born (1963-03-23) March 23, 1963 (age 61)
New Haven, Connecticut
NationalityAmerican
Alma materHaas School of Business (B.B.A.), 1987
OccupationCEO & Chief Global Strategist of Euro Pacific Capital

Peter David Schiff (pronounced /ˈʃɪf/; born March 23, 1963) is an American businessman, investment broker, author and financial commentator. Schiff is CEO and chief global strategist of Euro Pacific Capital Inc., a broker-dealer based in Westport, Connecticut and CEO of Euro Pacific Precious Metals, LLC, a gold and silver dealer based in New York City.

Schiff regularly appears on financial television and has been quoted in major financial publications. He is host of The Peter Schiff Show, on terrestrial and internet radio. and was formerly host of an internet radio show called Wall Street Unspunnow archived as podcasts. In 2010, Schiff ran as a candidate in the Republican primary for the United States Senate seat in Connecticut, but lost to Linda McMahon.

Schiff is known for his bearish views on the U.S. Dollar and Dollar-denominated assets and his bullish views on investment in tangible assets, foreign stocks, and foreign currencies. Schiff also voices strong support for the Austrian School of economic thought, first introduced to him by his father.

Early life and education

Schiff was born and raised in New Haven, Connecticut. His father, Irwin Schiff, a prominent figure in the U.S. tax protester movement, is currently serving a 13-year sentence for tax evasion in Federal prison. Peter Schiff attended Beverly Hills High School in California, and graduated from the University of California, Berkeley Haas School of Business in 1987 with a Bachelor's degree in finance and accounting.

Financial Career

Schiff began his career as a stockbroker at a Shearson Lehman Brothers brokerage.

Euro Pacific Capital

In 1996, Schiff and a partner acquired a small brokerage firm that had been founded in 1980, reincorporated it in California, and renamed it Euro Pacific Capital.

In 2005, Schiff relocated Euro Pacific to Darien, Connecticut because, he said, there are few brokers in the country who think like him and the Metro New York region has the largest pool of brokers in the country, making it easier to recruit like-minded employees.

Today, Euro Pacific Capital Inc. is a full-service, registered broker/dealer headquartered in Westport, Connecticut which specializes in non-U.S. markets and securities, trading directly on foreign exchanges rather than through U.S. dealer intermediaries." The company currently employs about 150 people and 15,000 clients and, in addition to its headquarters, has offices in Scottsdale, Arizona, Boca Raton, Florida, Newport Beach, California, Los Angeles and New York City.

Euro Pacific Precious Metals

Euro Pacific Precious Metals, founded in 2010, is a company that promotes owning physical gold and silver as vital elements of a prudent investor's portfolio. The company is headquartered in New York City and managed by Michael Freedman. It offers gold and silver bullion coins, but does not offer numismatic coins."

Other

Peter Schiff is also the owner of Euro Pacific Bank Ltd. and is is the parent company of Euro Pacific Intl., Euro Pacific Advisors Ltd. and Euro Pacific Funds SCC Ltd. The companies' website states that they were formed with the intention to better serve Peter Schiff's non-United States investor base and provide a platform of unique investment products in line with Peter Schiff's investment philosophy.

Economic Forecasts

In an August 2006 interview Schiff said: "The United States economy is like the Titanic and I am here with the lifeboat trying to get people to leave the ship... I see a real financial crisis coming for the United States." On December 31, 2006 in a telecast debate on Fox News, Schiff forecast that "what's going to happen in 2007 is that real estate prices", which had peaked in late 2005, "are going to come crashing back down to Earth".

In his 2007 book Crash Proof, Schiff wrote that United States economic policies were fundamentally unsound. Schiff believed that the imbalance between the amount of goods the U.S. consumed and what it produced would eventually lead to problems for the U.S. economy. As a remedy Schiff favored increased personal savings and production which he said would stimulate economic growth. Schiff cited the U.S.'s low personal savings rate as one of the causes of its transformation from the world's largest creditor nation in the 1970s to the largest debtor nation in the year 2000. Schiff attributed the low savings rate to what he asserts are high inflation and artificially low interest rates set by the Federal Reserve.

In 2008 and 2010 appearances on Fox News and financial news network CNBC, Schiff mentioned factors such as speculation and "the absence of lending standards" as factors which had contributed to the housing crisis which began in 2007. On December 13, 2007 in an interview on the Bloomberg TV show Open Exchange, Schiff further added that he felt that the crisis would extend to the credit card lending industry. Following this observation, it was soon reported that "Defaults -- when lenders essentially give up hope of ever being repaid and write off the debt -- rose 18 percent to almost $961 million in October, according to filings made by the trusts with the Securities and Exchange Commission."

Since 2007, Schiff has stated many times that, without a change in U.S. government economic policy, there will be hyperinflation in the US.

In a November 2009 videoblog, Schiff said that five stocks he picked for Fortune Magazine in January 2009 had gained a total of 360%.

In a March 2009 speech Schiff said that it would be impossible for the U.S. debt to China to be repaid unless the U.S. dollar's value is substantially diluted through inflation. In September 2009 Schiff said that "I would not be surprised to see at $5,000 over the next several years" and that the 2009 stock market rally was a "bear market rally".

Political career

Schiff was an economic adviser to Ron Paul's unsuccessful 2008 presidential campaign. In support of Paul's economic revitalization plan, Schiff said: "We need a plan that stimulates savings and production, not more of the reckless borrowing and consumption that got us into this mess in the first place. Ron Paul's plan is the only one that amounts to a step in the right direction. If you want meaningful change—for the better that is—Ron Paul is the only candidate capable of delivering it."

In 2008, Schiff also endorsed Murray Sabrin for the U.S. Senate seat in New Jersey.

In an interview in February 2009, Schiff's position was summarized as a nonpartisan critique of American policymakers, comparing former presidents George W. Bush to Herbert Hoover and President Barack Obama to former president Franklin D. Roosevelt, with neither of the more recent incumbents comparing favorably to the earlier ones.

Schiff supports the reduction of government economic regulation, and is concerned that President Obama's administration may increase such regulation. Schiff says that the economic crisis of the late-2000s provides an opportunity to transition from borrowing and spending, to saving and producing. He is critical of the U.S. government's efforts to "ease the pain" with economic stimulus packages and bailouts. According to Schiff, the U.S. government's approach of replacing "legitimate savings with a printing press" could result in hyperinflation.

2010 U.S. Senate campaign

Main article: United States Senate election in Connecticut, 2010

In December 2008, Connecticut citizens created a website encouraging Schiff to campaign against the incumbent Senator Christopher Dodd. Approximately 5,000 people made campaign contributions using the web site. On February 21, 2009, a moneybomb raised over $20,000 for Schiff's campaign. In a May 2009 video blog, Schiff said that he was seriously considering a run for the senate and when questioned by a Washington Post reporter, he said the chance of him entering politics was "better than 50-50". In June 2009 Schiff commissioned a poll of likely voters which indicated that he trailed Dodd in popularity by four percentage points. On July 9, 2009, Schiff launched an exploratory committee and an official campaign website. He began accepting donations in an attempt to see if "people who really believe in freedom, liberty, sound money and the constitution are prepared to support that with an actual political contribution or to volunteer their services and work on this campaign." He received over 10,000 donations and many e-mails from around the world.

In a campaign speech in Hamden, Connecticut on Dec 3, 2009, Schiff said "Unlike everybody else, I pretty much predicted everything that would happen in 2008 in specific and exact detail" and that "Somebody needs to be in Washington to prevent the next round of stimulus from taking place, because that will be the end of it. That will be the toxin that completely destroys the economy."

After giving some hints on The Daily Show Schiff officially announced his candidacy for the Republican nomination on September 17, 2009, during the MSNBC Morning Joe show. By October 2009 Schiff had received more than 10,000 telephone calls and letters and raised over $1,960,000 (USD) in campaign contributions.

At the May 2010 Republican convention, Linda McMahon received the most delegate votes but not enough to prevent an August primary election. U.S. Rep. Rob Simmons received more than the required 15 percent of the total votes necessary to force the primary. Schiff then collected the 400 signatures necessary to be listed on the August 2010 Republican primary ballot. McMahon won the primary. The general election was won by the Democratic Party primary winner, Richard Blumenthal.

Reception

According to the Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman, Schiff's "Austrian/Ron Paul type" approach to economics led him to incorrectly predict hyperinflation in the United States by 2010-2011.

Schiff is credited by some of his followers with having "more or less accurately" predicted the financial crisis of 2007–2010 while "nearly all failed to foresee the recession despite plenty of warning signs".

A video that Schiff posted on his YouTube channel, entitled "Peter Schiff was right" was popular in late 2008 and 2009. The video consists of a compilation of clips of Schiff's many appearances on various financial news programs from networks including CNBC, Fox News, MSNBC and Bloomberg, most of which took place from 2005 to 2007. In the video segments Schiff explains the fundamental problems he saw with the United States economy at that time. Schiff's warnings of a coming economic collapse earned him the moniker "Dr. Doom."

In January 2009, economic blogger and investment adviser Michael Shedlock stated that "I have talked with many who claim they have invested with Schiff and are down anywhere from 40% to 70% in 2008". Later that week an article appeared in the Wall Street Journal reporting that Schiff's broker-dealer firm "advised its clients to bet that the dollar would weaken significantly and that foreign stocks would outpace their U.S. peers" and that instead, the dollar advanced against most currencies, "magnifying the losses from foreign stocks Mr. Schiff steered his investors into". Schiff responded to Shedlock's criticism, writing that "to examine the effectiveness of my investment strategy immediately following a major correction by looking only at those accounts who adopted the strategy at the previous peak is unfair and distortive". Schiff also reponded to criticism in the Wall Street Journal.

On August 10, 2010, economist Mike Norman posted on his blog a critique and parody of Schiff, entitled "Peter Schiff...fraud?"

Broadcasting

From 2005 to 2010 Schiff hosted a weekly podcast named Wall Street Unspun. In October 2010 Schiff began hosting a new radio show named The Peter Schiff Show on internet and terrestrial radio. The show has featured guests such as Ron Paul, Rand Paul, Niall Ferguson, Dennis Kucinich, Rick Santelli, and others. The Peter Schiff Show is occasionally guest-hosted by Stefan Molyneux and Thomas Woods.

After having appeared numerous times on CNBC and Fox News, Schiff's television bookings dropped by 75-85% in the first half of 2009, according to his brother and Public Relations director, Andrew Schiff.

In August 2012, Peter Schiff replaced G. Gordon Liddy in the 10 AM to Noon time slot on the Radio America network internet broadcast.

Books

Peter Schiff is the author of six books published by John Wiley & Sons. His book, Crash Proof 2.0, appeared on both the New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller lists.

  • Crash Proof: How to Profit From the Coming Economic Collapse, February 2007, ISBN 978-0-470-04360-8 1
  • The Little Book of Bull Moves in Bear Markets: How to Keep your Portfolio Up When the Market is Down, 2008, ISBN 978-0-470-38378-0 2
  • Crash Proof 2.0: How to Profit From the Economic Collapse, 2nd Edition, September 2009, ISBN 978-0-470-47453-2 3
  • The Little Book of Bull Moves, Updated and Expanded: How to Keep Your Portfolio Up When the Market Is Up, Down, Or Sideways, 2010, ISBN 0-470-64399-4 4
  • How an Economy Grows and Why it Crashes, 2010, ISBN 978-0-470-52670-5 5
  • The Real Crash: America's Coming Bankruptcy—How to Save Yourself and Your Country, 2012, ISBN 978-1-250-00447-5

References

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External links

Austrian school economics
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See also

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