http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2I0QN-FYkpw

Kind of long (about 10 minutes) but a compilation of TV segments with Peter Schiff forecasting what has come to pass and other people (including Ben Stein just making an ass of himself) laughing at him.

Hot shit. That is one of the best videos I've watched. I don't mean to sound as though I knew it was gonna happen either, but it is hilarious watching these dudes just laugh at him like he's a fucking alien. This needs to be submitted to failblog.org. haha

Wow...

...but you did see the clip where Schiff says the economy will be "doomed" under Obama, right?

Watching that now.

Who could have predicted an economy based on pie in the sky house valuations and limitless amounts of credit/bad debt would have collapsed utterly and completely.

Of course not being an expert and knowing only common sense and nothing of fancy intellectual theories with graphs and so forth means I must be completely and utterly wrong about this and bow before the modern day alchemists who have served us so well, up to and including the present difficulties which are, I'm sure, merely a blip because someone forgot to carry a 4 or something.

Have no fears, they know what they are doing. Everything is going to be OK in the hands of these gods among men.

Incidentally Merrill Lynch is trading at $11 today down from $76 at the time of the interview.

Nice pick, Ben.

If only I'd listened to the experts!

Yeah, at least this makes me feel better about always hating Ben Stein.

Makes me wish I'd gone to listen to him when he was here a couple months ago. I wonder what he had to say about the economy then.

check out npr's planet money podcast. they has schiff on a couple weeks ago. pretty amazing how he was laughed off the stage.



that makes me think of this

also, isn't it a little sad/telling that many of the "modern day alchemists" who created all those financial instruments that spun money out of nothing and that got us in the situation we're in were PhDs who were were working in finance instead of the sciences?

tom adkins looks like he hasn't made any money since miami vice went off the air.

This really is unbelievable. It's like he's some sort of soothsayer.

no one ever noticed him before?

we all just made fun of him

FWIW from Wikipedia:

Schiff has said on numerous occasions that the current economic crisis is not the problem; it is the solution. According to him, the transition from borrowing and spending to saving and producing cannot be accomplished without a severe recession, given the current imbalances of the US economy. But according to him, that transition needs to happen. He also thinks the government is doing no one a favor by trying to "ease the pain" with stimulus packages, bailouts and such. Schiff believes these actions will only make the situation worse and possibly result in hyperinflation if the government continues to "replace legitimate savings with a printing press."[9]
Schiff is a firm believer in reducing government regulation of the economy. Schiff worries that Barack Obama will increase such regulation

maybe more cassandra. he wasn't saying any conservative investor wasn't thinking. he just went out there and unabashedly said it--and was therefore roundly ridiculed for it.

I tend to agree with the theory that in the long run the best course of action might be to let the recession play itself out so it can soak most of the bad actors and habits out of the system. The economy is such a large, dynamic system that any government remedy is going to be a couple steps behind what's actually plaguing it at that very moment, and can in many ways make things worse.

The one thing that can help is the one thing everyone is afraid to do: SPEND!!

buy me albums Loog!

If you mean a great works project, then I agree with you.

Agreed. For the last decade or so people been spending what they didn't have and couldn't cover, which let banks engage in practices that a Vegas craps junkie would raise an eyebrow at.
What you need is production. A large-scale works movement puts people to work and stimulates area economies and positions the country's infrastructure for the future.
Me buying another iPod made in China ain't going to make a lick of difference. What will is getting people working and getting wages moving upward naturally (instead of through minimum wage increases) which will let them spend again.

just spend on local services like maids, lawn maintenance, and prosties

its just comical, i dont know how these people can continue punditizing. i know that schiff latched onto this naysayer routine and he seems to have hit the nail squarely on the head, but the douchebags who were talking up Meriill, Bear, WaMu, etc. just kill me. They all still have websites, radio shows, blogs, network appearances.

amazing

As a rule for most things in life, I listen closest to the sanest sounding person who disagrees with the pack mentality, conventional wisdom and groupthink.

Thanks for posting this... We need some tough love and major pain and I'm encouraged that O might deal with it. The banking/lending industry is one thing, car makers, states (you cali) and others going to the trough is another thing.