Rewind: 2006 FOX News clip regarding the housing market.

I became a true believer in this clip when he cited lending standards at the end. The economy back then was stronger than it had any right to be, and people were taking out loans they could never hope to pay back once the market predictably corrected itself, and few lenders were doing their due diligence to prevent those loans from going to unqualified borrowers. The other commentators in the clip are enablers of bubbles.
 
It's the old "Peter Schiff was right!" video movement all over. Clearly he is the smartest guy in the room there, even if he did go on to later support Ron Paul's crazy ass and badly lose a senate primary election to Vince McMahon's wife......
 
In my opinion, the interesting part of this isn't what Schiff's saying... it's the reaction of everyone else on the show.
 
[quote name='Duo_Maxwell']It's the old "Peter Schiff was right!" video movement all over. Clearly he is the smartest guy in the room there, even if he did go on to later support Ron Paul's crazy ass and badly lose a senate primary election to Vince McMahon's wife......[/QUOTE]
Schiff's other activities, of which I have no knowledge, have zero to do with the incredibly prescient arguments he made in the clip. No one can deny that a bubble formed and then burst, and that lending standards were lax. While everybody was feeding the bubble, few were warning people to cool the hell down. People who did warn us should be given their due.

The temptation of the bubble is very strong indeed, and it takes a strong-willed person to resist. I don't care if he fucked his own mother with a pool cue, what was said in the clip was right on.
 
[quote name='Spokker']Schiff's other activities, of which I have no knowledge, have zero to do with the incredibly prescient arguments he made in the clip. No one can deny that a bubble formed and then burst, and that lending standards were lax. While everybody was feeding the bubble, few were warning people to cool the hell down. People who did warn us should be given their due.

The temptation of the bubble is very strong indeed, and it takes a strong-willed person to resist. I don't care if he fucked his own mother with a pool cue, what was said in the clip was right on.[/QUOTE]

If you look up some info on Peter Schiff you may see the point I was making. Schiff is a bearish economist throughout nearlly all of the 2000s. Bearish meaning all their economic talk is basically doom and gloom about this or that hitting rock bottom. Eventually yes you'll be right that one of say 10 predictions on economic doom is right on. Though all that did earn him the nickname Dr. Doom, possibly the coolest economist nickname ever. Still, many people saw Schiff on TV shows/radio talking about the housing bust, focused on him being right and really started to bank on what he said. Clips were all over Youtube and the like touting the phrase "Peter Schiff was right".

Schiff seeing that tried to soak up all the credit as you so suggest he was due, many felt to a fault. He backed a hopeless effort in Ron Paul & even tried to push that credit into a senate seat for himself. Problem was Schiff was while right about housing, he was not so right about a lot of other bearish economic predictions/advice. It cost his investors a lot of money over the last couple years of the decade and once the public (and the Republicans) saw he wasn't the brilliant, super savvy economist he made himself up to be... well let's just say he lost that primary election by a fairly large margin.

I'm not saying he was wrong about housing or anything else in the above clip. In fact I too found it funny, yet sad, that the only guy to agree with him on any part of it is the last guy at the end who barely got a word in. But, I'm just giving the generic run down on what went wrong with the "Peter Schiff was right" movement. The fact is people put too much weight behind what are essentially pundits like this. To be honest Schiff wasn't the only bearish economist in the mid 2000s and trust me all of them came out of the woodwork to claim credit around 2008 and they certainly cashed in on that credit with book deals, appearances, and even election campaigns. So I'm of the opinion that he was in fact given his due already.
 
I don't particularly care about Peter Schiff, but a cursory glance at the controversy yields his defense that his long-term investors recouped their losses. Hell, my pathetic portfolio was down quite a bit when the shit hit the fan but I stayed cool as a cucumber. Everything is back in order now.

But hey, if he sucks then he sucks. I still enjoyed the clip.
 
[quote name='Duo_Maxwell']If you look up some info on Peter Schiff you may see the point I was making. Schiff is a bearish economist throughout nearlly all of the 2000s. [/QUOTE]

Yeah, a broken clock is right twice a day, and Peter Schiff is right once a decade.

Hardly something to applaud.
 
[quote name='Duo_Maxwell']If you look up some info on Peter Schiff you may see the point I was making. Schiff is a bearish economist throughout nearlly all of the 2000s.[/QUOTE]

Considering FED policy of crazy low interest rates, trillions spent overseas, massive increase of total government spending, and the housing bubble started right after the NASDAQ bubble, there was reason to be bearish during the decade.

There were also $20+ trillion in derivatives by the mid to late 90s. But yeah, you're right, broken clock.
 
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