Gold bug Peter Schiff on the coming financial crisis

I've been listening to Peter Schiff's ideas for maybe 20 years now, and I believe most of what he's predicting in this speech will come to pass.  Since few, if any, of the 1,500 people who looked at this blog last week will listen to this, I'll paraphrase him.  In short, we're in for another recession soon, the dollar will lose a ton of its value, which means the price of gold will rise.  For the average person, this coming financial crisis will be worse than the Great Recession of 2008.  I'm with him, by and large, on that part. 

He says that because the Republicans and President Trump have claimed credit for the rise in the stock market over the last year, that they, and capitalism itself, will get blamed for the coming crisis.  That will lead to a "Socialist-type" president in 2020, someone like Bernie Sanders.  I think that Trump will be impeached, and will be forced out of office.  Now that we've seen him in action publicly for a couple of years, I honestly wouldn't be surprised if Donald Trump committed suicide when the shit really hits the fan, but I hope I'm wrong there.  All narcissism aside, I think Pence will inherit the financial mess, and won't do much of anything.  He's just not a strong leader. 

We will get a 2020 president from farther Left, Elizabeth Warren is a possibility, or someone much like her.  There will be a push for more social spending to help the TENS OF MILLIONS of Americans struggling to simply survive.  It will be an incredibly tough time for a huge number of people, no doubt about it. 

Here's where I think Peter Schiff is wrong.  First Capitalism IS to blame for this coming crisis  to a large degree.  That doesn't mean capitalism is evil, like many on the Left believe.  I'm a capitalist, I'm working on starting my own little business.  But Capitalism sets the stage for unbridled greed, and the "capitalists" completely rig the game in their favor and suck wealth away from the average working people.  This starts small, and increases over many decades.  It's just plain ridiculous now.  What's really funny is that the "true capitalists," the ones who actually work hard to build well-run businesses, aren't the ones who rig the game.  It's the half-assed, incompetent business people, those who are in business due to cronyism and not talent, that work with politicians to rig the game.  They do this because they simply aren't smart and hardworking enough to stay in the game if it isn't totally rigged in their favor.  These people are going to get ANNIHILATED in this next recession.

But by rigging the entire financial system to support lazy, incompetent, groups of cronies, they literally set the whole system up for collapse.  And that's where we are now.  The average people have been so screwed over for so long, that they're rising up.  Different groups of average people are feeding off each other's energy, and growing in numbers, power, and social steam.  The populist movement, on the Left and the Right, is still growing and still gaining steam, and will erupt big time in this next recession.  But there won't be a Republican rebound in 2024.  IF the United States is still alive then as a country (which I hope it is), there will be a massive restructuring of how things work across the board. 

All of this is part of trends and themes that are much, MUCH longer in time frame than even Peter Schiff thinks about. 

So is there an upside?  You bet.  The greatest change and innovation happen during deep recessions and depressions.  There will be a collapse of much of the surviving, Industrial Age economy, but there will also be a huge rise of new businesses, new ideas, and new industries.

So there you go.  That's what I (a currently homeless artist/writer) have to say in response to one of our country's best known, gold-standard believing, financial thinkers.  Time will tell who's closer to the mark.