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Peter Schiff on Gold's Future, Bitcoin Crashing, & Iran War [FULL INTERVIEW]
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My FULL interview with Peter Schiff!
This man is notably known for calling the 2008 housing crisis. But even more impressively, calling the top on Bitcoin and the bottom on gold six months ago on my stream.
SPEAKER_01And so when I tell them, hey, Bitcoin's gonna crash, they laugh that off, just like it laughed off the coming financial crisis.
SPEAKER_00Peter's opinions as a political commentator make him an especially important person to listen to as we try to figure out the long-term implications of the Iran war, AI, and the Trump administration. Yo, yo, yo, Mr. Schiff!
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Welcome back to the stream, man. How are you?
SPEAKER_01I'm okay. I'm okay. I forget your name.
SPEAKER_00It's uh, it's okay, Peter. It's Thread Guy. I just call you Thread Guy. You can call me Michael. We've been through this before. The who are you again? But we'll get it for part three, man. But welcome back.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that's that's I'm sure.
SPEAKER_00And I weren't for you, by the way.
SPEAKER_01Michael.
SPEAKER_00Well, look, welcome back to the stream, Mr. Chef. It's an absolute pleasure to have you here. And I want to start with a quick, a quick lay, okay? And I want to give you some props because you came on the show in like late October, and I have this friend Frank, and Frank built this little product that basically allows you to copy and paste any media, podcast, tweet, or whatever that has some trade idea. You could backdate it and you can see how the trade played out. So, like if you listen to this interview from three months ago, how would the trade idea and the interview have played out? And I've had a lot of guests on the stream over the last year, probably hundreds of guests. And I have to admit that your interview in October and the trade it came up with was short Bitcoin, long gold, I think like October 20th, is in fact the single best performing trade that has happened on my stream. So, with a heavy heart, I do have to congratulate you on that achievement, Mr. Sher.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, well, in all fairness, I've probably made that call before. So it's probably not the only time I did it. So that that may be one of the times it worked.
SPEAKER_00They tell you about a broken clock uh twice a day. But you know, here's where I want to start.
SPEAKER_01The real broken clocks, though, are the Bitcoiners because they're always bullish on Bitcoin. So you can't you can't you can't accuse me of being a broken clock when I criticize Bitcoin, because all you got is broken clocks on both sides, right?
SPEAKER_00It's you know Yeah, it's only been the best performing asset of the decade, but you know, a broken clock a couple a couple times a month.
SPEAKER_01But uh yeah, it again it has been, but most people haven't owned it for an entire decade. So for the majority of people who owned it, I think the performance has been pretty bad. Uh, because over the last five years, the performance has been you know low. I think it's about 12% over the last five years. I mean, if if you go back 5.10 years or five point, but then you get to that trough where Bitcoin was below 10,000. So from there it was a big move. But from when it hit 69,000 in 2021, it's it's it's been a horrible. In fact, it's still below 69,000 now. That was, you know, four and a half years ago.
SPEAKER_00I think it's like 69.3, but look, uh, to your benefit here, I'm gonna give your cortisol a break. And I actually didn't recommend.
SPEAKER_01Oh, yeah, you know, you're right. It did move, you know, it it was it was below 69,000 earlier today. Yeah, yep. And then I think the markets are anticipating Taco Tuesday. Taco Tuesday, yes, they are to rally it. So Bitcoin is back above 69,000, but it's still below Michael Saylor's average cost, which is closer to 76,000.
SPEAKER_00Yes, which I know you are a big fan of. But look, luckily for you, I actually in my notes didn't write down the word Bitcoin one time because there's a bunch of other stuff to talk about. And you know, here's where I want to start is it's been, I think, six months since you've come on the show, give or take. And near the end of the interview, I asked you for advice on you know what to do. And your advice was go to your local grocery store and hoard toothpaste because supplies are going to be very scarce really soon. And one way or another, things have escalated, geopolitical tensions, things have gotten into a weird spot. And so I kind of want to give you a chance to set the stage on you were here six months ago. How do you envision where the world is going over the next six months?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, well, obviously, when I was on before, we weren't at war. Yes, and so that actually uh even increases the the uh the the reasons why you would want to start hoarding stuff. I mean, before I was mainly looking at prices and thinking, look, you know, if you got extra cash, just buy the stuff that you're gonna need in the future and buy it now because it's you know gonna be more expensive in the future. So you might as well buy it. In fact, I was I was upset, you know, I was on my boat all week for vacation, and I didn't realize that the captain, you know, had we hadn't filled up the tanks with diesel. We had about each tank was about a quarter full. And I was like, crap, I wish, you know, I just I didn't realize that we were so low. Because I would have I would have told them to fill the fill it up because I knew, you know, as soon as the war started, I would have like crap, we better, we better buy a bunch of a bunch of diesel. And so now I'm like, what do I do? I mean, I maybe it'll pull back a little bit before I pull the trigger. I get I get very good mileage on my boat because it's solar powered, but I run the generators on diesel. So I can I that diesel could last me a year or two, but I would have liked to have filled it up before how. How big is your boat? But but I may have to, I may have to fill up the tanks now because it's possible that they can be rationing the stuff. Who knows what might happen in the future if this war continues and the disruption is bigger. But yeah, you know, I think people need to be stocking up if you've got the room, obviously. And I think that is the advice I give a lot of people who don't even have money to invest. Someone says, Well, what should I do? You know, I don't have money to invest. Well, you know, you have money to stock up on non-perishable items that you're going to need, and you might as well buy them now as opposed to keeping your cash in the bank and buying them later when the prices are higher, and they may not be around. I mean, they could be in short supply, there could be rationing, there could be price controls. I mean, who the hell knows where this thing is headed? So, you know, it's better to have the things. Do you have a bunker? Do you have a bunker? No, I guess my boat might be my bunker. I can I can I can hang out there. How big is your boat? Well, it's it's you know, it's not that big. I mean, it's a it's a catamaran. Okay. Uh, so it's 60 feet long and it's about 35 feet uh beam. So it's it's wide for its for its size. So it feels pretty roomy. Yeah. But uh, I got the smallest one because I feel it's a little bit more nimble. And that's why if I had to, if I had to use, if I had to take control of myself, it's easier for me to handle it. I mean, I got the crew, but if I didn't have the crew, it's easier to to do a 60-foot boat than than a bigger one.
SPEAKER_00I mean, that's a fucking sizeful boat, but okay. You know, here's where I want to start with you, Mr. Chef is, you know, most of my time on this stream, we've talked about crypto, talked about a little bit of equities, a little bit of stocks. But over the last two months, I mean, we've been forced to really pivot everything that we're doing and talk about the Middle East, talk about the Iran conflict, talk about oil. I got the barrel in the background, and talk about this, you know, USA-Iran conflict. And the most jarring thing to me so far has been how difficult it is to navigate truthful and honest information, right? And you sort of have both sides. You have news outlets that are owned by select parties, you have uh leaders on both sides that have incentives to lie and fabricate information, manipulate markets, how prices, everything in between. And it's pretty uh, yeah, it's jarring how difficult it is to decipher what is real and actually happening versus what is not. Like, how do you now like, yeah, how do you do this?
SPEAKER_01Well, I mean, pretty much most of the information coming from government, I think, is is inaccurate or outright lies. Certainly most of what Donald Trump says is a lie. You know, first he used to lie mainly about the economy, but now he seems to be lying about about the war. But yeah, I mean, I I I I I I kind of just tune it out. I mean, I listen to it just so I can comment on it, but I don't put any stock in it. Yeah, I I I look at what's actually happening, not what people are saying is happening. And so what what are you paying the most attention to, especially right now? Well, I look at the markets, obviously. So I look at the price of gold, I look at the bond market, I look at the US dollar uh as kind of indicators of our investors figuring this out. To what extent are they recognizing these problems? And I do look at the economic data, knowing that a lot of it is you know unreliable and manipulated. Cool. And like but but some of it, you know, like you look at the popularity uh polls, so you look at Trump's record low popularity as a good indication that the economy is is is not doing well. Because the public, when they're asked, you know, to rate the presidents as to whether or not they approve or disapprove of the way they're handling the economy, it's generally a referendum on their personal circumstances, because that's really all they they know. If you just ask Joe Six Pack how's the economy doing, all he knows is how he's doing. He doesn't know how the whole country is doing. And and so if he's doing better than he was, then he's gonna give the president higher marks and he's gonna say, Yes, I approve. If his circumstances are worse, he's gonna say I don't approve. And the fact that you have record low approval mating uh is is a pretty good sign that things are getting worse. They're they're not getting better.
SPEAKER_00So I know you've been I mean you've been very vocally critical of Trump pretty recently here, and then at the same time, I think maybe to everyone, maybe not to everyone, but definitely to my surprise, this situation in the Middle East has spiraled out of control a little bit here. But it seems like all things considered, Trump has been able to maintain significant control over the stock market, right? Like even on a day like today, one of his crazy posts of all time tweeted, you know, truth social posting that was gonna send you know Iran back to the Stone Age. I mean, we we closed green on the day on SPX. Like, how how has he been able to maintain control over the stock market and not let this wind out of control spiral out of control?
SPEAKER_01Well, I don't know how how much he's controlling it, but I think the stock market at this point, um, you know, Trump is kind of like the boy who cried wolf. The the posts over the weekend are just so extreme and over the top, especially the most recent one where the deadline was uh 8 p.m. tonight. Tonight. And that was gonna be the death of Iranian civilization never to return. I mean, what the hell does that mean? You're destroying their entire civilization? I mean, it goes back thousands of years, but what does that even mean? I mean, are you talking about killing off the people? I mean, they're part of the civilization. I I don't know. I mean, before that, he was just gonna bomb them back to the Stone Ages. But I guess the Stone Ages was still some kind of civilization, as opposed to killing the entire civilization. But I think the markets are kind of like, this is just Trump. They don't they don't believe it. And I think, you know, if the if investors don't believe it, why would the Iranians believe it? But you know, the thing is, I saw videos, the Iranians, they have thousands of people on the bridges. Trump said, I'm gonna bomb the bridges. And so instead of going away from the bridges, there are thousands of people, women and children on the bridges. They're like chanting. So, how are we supposed to bomb those bridges? Could you imagine if you're a pilot and a bomber and you're supposed to drop a bomb on a bridge full of women and children? Who the hell's gonna drop that bomb? I mean, so the whole thing is ridiculous at this point. So I think the markets are rallying or you know, rallied into the close and they didn't sell off that much because everybody's trying to anticipate the, you know, the the the extension. Okay, I you got two weeks more before I destroy you completely. But I, you know, I don't even like that. I don't know why Trump is even negotiating on Truth Social. Why can't he just communicate privately with the Iranian leadership? Why does this all have to be out in the open? That doesn't even make any sense unless, you know, it's all a bunch of bullshit. And so, um, but you know, the markets I think are now realizing that this isn't gonna happen. Because I I think if investors thought there was even a realistic probability that we were going to carpet bomb Iran tonight and wipe out their civilization, uh, I think the stock market would have been down a lot more than 400 points, you know, which was like the low, which is nothing for the Dow to be down 400 points. And, you know, I think oil prices would have, you know, moved considerably higher. Because, you know, we we would really be upping the stakes in this war if if if we did that. And remember, Trump, Trump claims that part of the reason he's doing this is to liberate the Iranian people from their oppressive regime. Well, if you're doing it for the people, how do you threaten to destroy their civilization and bomb them back to the Stone Age? How does that help the people? So it is that kind of rhetoric, not only is it inflammatory, but it doesn't even fit what he claims the objective is.
SPEAKER_00You know, I don't know if this is part of this like larger just trend of unveiling the curtain and everything in public. And it didn't used to be this way, but something that's been pretty jarring about following this war is how there's just been this feels like a blatant manipulation of good news right before market close, bad news right after close, right? Even starting strikes happen on February 28th, right after Friday close, escalate right before futures open, good headline, market closes, bad headline. Like it feels like there's pretty this pretty blatant manipulation.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I mean, that's also a possibility that Donald Trump puts out those posts, knowing that he is going to back away and giving people that have the information for sure. Because a lot of us, look, we can guess. We've seen this movie before, right? We know how it ends, but there's no guarantee. But if you are a real insider and Donald Trump has told you, I am going to put out this post to scare the shit out of everybody, but don't worry, I am going to call it off. It's a it's a lock, right? I'm gonna do it for sure. And once you know that, well, now you can really go into the markets and size with a lot of confidence and you can buy SP futures. First, first of all, you could get short before the post, and then you can reverse long. You can, you know, you you you can you can really get loaded up to make a killing if you know for a fact what is going to happen. And you know that one thing you know is the people in the Trump administration they are savvy when it comes to the market because most of these people have come from Wall Street and the markets, and and so they know how to trade and they know what how markets work. So I think you have a lot of people who are certainly in a position to profit from this type of insider information. And if the only one who can prosecute it is Trump himself, because he's in charge of the the SEC, then you pretty much know that you're you know you're in the clear.
SPEAKER_00It's been pretty, you know, like has it always been the case that like I wasn't paying that much attention during Trump won, right? Maybe until 2019, 2020. I think is when I really started paying attention to markets. Like, has it always been the case that markets are a direct proxy for success of government? Like, you know, I I would imagine you everyone saw that Pam Bondy clip, right? Where she's at the Epstein hearing and she's you know, why are you asking me questions about Jeffrey Epstein? The Dow's over 50,000. She's now out as attorney general. There also was this leak of Pete Hegseth trying to slam this leverage defense ETF, you know, it early February, right before we struck Iran. I don't think he got his bids through, but it feels like so blatant that market price is the only metric for success in government. Like, what are the implications of that?
SPEAKER_01Well, you know, I can't recall at any point in time where a president, any president, including Trump, you know, 45, uh, any president that had so much of an impact on financial markets on a day-to-day basis. I, you know, there was always an impact on major news announcements that came out of government. So the government comes out with the jobs numbers. And and that and the markets would move on that. But I can't recall markets moving the way they move based on the president saying anything. So, I mean, other than yeah, we it's launch starting a war, but you know, Trump just influences the markets. People now look at Truth Social. Probably traders have Truth Social, you know, up on their screens. You have to following Trump. In fact, the only reason people go to Truth Social is to see what Trump says. Because if you're not on Truth Social, by the time you know about it, it's too late to trade. So the traders are probably stuck. There may be some algorithms that are particularly you know coded in to immediately input trades based on what Trump posts. But I don't like the fact that the president has so much sway over the markets on a day-to-day basis, which opens up to the opportunity to trade on that information because you're not even trading on insider information about the company. It's not like I got advanced information on a buyout or I know what the earnings are. This doesn't move necessarily individual stocks, it moves the entire market. So you're just making directional bets. Stocks up, stocks down, Bitcoin up, Bitcoin down, oil up, oil down, right? You can just make these bets because you know exactly how the markets are going to react to whatever the president says because you've you know you've seen how they've reacted before. Uh, so there's a lot of opportunities to trade on this stuff. And I I think that you know that that that's a problem.
SPEAKER_00Do you think there's time decay there? Like as market moving events happen off Trump tweets, his ability to move either direction decays. Like we had the Liberation Day, Taco V recovery. But then as like he influences, influences, influences, influences, do you lose your ability to like in crypto? They call it the shill decay, right? It's like you shill one coin, you can pump it a ton, second coin a little bit less, third coin a little bit less, and as time goes on, you're a complete nobody. Have to make a new account.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, well, because people get wise to the con. They're not gonna keep falling for it if you keep you know rugging them every time you come up with with a new with a new token. And and yeah, I mean, the president is going to lose eventually. People will stop reacting to his posts if you know they're always gonna be neutralized later on, then the market should move less and less, and therefore the profit opportunity. I mean, I would like to see uh the markets move on a po on a on a on a post, and then when he walks it back, to have them go the other direction. Yeah. To to get some of these insiders to lose. Because now they're so you know, there's not the reaction that they expect. And and then the market moves against them, and they end up with these sizable positions, uh, and they get they get clobbered because the markets may eventually react in a way that the people who have the inside information on the post do not expect.
SPEAKER_00I actually do have a crypto question for you, which is I don't know if you're familiar with hyperliquid, 24-7 perps on basically everything at this point, but over the last couple months, first with this gold but silver mania, having access to trading that over the weekend caught these like crazy gains that otherwise you wouldn't have been able to catch. And then secondly, with oil, right? Trump, uh, you know, US and Israel strikes February 28th at like Friday night, markets closed by Monday open or futures open. There's like this crazy$20 gap in crude that if you were trading hyperliquid perps on oil, you could have realized those gains. Have you followed this at all? 24-7 perps. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01But early that week, crude had come back down and it really wasn't up that much. And you had all of these Trump shills in the financial media saying, you see, this is because of drill baby drill. We're no longer dependent on the rest of the world. You see, it doesn't matter. And here we are,$1, you know,$15. Yeah. So, you know, we've doubled. Uh, and I was saying at the time, I said, just give it some time. That's why I wish I'd realized that my my tanks were low. I would have would have run in, filled them all up. So, but um, but I am gonna get killed. I have to fly to uh North Carolina tomorrow. I'm speaking at a at a at a at a conference there. That conference, it's an event, uh, a goal company. Is that a private flight? It is a private, yeah. It's I I'm playing, yeah. And I'm gonna end up spending a lot more on the flight than I thought when I agreed to go there because the fuel costs are so much higher. Are you exclusively private? Um, not exclusively, but mostly. Mostly like eight what percent? I don't know. I mean, most I have well, I I commit to a certain amount of time every year. You know, I don't own the plane outright. I have hours that I fly. Uh so I I you know I mostly fly. But it depends. Like if I'm flying to Europe, I I I I don't I go I'll take a commercial flight to get across the Atlantic. But then if I fly there, I'll I'll I'll I'll usually fly private if I fly.
SPEAKER_00Okay, nice.
SPEAKER_01Um but but yeah, but but if I fly and and then here, you know, usually I do the private. I mean it's it's not a um a a wise financial decision. Okay, I was gonna ask you how much uh how much as you know, as a I know I'm normally a very prudent person, and so it's one of the extravagances that I just figured, all right, you know, I'll just spend it. And yeah, I mean, I'm going, so I'm going to this conference and I'm flying directly to the airport, uh, right near. So it's a three and a half hour flight, and I, you know, and I and I'm you know 10 minutes from the hotel when I land. But if I would have gone commercial, the only flight there was that was anywhere close was a 6 a.m. flight on jet blue. 6 a.m. leaving. Jet Blue's cool. And yeah, so but so you can't, you know, it's coach, it's jet blue, 6 a.m. And then I would have to drive for an hour and a half to get there after I landed. And if I didn't want to do that, every other flight had a connection, and it was, you know, eight hours to get there. And then still I had the hour and a half drive. I couldn't get to the little airport that I'm flying into. So it is a hell of a lot more convenient. In fact, if I had a fly commercial, I probably wouldn't have gone. That's how much I like that's how much I don't like it. It's such a hassle going to the airport, going through security, the lines. I you know, wait, let me ask you this.
SPEAKER_00Let me ask you this how much money do you need to comfortably fly private?
SPEAKER_01I don't know. It just it depends. There are a lot of people that are way more extravagant with their money than I am. So I I think you could have a lot less and still afford to do it. But like if you were being an idiot. I mean, you know, you're talking about spending, you know, half a million dollars at least a year on private jet travel. And so if I was doing all those flights, you know, commercially, maybe it would be, I don't know, 50 to 100. I don't know, you know, it's a lot less, you know, especially. Well, I mean, if I'm traveling with a family and I got to buy four tickets, if you're gonna buy four business class, first class tickets, it starts to add up, you know. But this flight I'm taking by myself, but I'm taking the smallest plane possible so I can save a little money. Okay, because it's just me.
SPEAKER_00Okay. Um, all right, before I ask you about gold, I want to ask you one more like Trump admin question. I feel like I'm ragging on the Trump admin, but I I I okay. My friend wrote this article, my friend based 16Z, popular uh Twitter commentary, wrote this article called Loot and Rob. And the basic premise was that we've reached late-stage empire, late stage America, and the goal of all of the elite powerful in America is to take as much money as humanly possible and run. Right. Some examples of this are like respectfully, Donald Trump, first day in office, launches a meme coin, or like how many you know founders have taken uh not gone public, raised private rounds up to you know 1.5 trillion, what SpaceX is gonna do, IPO on the public and you know, token stock goes down only, or Donald Trump Jr., they buy this like drone company right before we go to war in you know Iran. It feels like there's this trend of people in power, sort of taking as much as possible and then picking the ladder up behind them. Like, is this something that you felt when you was this happening when you were young, like back in the day? Have you seen this before? Like, how do you feel about this?
SPEAKER_01No, I mean, I the I this is the unprecedented graft in this administration, the amount of money that they're making off of the presidency. Now, you could say, well, Trump's just a savier businessman than his predecessors, and he's you know, exploiting uh the office and using it to his advantage, but he didn't do that in his first term. Nothing like I mean, nothing like this. And so I don't like it at all. I mean, I don't like any of this. I mean, the money that he made off of crypto, off of Trump coin and Melania coin and his crypto business that his sons are involved in, uh, crypto mining, uh, all these deals, and and then going around uh the Middle East and cutting deals that benefit his companies. You know, all of this is, you know, it it it it dwarfs anything that Hunter Biden did with his dad. And I was critical of the Bidens, and I and so were a lot of Republicans, and I supported their criticism of the Bidens, but those same Republicans are are not saying a word about what the Trumps are doing, which is way worse than what the Bidens were doing. So I don't like hypocrisy at all on this. And you know, certainly there's a lot of ways to influence the president, bribe the president now. I mean, not just by handing him, you know, bars of gold, but you could bribe him by buying his tokens, you know, making donations to his ballroom, which I've been against this ballroom from the beginning. I don't I don't like turning the White House into a palace. Um, you know, it's supposed to be more modest. It's a house, it's not the White Castle or the White Palace, it's the White House. The president is not royalty. I don't want big balls at the White House, you know. I I the whole idea of it. Uh, but Trump, you know, Trump wants to make it more of a palace, and that's not the whole idea of what America is supposed to be about. He's you know, he's there for a short period of time, uh, but he's not a king. Um, so I don't, you know, I I don't like any of this stuff. You you can look too at um the other ways that that Trump seems to be making money. Look at the the club that they set up. His kids set up this club in Washington, D.C. called like the Capitol Club. And it's the second most expensive members' club in the country after Mar-a-Lago, and it's$500,000 to join. And what does that get you? That means you can go in and have lunch with Trump's cabinet members who hang out there. So it's almost like, you know, that's what you have to pay. Are you a member? No, I'm not a member, but I'm sure that a lot of people, like, you know, you want to get to the president, you want a favor from the president, you buy into his into the club. You hand over the 500 grand and they schedule a meeting at the Capitol Club or whatever, you know, whatever it is, you know, the executive, executive club, executive branch. I forget the name of it. But I mean, the whole family is making a fortune off of Trump being president and and the influence that he has, the power that he has by virtue of the fact that he holds this office, you know, and none of this should be allowed. But it's all it's all a horrible precedent for the future. Because if Trump gets away with it, then well, then everybody's gonna get away with it.
SPEAKER_00Okay, so on another note, since you last came on the stream, gold is up like, I don't know, a hundred plus percent, something insane.
SPEAKER_01Well, a hundred bucks wouldn't be insane. It's probably up a lot, a couple of probably up a thousand.
SPEAKER_00Percent, percent, percent.
SPEAKER_01Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah, percent. Um, what where did this bid come from? Like, who was the marginal bidder on gold on this? I mean, crazy.
SPEAKER_01Well, I know I think I think the main buyers for the run from 2,000 to 5,500 was coming from central banks. I think the last move from maybe 5,000 to 5,500, I think we finally got you know private investors, speculators kind of getting in, jumping on the bandwagon, and then you know, we had a pullback. But uh the the majority of the demand came from central banks. And and I think that that's going to continue. And in fact, I think what's going on right now with Iran is just going to uh fuel that that that trend. And that the United States has created even greater incentives to diversify out of the dollar and to move more of your reserves into gold. So I think that trend is going to continue. It's going to accelerate. And I think that more private investors are going to be moving into gold in the years ahead. I think they're starting to recognize now the importance of gold. And looking at the 25-year track record now since 2000, 1999, and how the US stock market is down by better than 75% measured in gold. So, you know, gold's preserving value a lot better than stocks. And I also think a lot of the money that kind of sidetracked into Bitcoin, uh uh, you know, 2021, 2022, up through, you know, 2025, I think a lot of that money uh is going to start moving into gold. I mean, the investors, maybe not the money coming out of Bitcoin, because a lot of the money can't get out of Bitcoin. Bitcoin will just implode. But the investors that were allocating money into Bitcoin instead of gold, going forward to the extent that they're going to allocate more money to an inflation hedge, an alternative asset, they'll favor gold. They'll be putting new money into gold instead of putting it into Bitcoin.
SPEAKER_00Um, someone in the chat has a question, which is like along the lines of do you think these hedge funds and trading firms are manipulating gold, like what JP Morgan was doing 2008, 2009?
SPEAKER_01Well, I mean, I don't know. I mean, if if if usually the people who say that they're manipulating gold, the manipulation is designed to suppress the price. Well, clearly it's not working. I mean, the price of gold has gone way up. Now, you could say, well, maybe it would have gone up even more had they not been able to manipulate it. So I don't know. But I think the gold is going to go up regardless of attempts to manipulate it. And from my perspective, you know, that helps out. I mean, I'm trying to get more people to buy gold. And if manipulation keeps the price lower, that that's good for the people who are buying it because they get to buy it cheaper than than a higher price. So it works out. I mean, if you're trying to buy gold, then you know they're they're doing you a favor if they're suppressing the price. I guess if you're a gold mining company, you you know, your profits could be greater. And I own a lot of gold mining companies.
SPEAKER_00Why do you own so much gold mining companies instead of just gold? Yeah, but the Bitcoin miners haven't really been that good of a trade, uh, especially recently.
SPEAKER_01Well, I mean, Bitcoin mining isn't a real business.
SPEAKER_00Well, but same, you know, same comp, though. You know what I mean?
SPEAKER_01Well, I mean, it's not really the same because gold mining companies have reserves of gold, right? So you can look at a gold mining company and how many ounces they own in the ground. Bitcoin mining companies don't own any reserves of Bitcoin. All they can do is go out and solve the math problems to create them, but they don't have any proprietary, you know, batch of Bitcoin that that they own. All they do is they go out there and and and solve problems like everybody else. And you know, I mean, Bitcoin can just collapse at any moment and there there goes their business. Um, so I I you know I I I I wouldn't be interested in buying mining Bitcoin miners. In fact, if I was gonna be in Bitcoin at all, I would just assume buy the Bitcoin and then the mining companies. I think if you if you go back and you look at it Yeah, that's what I'm asking.
SPEAKER_00Why do you buy the mining companies for gold?
SPEAKER_01Well, because I do think that over time the leverage is going to be substantial in these mining companies. But if you look at the history of Bitcoin and the miners, you're much better off just owning Bitcoin. I mean, since Bitcoin existed, you know, if you just bought Bitcoin only and didn't put any money into these mining companies, you're way better off. Uh, you know, whereas there are periods of time, I think, that mining stocks did a lot better than the metal. And I think the miners are undervalued. I mean, I again I don't know how to value the Bitcoin miners because I don't think they're worth anything. But I think there's I think there's a lot of value in the gold mining stocks, which is why I have so much of my own money invested in those. And it's why I encourage my clients to invest in them. Who are your clients? Is that like stream viewers, or what is that? Who are your clients? Well, I'm I'm sure some of the people that are watching this are my clients. Uh okay, I just didn't know if they're like paid clients or how that works. And hopefully some of the people who are watching this become clients. That's one of the reasons I go on these things. You know, so people can go to Europe Pacific Asset Management and they can contact my representatives. We manage portfolios for people. Uh, some of them are gold-focused, gold mining, and some of them are just more broad, uh, income-oriented portfolios, foreign stocks and bonds. I also manage a family of mutual funds that people can buy no load and any of the big discount brokers. You can get information on those mutual funds at my website at your pack.com. Uh, but we have a gold fund, we have an emerging market fund, a foreign value fund, a foreign dividend payers fund, and a foreign bond fund. Um, but yeah, my clients are are are retail by and large. They're, you know, individual investors. I I suppose more on the higher net worth side, but you know, not exclusively. Because again, my my mutual funds have a$2,500 minimum. So there are a lot of people that own my mutual funds that are, you know, middle class. They're not very wealthy, but they have somebody in my mutual funds. So they're they're clients of mine. And at Shift Gold, you know, we have a$5,000 minimum. Some people, you know, buying$5,000 worth of gold or silver, you don't have to be rich. In fact, now I've got a new platform, tgold.com. You can go to tgold.com. You can buy$100 worth of gold. We store it for you. We don't deliver it. But so anybody, you know, you can go on there and just you can, you know, you can put it, you can set it up to have an automatic investment from your bank account or something. You can buy$50,$100 a week uh if gold. So you can start, you know, stacking something real instead of stacking SATS, you know, where you're stacking nothing. You should stack gold or silver where you're stacking something.
SPEAKER_00Those flights don't pay for themselves, you know. Yo, what I wanted to ask you about, like, especially when the gold mania was happening, it slowed down a little bit here, but you know, you've been predicting 5k gold for like a very long time. What why did the you have been, and I I was I I respect the show. Why is it happening right now? Like, why did this not happen 15 years ago, 10 years ago, five years ago? Like, what is significant about right now where all of a sudden it feels like there's this shift to holy fuck, I need to own gold.
SPEAKER_01Well, first of all, you have to look at where gold started. So in 2001, gold was at 300, less than 300. So it had a big move from 300 to 2000. So it took some time for the market to digest that gain and and work off a lot of the selling from that. And so that the time helped build a real big base and clear out all the selling. And so that enabled the next big leg. But I think part of the reason it also didn't start sooner was you know, the dollar held up, held up a lot better than I expected as a result of QE1, QE2, QE3. I I thought the dollar would have been a lot weaker, and that would have caused the price of gold to move up sooner. But but it didn't happen that way. There was a lot of confidence, misplaced confidence in the dollar, in the Fed that I think delayed that move. And it happened a lot later than I would have thought. But, you know, my target is not 5,000 anymore. At this point, 5,000 is not that big a deal. Now I have to talk, you know, 10,000, 20,000, because we've printed so much money since my original 5,000 call that 5,000 now is not the same thing as 5,000 in 2008.
SPEAKER_00Speaking of printing QE, the Fed, uh, how do you think the Fed is going to react to the Iran war?
SPEAKER_01Well, it's not so much the war that they will react to, it will be the impact that the war has on the overall economy, on the employment uh situation, on prices. But overall, I expect the Fed to be cutting rates and going back to QE because of the underlying weakness in the economy that will in part be attributed to the war, but not in whole. But I expect the Fed to look through the increase in prices. So even though the official measures of inflation will be a lot higher than 2%. I mean, they can be 5%, 6%. I think the Fed will look through that anyway and and still ease policy, which will be a mistake, but they're gonna they're gonna make it. What is QE gonna look like this time? Well, just it always looks the same. They just do more of it. You know, they just buy they buy a bunch of bonds, create money.
SPEAKER_00How big do you predict it to be compared to the last time we had QE?
SPEAKER_01Well, COVID QE took the balance sheet up to about nine billion from like three billion, right? So it kind of tripled. And now it's what six and change. So they they've been they've managed to shrink it somewhat, but it it's already going back up again, so it stopped shrinking. The balance sheet is expanding. But I think this next one, I think I think they could easily take it up to 20 trillion balance sheet. I mean, so we'll see. Whoa. But that would be you know, if they triple it from here, if they triple six, seven trillion, you're at 20 trillion.
SPEAKER_00That's insane. That's a fucking big number.
SPEAKER_01You know, when I when I'm thinking about the well, look, the national the national debt is almost 40 trillion. It'll be 40 trillion in in in a month or two. In fact, it Trump just asked for a 50% increase in the military budget. Yeah, he did. From 1 trillion to 1.5 trillion. They're 500 billion right there. You know, extra money that we have to borrow.
SPEAKER_00So one of the things like I think about when I'm thinking about forward-looking markets here is that like when I think back to before February 28th, when we should we struck Iran, the like stocks were sort of in turmoil, right? Everyone was in panic mode over this AI, potentially deflation, AI, white-collar workers losing their jobs, NVIDIA was sort of flat. Like everything was was kind of flat, right? We've been like in this, I guess technically in a range for like over a year post Liberation Day. And then we've gotten, I don't know if it's distracted is the right word, but it's just the word that uh I'll use with what's happening in Iran. And so it feels like there's gonna be this moment, right? Like, say we get the taco supreme, Trump goes for a full-blown pollout ceasefire, whatever. Let's just like assume that happens. And there's gonna be a rally in the market, but at least in my head, there's gonna be this rally for like a couple weeks, and everyone's gonna think to themselves, okay, now what? And okay, now what doesn't solve the underlying problems that we like went into this thing with. And so, in your head, how long would this hypothetical rally last? And then, like, what comes next? Um, the which rally? Like, on we're done in Iran rally.
SPEAKER_01Well, I you know, I don't know. I mean, I I think that to the extent that we end the war, there will be some kind of relief rally in the markets that the war is over. But the markets really, stock market in particular, didn't go down that much because of the war. So I I don't I don't expect the recovery to be that big given how shallow the decline was. But I do think that however the war ends, if it ends, because it could just drag on, you know, indefinitely, even if we don't escalate it. But I think the situation in the Middle East is going to be worse, not better. So I don't think that we will have achieved uh any of our objectives. I I I I I don't think we're gonna change the regime. And in fact, Donald Trump now claims that it is a new regime, even though it's the same regime. I mean, yes, they're different people, but it's the same regime. Yeah. Right? And and and and so life in Iran is, you know, but what we have done is I think we've created a lot more animosity within Iran for America, probably for Israel too. So the Iranians hate us more than they they've hated us before, which is not not good. And I think that there may be some sympathy that we created for Iran that may not have existed before. And I think the U.S. looks worse, uh, especially if we go in and start this war and we end up really not achieving anything. Now, Trump will just claim it's the greatest victory in the history of war. Of course, and it's the most brilliant uh battle ever, you know, ever you know, directed by the most brilliant commander-in-chief to ever us live, you know. You know, I mean, he's better than you know any anybody else. But um I I think that I think that you know we're gonna create a bigger problem than what we try to solve. I think the oil price is going to be much higher after the war than it would have been had we never fought the war. I I think the idea that we're gonna see a crash in the oil price as a result of the war, that we're gonna have all this cheap oil once the war is over, I think that's just a fantasy. Now, maybe oil prices will be lower than they are today, but they're not going back to sub$60 a barrel. Maybe oil goes from 110 to 80 or 90, but but then again, it and it's not even gonna stay there. Because once the dollar really starts to fall, which hasn't happened, then oil prices are headed a lot higher.
SPEAKER_00You don't have a lot of cash right now, and I I've seen you tweeting a lot that you hate cash, especially right now, and that gold, but foreign stocks.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I don't have a lot of cash because I I I think inflation is. Going to destroy the value.
SPEAKER_00What percentage of cash are you in?
SPEAKER_01I mean, personally for clients. I mean, personally, personally. We don't keep keep much cash for clients, a few percent. No, I don't have much cash personally. I mean, I I mean I have cash in my checking accounts because I have ongoing bills that I need to pay. But for my investment accounts, I'm largely, you know, almost fully invested. I mean, I can keep, you know, a few percent in cash just in case stuff goes down and I want to buy more. But in general, as I have more money, I I invest it. I don't just let it sit in in US dollars. I you know, I do something with it. Fortunately, you know, I added a lot to my energy positions before the war started, well, well before. So those have done, those have worked out. But you know, I also added to my emerging market positions, which have gone against me, but I put more money there. You know, I I look at if I get an opportunity, if you know, stocks that I like go down and I have more money to invest, I deploy it at at better prices. You know, I don't I don't have to get the absolute bottom. I know that if I'm getting good values, I'll I'll keep putting money into investments that I like because I don't want to leave money in cash. But yeah, I have a lot of expenses. You know, I got my boat, right? I got my plane, and I'm like, I got you know people I have to pay, you know, salaries to, not in my business. I got people, you know, in my personal life, at the house, at the boat, you know, all this stuff that I gotta pay. And I got, you know, I got I got a wife, you know, I got kids. They're all spending my money. So I gotta keep it. You know, I gotta, I gotta have, I gotta have money uh to pay all these bills. Because I don't I don't have any debt. That's one thing. I don't have any, you know, credit card debt, I don't have any, you know, real leverage on my portfolio, I don't have leverage on my properties really. I have one mortgage. Uh I have four properties, and I only have one that has a mortgage. And the only reason I have that mortgage is it's at three and three-eighths. And I'm like, you know, I hate to pay it off. But the other properties, I never even used mortgages, even, you know. But but that one I had a mortgage and I had it at this low rate. I'm like, you know, I'm not gonna let the bank out of jail by by paying off that mortgage. They'd they'd have to they'd have to offer me some sweet incentive in order to get me to do that.
SPEAKER_00You know, one more like side note, gold question is do you think the thesis for gold as an asset changes in a world that's just economies dominated by AI? Five years, ten years from now, exponential AI growth? Does that change the value proper the thesis for gold?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I mean, that is a wild card that can, you know, have a significant impact on my thesis, depending on uh, you know, how productive AI can be and how quickly that productivity can be materialized. Because there is the potential that we can have a huge increase in supply uh that would counteract all the money printing. And so you know I and yeah, I mean, but I I don't know how to handicap that. I mean, I have a son who thinks the whole world is gonna be changing uh in a couple of years. Of course, he thought that a couple of years ago. But you know, there's there's a group of people who really, you know, look at AI as you know, as as as you know, this huge thing. And it may, it may be, but it may not uh play out as quickly as as some people think. But a lot of people probably don't even think about it at all. So you know, I I'm you know, I'm sure the truth is in in there somewhere.
SPEAKER_00So you think it could be a black swan to gold?
SPEAKER_01Well, you know, I think well, it would be a black swan to everything, and then not not just gold.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Um but I mean it would be and not a black but a a black swan in a in a negative sense. I mean, let's say AI makes such a massive difference in productivity that everything I want to buy and everything that I need is very abundant and and a lot less expensive. I don't need as much money to buy it. Nobody does, right? So uh so if it turns out that everything I need is gonna be practically free, then then fine. You know, that's that's okay with me. Fair. Uh, but but the reason I I save and I invest is because it probably won't be free. It's probably gonna cost money, and so I want to make sure I have it. Uh, but you know, if we have a society where no one needs money because everything is free, because everything was created instantly out of thin air by by AI, you know, yeah, you know, I'm not I'm not against that kind of progress.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, fair. You know, one of the last things I want to ask you is on this, you know, this little bubble we live in on on Twitter, especially on the finance side. There's a lot of young people that watch my stream, and there's this narrative that people love to push around this doomer narrative of the permanent underclass, and you have X finite single-digit number of years to make it, hit some arbitrary number, or you're gonna be stuck in the permanent underclass of you know, AI doom or hyperinflation or whatever myriad of reasons that the future will be more harder than the present. What do you think? Especially for the young people that watch the stream, like this permanent underclass narrative.
SPEAKER_01No, you know, the the the people that would benefit most from AI would be the masses, would be you know, the lower class, the middle class. Um, their lives would have the most significant change from me. I mean, if you're already rich uh and you can afford a lot of things, then the fact that AI makes stuff cheaper doesn't really change your life as much. But if if you don't if you're broke and all of a sudden you can afford all sorts of things that you had to do without because AI has made them so much cheaper, you know, you're better off. And you know, to the extent that you don't have to work, a lot of the jobs that AI could eliminate are very mundane uh jobs. You know, they may be, you know, physically demanding, boring type of jobs. And if people don't have to work those jobs anymore, that that that's a good thing for the people that don't have to have those jobs. But then you don't have a job. Well, again, they won't need look, if the government gets out of the way, if you need a job, you'll get a job. And if you don't need one, then you know, then you won't have to have one. Uh, but I don't want the government being there providing the jobs or providing uh you know benefits. I I want the free market to provide them, and they will. I mean, there's always going to be opportunity. Uh and it as AI makes me um you know more efficient, I have more leftover money to hire people if I need them. Now, you know, obviously, you know, if if I if I don't need to hire anybody, if I can if I just hire AI, I don't need anybody, well then, you know, then then uh the the people who I I aren't hiring, if to the extent you know they can get their own AI to do the stuff that they need done. And they, you know, they won't need jobs because I mean if everybody had their own little robot, why would you need a job? Just let your robot do all the work, right? You don't have to do anything. And if the robots are cheap enough and there's enough of them where everybody just can afford one and then the robot does everything, you know, or you know, or if you know you you know, you look at like uh on a Star Trek or something, they have replicators. You you want food, you just push a you tell the computer what you want and and it materializes. So if if we don't have to grow food, we don't need farmers. If I don't have to go to the grocery store and buy food, if food could just be conjured out of the atmosphere, you know, what people don't need money to afford it, or you just have whatever you want. Fair. So I don't know when I don't know when AI is gonna progress to that point, though.
SPEAKER_00Okay, the last thing I want to ask you before I let you go is Mr. Schiff, I've heard a rumor that there is a presidential run in your future.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, well, I just posted something on X because I was reading about how JD Vance, um, there was rumor that he doesn't want to run in 2028 because he'll just lose, which I agree he will, because the economy is gonna be really bad. And the voters are gonna blame the Republicans, they're gonna blame the incumbents, they're gonna blame uh, you know, Vance. He's part of the administration. So the idea is that Vance's chances will be better four years later when you know he's running as you know, to clean up the mess. And you know, it used to be that being the incumbent was the advantage, but when you just pass the baton from weak economy to weaker economy, and every election is about throwing the bums out, the advantage is not to be the incumbent. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because then you're not blamed. Because the the incumbent has to lie to the voters about how great everything is. And the voters know that's a lie. The challenger gets to be honest with the voters and and and feel their pain and say, I know how bad the economy is. The only lie he has to tell or she is that I'm gonna make it better. I'll fix it. Yeah, but but that's what people believe. But so that I said something, look, I said things could be so bad by 2032 that maybe maybe I'll have to run. Because I don't even know if the voters would buy a Vance, because look, I mean, you get we're gonna have to have a real game changer, you know. Uh, somebody different, maybe, maybe, maybe a Rand Paul, but I don't know. I mean, there's somebody that we don't even know about. I mean, I'd rather not have to do the job myself.
SPEAKER_00I'd rather you think you could win if you really, really went for it and you locked in and you said, Fuck it, America needs me. I'm gonna run. Do you think you could win?
SPEAKER_01Well, I don't think I would run if I didn't think I could win. I mean, I ran for the Senate once. I thought I had a shot, but you know, but I don't think I would be able to win unless things were really, really bad. And I was really, really rich because aren't you pretty like 5K? How much what how high does that have to go? No, no. Well, to fund the presidential campaign, that that's that's a lot of money. Um what price gold? Huh?
SPEAKER_00What price of gold would you need to fund the campaign?
SPEAKER_01Well, I assume that gold would be a lot, lot higher. You know, if things get as bad as I think and gold is as high as I think, then I may be able to fund the campaign. But the question is, would I be better off running myself or funding somebody else's campaign that might have an even better shot than me? I mean, I'm obviously very I mean, I I mean I can't lie. I have to, and I have a huge record of very politically controversial uh stances, but you know, I think that if things are bad enough, look, Malay won an election in Argentina. So my candidacy would be very similar to his. The things that I would be advocating, it'd be a very similar campaign. So he was able to win. The question is, would something like that play in in the U.S. given the you know the situation we have politically in this country, could a Malay win in in the U.S. I well, you know, I don't know. But you know, it was just a post that I was, you know, I I just threw it out there as you know, not not like a serious thing. I don't have a um exploratory committee set up.
SPEAKER_00I don't think you're that controversial politically, by the way. I don't think it's like insane.
SPEAKER_01Well, I am very controversial.
SPEAKER_00What's your most controversial political take?
SPEAKER_01Well, because I want to I want to like eliminate almost all of government. I mean, including the most popular programs, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Obamacare. You know, I don't, I don't, I, I, you know, I want to get rid of all these things. And, you know, I have ideas on how to phase them out, but I, you know, I want to shrink the government dramatically. I want to get rid of most government departments and agencies. Most of what the federal government does shouldn't be done by government at all. Or if it's done at all, it should be done on a state or local level. You know, so I I want to recreate the freedom that we had in the 19th century. But I want to overlay that with the 21st century technology and infrastructure. You know, I I you know, I want the rugged individual. I don't want the nanny state, the welfare state. Yeah, I don't I don't like anything about what America has become. What I like is what America once was. And and so I I would like to restore those principles, right? The principles that the framers risked their lives for when they declared American independence 250 years ago. You know, Trump is gonna be making a big deal now about the 250th anniversary of the United States. Well, the principles uh that we fought for, we've we've we've given them up.
SPEAKER_00What do you think was the moment that was there like a specific moment that America started going south in your eyes?
SPEAKER_01It wasn't any one moment. It was, you know, kind of a progression of ideas that really started in earnest with the populist movement in the the later part of the 19th century and you know, then continued into the early 20th century with the Federal Reserve, with the income tax, then with the New Deal, and and and all of the intrusions in in into the economy that we didn't have before. Um, you know, when when um when they first introduced welfare, you know, they called it relief. A lot of Americans were embarrassed to take it. They didn't want it. And and some of them paid it back. Like when they so that was that that was the mentality of Americans. But now we have a society where people feel entitled to stuff for free from government. So people don't feel bad about getting free stuff from government. They want even more. They feel they're getting ripped off if they're not getting enough from government. And I want to live in a country where people don't ask government for anything. I mean, the government is supposed to be there to protect our rights. That's it. To prevent people from stealing our stuff, not to steal our stuff, which is what most people want government to do today. They want government to steal stuff from other people and give it to them. And, you know, that's not the country that we're supposed to be.
SPEAKER_00Look, I'm not saying I would vote for you, but I think you could run a pretty compelling campaign. Peter, as a sign-off question, it's it's it's been a pleasure to run back part two. As a sign-off question, especially what I usually ask as a sign-off, especially for all the young people, young traders, aspiring traders that watch the stream, that that follow my content, that are paying attention to the markets right now and are thinking to themselves, holy fuck, this is a shit show. This is difficult. I don't know how to navigate this. What is your advice for how to navigate the trading environment, specifically 2026 and on?
SPEAKER_01Well, look, you know, obviously, you know, I, you know, whenever gold goes down, just buy it, right? You're getting an opportunity. Uh, when silver goes down, buy it. You know, go to shift gold and buy some gold and silver. Because I think any pullback is a buying opportunity. Uh, and I think, you know, rallies in the dollar should be sold and and and and people should be moving more assets abroad. I think that is going to be the theme that dominates uh the landscape for the next decade or more is going to be the the flow out of U.S. assets, out of U.S. stocks and bonds back into global stocks that are you know much better valuations. I think central banks continue to move out of dollars into gold, and investors keep moving out of the US into other other markets. They they the money has been flowing into the United States for for 20 years. Now, now I think it's it's going the other way. So I would encourage you know your listeners uh to check out my websites at shiftgold.com and Europe Pacific Asset Management Europeath.com and listen to my podcast. You know, I'm probably gonna do a live podcast uh in a couple hours on my uh on my uh YouTube channel. Uh so people can sign up there and also Shift Radio is where they can listen to it besides my YouTube channel.
SPEAKER_00Peter, I'll tell you what, man, we're different ages. We hold some different assets, but you have a fan in me, Mr. Schiff.
SPEAKER_01Thank you.
SPEAKER_00I appreciate you coming back on. Is there anything else you want to say, shout out, anything? I'll we'll we'll definitely check you out later too.
SPEAKER_01I think I got enough out there, you know. Yeah, so uh Sickman.
SPEAKER_00Thanks for coming back on. Hopefully, part three, maybe 10k gold. We'll run it back. Looking forward to any updates on the presidential campaign, and it's always a pleasure, man. Thanks for coming. Peace.