Peter Schiff’s Payback
Lance on Nov 17 2008 at 9:40 am | Filed under: Economics, Investing, Lance's Page
The insufferable Peter Schiff has a video going around, which frankly, is just brilliant. He may be unpleasant at times, but he nailed this thing, and took mounds of abuse while doing so. More importantly, I KNOW HOW HE FEELS!
The resentment, irritation, condescension and, at times, outright hostility to my Cassandra act makes me wish I had a video of my own. Sigh…
Oh well, it pays to remember that Cassandra was right. I was never as sure of myself as Peter, but risk management isn’t about knowing you are right, but knowing what could go wrong and whether it is likely enough to act upon.
As an aside, Peter is no big government type, and he goes to prove that despite the media focusing on Roubini and others (who do deserve a lot of credit) that people across the ideological perspective warned of this. Thus having seen this coming is not the same as being correct about what to do about it, since those who saw the oncoming train differ markedly on that score.
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Hasn’t Schiff lost a ton of money not recognizing that the problem was more than just a US financial problem and having his clients invest heavily in overseas stocks specifically asia?
Yep, the same guy. I did say he was insufferable didn’t I? Of course, I think he is probably right that Asia is a more attractive place to invest long term, and that dollar based financial assets are in for some tough sledding. There is a lot that I do not agree with, and frankly I think he is likely overboard. While I didn’t address his arguments head on over at QandO, the comments section there will show ways that I disagree with him in his certainty about the right course of action at this point in time. As you know, I am not a fan of overweening certainty. Peter has that in spades and my guess is it will eventually bite him hard.
I will say that his clients have done better overall in the last few years, with much of his short term struggles due to the reversal in the decline of the dollar and his bet on gold. I would not bet against both bets moving in his favor over the long haul.
You are correct in saying that his major failing was not noting how international these problems are, and the international aspects of this I have been pressing strongly. In fact, though I suspect that international investments are priced for very attractive returns, the economic problems are likely to be worse in Europe and many other countries over the next year or two.
Hmmm….
I am going to copy this comment over at QandO and expand on some of the themes we are discussing there.
You got-you gotta watch out for them foreigners cuz they plant gremlins in their machinery. It’s the same gremlins that brought down our planes in the big one. Y’know they’re still shippin them over here. They put em in cars, they put em in yer tv. They put em in stereos and those little radios you stick in your ears. They even put em in watches, they have teeny gremlins for our watches.