Peter Schiff Quotes

I believe that the market is slowly waking up to the fact that the Federal Reserve is a clueless organization. They have no idea what they're doing. And so the confidence level of investors is diminishing, in my view.

Long before folks fretted the demise of 'quantitative easing,' I fretted its existence. It proved the reverse of its image, an antistimulus, and we've done okay not because of it, but despite it.

A lot of people are down on Bernanke, but in my view, he saved the nation.

The Federal Reserve is playing a mind game—but with enormous real-world consequences.

The Fed contributed to the financial crisis, keeping interest rates too low for too long. I give them credit for responding and stabilizing the economy and the financial sector during the crisis. But then they tried to do too much with quantitative easing that went on forever, just dramatically exploding their balance sheets.

The Fed cannot levitate markets forever. And when they finally do move, I think we have to be prepared for a considerable amount of turbulence.

The time will come, and probably during 2009, that the only way the U.S. will be able to fund its deficits is to create money by printing it. The Treasury will have to sell bonds, and, in the absence of foreign buyers, the Fed will have to print the money to buy them. The consequence will be runaway inflation, increasing interest rates, recession, and inevitable tax increases on all Americans.

At best, in such depression times, monetary policy is a feeble reed on which to lean.

The stress on the financial system in the fall of 2007 was significant, but not so significant as to threaten the overall stability of the U.S. economy, although it did lead to the beginning of a recession at the end of 2007.

The Fed is the major U.S. firefighter. It's not the Treasury. It's not the Congress. We certainly saw that vividly in 2008.

The Federal Reserve - all of them - could be sitting on a barrel of dynamite, and then pouring gasoline on top of it, and then light a cigar with matches, throw the match into the gasoline, and then not notice that there is any danger.

There's nothing the people love more than a Federal Reserve joke.

Well, I think as long as people are talking about stimulus, I think the Fed will be thinking about cutting rates because monetary policy is the better way to go because you can turn it on and turn it off.

It has been said that the Fed's job is to take the punch bowl away just as the party gets going, raising interest rates when the economy is growing too fast and inflation threatens.

In the economy of the cuckoo people that populate central banks, everything is possible. What you have is gigantic bubbles, the NASDAQ in 2000, then the housing bubble and then commodities in 2008 when oil went from $78 to $147 before plunging to $32 within six months.

Normally, if you have a huge category that leads a bear market all the way down to the bottom - like tech after 2000, or energy in the '80-'82 bear market - you get one quick pop, and then years of lag as we fight the old war.

Normally, the market peaks before bad news emerges. That's what happened in 1929, and that's what happened in 2000.

If Federal Reserve loans are subsidies, it doesn't show up in the federal budget.

The Federal Reserve's job is to take away the punch bowl just when the party gets going.

When the economy is bad, the economy is the only issue.

The economic repercussions of a stock market crash depend less on the severity of the crash itself than on the response of economic policymakers, particularly central bankers.

Every time the Fed implements 'quantitative easing,' a.k.a. printing more money, two things go up: taxes and inflation. When taxes and inflation go up, more jobs are lost.

During an economic crisis, what matters is that the government keeps its foot on the accelerator.

In 2006, the Congress had approved plans to allow the Fed, beginning in 2011, to pay interest on banks' reserve balances. In the fall of 2008, the Congress moved up the effective date of this authority to October 2008.

Once an economy reaches a certain level of acceleration... the Fed is no longer with you... The Fed, instead of trying to get the economy moving, reverts to acting like the central bankers they are and starts worrying about inflation and things getting too hot.