Bob,
I will not be sending Mr. Schiff $50,000 his minimum required investment
in "Euro Pacific Capital" in the Connecticut Hedge Fund center.
http://www.europac.net/services/wealth_management
You can see from the title and first paragraph that he is targeting
emotion -- "ogre, clear and present danger, stalking, global warming,
peak oil, Arab Spring, Miley Cyrus, nuclear Iran, Obamacare, horror,
deflation, basement" he hits all the buttons, so no no need to read
further.
If you do read further you will find no mathematics, no graphs, not even
a table of numbers, or where those numbers might be, or any footnotes to
scientific literature that might support to what he is saying.
Such blogs are designed for the gullible, and best avoided. They are
free and worth what you pay for them. Sales pitches. You can find
better free entertainment on Youtube that is not trying to separate you
from your money. The only way they can stay in business is from
constant infusions of cash from outside investors. Hence the
proliferation of investment blogs, pie in the sky, get rich schemes
trying to herd investors into plunking down money.
If you want to gamble, I recommend Tahoe Reno Vegas where you can get
free drinks while losing money.
If you want to learn finance, follow Schiff's footsteps to Beverly Hills
High School and UC Berkeley to learn how to fleece the sheeple without
third party published audits on investment performance
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Schiff
*graduated from theUniversity of California, Berkeley
<
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_California,_Berkeley>in 1987
with a BS in Accounting and Finance*
which beats his father's racket where followers not only lost money but
went to jail
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irwin_Schiff
Schiff is serving a 13-plus year sentence for tax crimes with his
location listed as the Federal Correctional Institution at Fort Worth,
Texas. Schiff has a web site named "PayNoIncomeTax.com" which has
previously offered his various books for sale. He is featured in
Hollywood producer Aaron Russo's 2006 film America: Freedom To Fascism.
In this last case Schiff's attorneys again asked that the court consider
the claim that Schiff has a mental disorder relating to his beliefs
about taxes. Schiff had attempted to evade the payment of over $2
million in taxes from 1979 through 1985 and that he had used offshore
bank accounts using multiple tax identification numbers and had
attempted to hide assets in connection with his tax protester related
activity. Other individuals who have been convicted of federal tax
crimes after following Irwin Schiff include Warren J. Burdett;
Christopher and Pamela Harrison; Scott D. Haynes; Kenneth Heath; Joseph
Letscher; David Middleton; Robert L. Mosel; James C. Payne; David G.
Pflum; and Steven A. Swan.
>
>
> The "Deflation Is An Ogre" Myth
>
> /by Peter Schiff via Euro Pacific Capital
> <
http://www.europac.net/commentaries/deflation_menace>,/
>
> Dedicated readers of The Wall Street Journal have recently been
> offered many *dire warnings about a clear and present danger that is
> stalking the global economy*. They are not referring to a possible
> looming stock or real estate bubble (which you can find more on in my
> latest newsletter <
http://www.europac.net/global_investor>). Nor are
> they talking about other usual suspects such as global warming, peak
> oil, the Arab Spring, sovereign defaults, the breakup of the euro,
> Miley Cyrus, a nuclear Iran, or Obamacare. Instead they are*warning
> about the horror that could result from falling prices, otherwise
> known as deflation*. Get the kids into the basement Mom... they just
> marked down Cheerios!
>
> In order to justify our current monetary and fiscal policies, in which
> governments refuse to reign in runaway deficits while central banks
> furiously expand the money supply, *economists must convince us that
> inflation, which results in rising prices, is vital for economic growth*.
>
> *Simultaneously they make the case that falling prices are bad.* This
> is a difficult proposition to make because most people have long
> suspected that inflation is a sign of economic distress and that high
> prices qualify as a problem not a solution. But the absurdity of the
> position has not stopped our top economists, and their acolytes in the
> media, from making the case.
>
> A January 5th article in The Wall Street Journal described the
> economic situation in Europe by saying "Anxieties are rising in the
> euro zone that deflation-the phenomenon of persistent falling prices
> across the economy that blighted the lives of millions in the
> 1930s-may be starting to take root as it did in Japan in the
> mid-1990s." Really, blighted the lives of millions? *When was the last
> time you were "blighted" by a store's mark down?*If you own a
> business, are you "blighted" when your suppliers drop their prices?
> Read more about Europe's economy in my latest newsletter
> <
http://www.europac.net/global_investor>.
>
> The Journal is *advancing a classic "wet sidewalks cause rain"
> argument, confusing and inverting cause and effect.* It suggests that
> falling prices caused the Great Depression and in turn the widespread
> consumer suffering that went along with it. But this puts the cart way
> in front of the horse. The Great Depression was triggered by the
> bursting of a speculative bubble (resulted from too much easy money in
> the latter half of the 1920s). The resulting economic contraction,
> prolonged unnecessarily by the anti-market policies of Hoover and
> Roosevelt, was part of a necessary re-balancing. *A bad economy
> encourages people to reduce current consumption and save for the
> future. The resulting drop in demand brings down prices.*
>
> *But lower prices function as a counterweight to a contracting economy
> by cushioning the blow of the downturn. I would argue that those who
> lived through the Great Depression were grateful that they were able
> to buy more with what little money they had*. Imagine how much worse
> it would have been if they had to contend with rising consumer prices
> as well. Consumers always want to buy, but sometimes they forego or
> defer purchases because they can't afford a desired good or
> service. Higher prices will only compound the problem. It may surprise
> many Nobel Prize-winning economists, but discounts often motivate
> consumers to buy - -try the experiment yourself the next time you walk
> past the sale rack.
>
> *Economists will argue that expectations for future prices are a much
> bigger motivation than current prices themselves. But those economists
> concerned with deflation expect there to be, at most, a one or two
> percent decrease in prices. *Can consumers be expected not to buy
> something today because they expect it to be one percent cheaper in a
> year? Bear in mind that something that a consumer can buy and use
> today is more valuable to the purchaser than the same item that is not
> bought until next year. The costs of going without a desired purchase
> are overlooked by those warning about the danger of deflation
>
> In another article two days later, the Journal hit readers with the
> same message: "Annual euro-zone inflation weakened further below the
> European Central Bank's target in December, rekindling fears that too
> little inflation or outright consumer-price declines may threaten the
> currency area's fragile economy." In this case, the paper *adds "too
> little inflation" to the list of woes that needs to be avoided.
> Apparently, if prices don't rise briskly enough, the wheels of an
> economy stop turning*
>
> Neither article mentions some very important historical context.*_For
> the first 120 years of the existence of the United States (before the
> establishment of the Federal Reserve), general prices trended
> downward_*. According to the Department of Commerce's Statistical
> Abstract of the United States, *the "General Price Index"* declined by
> 19% from 1801 to 1900. */This stands in contrast to the 2,280%
> increase of the CPI between 1913 and 2013/*
>
> *_While the 19th century had plenty of well-documented ups and downs,
> people tend to forget that the country experienced tremendous economic
> growth during that time. _*Living standards for the average American
> at the end of the century were leaps and bounds higher than they were
> at the beginning. The 19th Century turned a formerly inconsequential
> agricultural nation into the richest, most productive, and
> economically dynamic nation on Earth. Immigrants could not come here
> fast enough. But all this happened against a backdrop of consistently
> falling prices.
>
> *Thomas Edison once said that his goal was to make electricity so
> cheap that only the rich would burn candles. He was fortunate to have
> no Nobel economists on his marketing team. *They certainly would have
> advised him to raise prices to increase sales. But Edison's strategy
> of driving sales volume through lower prices is clearly visible today
> in industries all over the world. *By lowering prices, companies not
> only grow their customer base, but they tend to increase profits as
> well. Most visibly, consumer electronics has seen chronic deflation
> for years without crimping demand or hurting profits. *According to
> the Wall Street Journal, this should be impossible.
>
> *The truth is the media is merely helping the government to spread
> propaganda.* It is highly indebted governments that need inflation,
> not consumers. But before government can lead a self-serving crusade
> to create inflation, they must first convince the public that higher
> prices is a goal worth pursuing. *Since inflation also helps sustain
> asset bubbles and prop up banks, in this instance The Wall Street
> Journal and the Government seem to be perfectly aligned.*
>
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