Peter Schiff stole my thoughts

Well...not really. However, we've had similar views for a long time. The guy's a genius and had the courage to stand up to all the other economic "professionals" because he ultimately knew that something wasn't right. A lot of people STILL disagree with him, and don't get me wrong, it's a difficult pill to swallow, but he was right about a lot of things, and you really can't argue with the fact that everyone else was wrong about the indefinite stability of our economy.

http://www.thedailyshow.com/full-episodes/index.jhtml?episodeId=230053

They spoiled us with endless sub-prime mortgages, which led to "shocking" defaults on loans by the dozen, and the thing that really makes me angry: BAILOUTS. Now don't get me wrong, I think Obama truly wants what is best for most of the people in this country. A lot of what he's done in these months will ultimately make our suffering less painful than it could have been. However, bailouts don't help ANYONE. If a business isn't financially sound, that's their problem. Let it go bankrupt, and accept all those people losing their jobs. LET ME FINISH: Then the smart and talented individuals who are experienced in that company, those who were ignored for so long, can rise to the top. They can either bring the firm out of bankruptcy, or start a new business with carefully monitored guidelines. That's how capitalism works. That's the ONLY way it works, and it would be foolish to stray away from it now. The United States government is like those parents who never scold their children for fear of having their kids cry in public. When a child (business) does something wrong (allows their accountants to smoke crack in the mailroom), that child needs to be reprimanded or he/she will end up sleeping in Mommy and Daddy's bed for the next 50 years (want bailout money every time they suck at keeping business afloat). Believe me, I am aware of the fact that some bailouts were out of our control. Essentially, the government was contractually obligated to make up for lost assets on some firms, or the economy would have collapsed to a point where it would have been near impossible to regain our bearings. Bailing out companies who have been putting out the same shoddy cars for the last twenty years? Now that's asinine. All these companies got lazy, and figured they could get by producing the same thing over and over without bothering to do any significant research. If they were smart, they would have introduced new energy efficient technologies in increments over the next ten years to maintain a steady demand, but apparently research and development has been on vacation for the last two decades. If we just let them fail, everyone would have benefited. More tax dollars to go elsewhere (our broken roads or even our pockets, perhaps?), the employees would have benefited by leaving the company to join a more steady organization that would rise from the ashes of the failed auto industry, and us consumers would benefit from the exponential increase in competition that would result from new transportation production companies. I say transportation instead of automobile because who knows if another far superior vehicle-type would have emerged in the next five years? Well, now we'll never know because the auto companies won't bother to try discovering them.

It was completely and utterly foolish to think we could coast by for so long being a solely service based economy. At some point, we need to produce something if we want to close the deficit. There are only so many services you can export before other countries realize they're idiots for paying for it. I know, I know, I've been training my whole life to enter a service industry too. I would also rather not switch my career aspirations over to a labor-intensive industry. There is some good news, but this may come off as politically incorrect: A few years ago, this country was packed with laborers willing to do our labor for us, only at the price of allowing them to live here. Unfortunately for us, after extensive racist efforts to kick them out, and driving our economy into the ground, that opportunity might be long past us. People seem to forget that in creating a company that sells tangible goods after producing them also creates a ton of other jobs as a result. Only about 5-10% of the jobs within that firm would be filled by laborers. The rest of the employees can be as lazy as you want them to be. Whether these other jobs be filled with managers, marketers, salespeople, accountants, HR, and the list goes on and on. So if you just allow a few [possibly "illegal"] employees into the organization, you can create less labor-intensive jobs for everyone else. Let's just hope they're not too offended when we ask them if they want to join our country when we realize we have no other options...

Everything he says about interest rates is true and has been true for a long time. I raised my hand in my microeconomics class in high school asking how our economy could possibly afford such low interest rates in the long term and my teacher's answer ended at "that's for the Fed to worry about." When I began arguing with her that you can't give away what you don't have in the first place, she got mad at me for disrupting her lecture and asked me to leave. I also threw my textbook and raised my voice during that argument, so that might have had something to do with it, too.

It's really too bad that all those who have been smart in the past and saved their money are going to suffer when value of our American dollar plummets. It will feel a lot like getting completely robbed.

"Meanwhile, by propping up all the industries and companies that need to fail, we're preventing companies, that need to expand and are growing, from hiring those people." THANK YOU, PETER SCHIFF. THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR PUTTING MY THOUGHTS INTO SUCH ELOQUENT WORDS. I have failed to do so for so long, and maybe that's why no one has ever believed me. Deep down, I truly hope you're wrong about hyperinflation and our economy spiraling downward into the abyss. Yet part of me wants both of us to be right just to say "I TOLD YOU SO."

PS: I don't actually hope we're right. You've got a great track record, though.