Get ready for Peter Schiff was Right Part II.
Schiff's prognosticative powers evaporate when it comes time to actually dedicate money to markets, the ultimate empirical tribunal for hypotheses about the economy:
http://www.europacificfunds.com/value_fund.htmlYTD: -10.08% (-1.49% for the relevant index)
Net expense ratio: 1.75%
But by all means, keep believing he's a visionary oracle because he vaguely predicted real estate troubles in 2006. You'll be in good company with a bunch of gold bugs and libertarians with the aggregate IQ of a sweet potato.
If anybody really knew what the future held, they would be tearing it up in the markets year in and year out. But this happens rarely, or perhaps never. At best, we can develop provisional hypotheses, subject them to empirical tribunal, and adjust our beliefs about the world/future predictive course according to the results, like a ship at sea.
At worst, we can take our hypotheses as
a priori truths, never subject them to testing, and adjust/warp all of our other beliefs so that these axioms hold true, like Christians awaiting the arrival of their Messiah, Marxists awaiting the inevitable collapse of capitalist society (any decade now!), and most gold bugs awaiting imminent hyperinflation.
