저자: Victoria Manning · 외국인
다듬은 글
then they may even go negative, but I think we're going to have a worse financial crisis than the one we had in 2008. But if the Fed does what I think it's going to do to try to prevent that crisis, they will actually usher in something much worse, in the form of a dollar crisis. That would be far worse than the general financial crisis. They could finally kill the dollar.
The conventional wisdom has been that we're the best house in a bad neighborhood. But that can't go on forever, and it appears to be beginning to crack. With all the big banks, the Royal Bank of Scotland, and Soros saying panic, it's over, everything's going to collapse, I have to ask: what do they think they're doing? They have no idea.
The only reason the dollar has risen these past several years, although it's now falling so far in 2016, is that everybody was convinced the Fed's policies had actually worked, that we had a real recovery, and that the Fed would be able to raise rates. I knew all along that wasn't true. I actually thought the Federal Reserve was smart enough not to raise rates, but they proved me wrong, because they were dumb enough to think they could get away with a quarter-point hike. I knew that wouldn't be the case. Now they've pricked their own bubble and the air is coming out of it.
That's why you talk about gold. The only reason gold was falling was that people believed in this myth. Now that we're looking behind the curtain, gold is off to its best annual start in its history. Gold is now at about 1,230 dollars an ounce, a little more. It was at 1,050 the day after the Fed raised rates. And just yesterday, one of the biggest gold bears, an analyst at ABN AMRO, had a 2016 price target for gold of 900. She changed it yesterday from 900 to 1,300. That's a pretty big about-face for a major bank. The reason she gave is that her case for lower gold was based on the Fed raising rates. She now believes the Fed won't raise rates at all in 2016, so now she thinks gold will rise.
Turkey, what do you say to people like Dent, who has been very accurate on a lot of fronts, saying gold will end up going down because it's not really a commodity and is basically worthless? I disagree with him on some of those points. It is a commodity. It's used industrially, it has a cultural role, and it serves as a hedge against inflation or emergencies for big governments, large populations like China, India, and Mexico. It's anything but worthless. Even setting aside its role as a commodity, it has a unique role, and it's been valued for its properties for thousands of years.
Think about the environment we're in. We not only have zero percent interest rates, we have negative interest rates, and we have governments threatening to outlaw cash. They want to do away with the hundred-dollar bill. If that happens, gold will be all we have as a true barter currency. It will force us back to real money. That was my next question. I've never seen a push by the European Central Bank, by Larry Summers, and by the big five banks to get rid of cash and make us go all digital. What is that really about, Mr. Schiff?
Well, it's all about control. It's about a loss of financial privacy, a loss of freedom, and the ability to debase the money. Look at the problem with negative interest rates right now. I'll just take my money out of the bank and put it in my mattress and avoid a negative rate. Well, they make that impossible. If it's either you put it in the bank or you don't have it, then it's stuck there, and you can lose money to negative rates, or they can bail in your money, tax it, or basically nationalize it, which they've done in Europe over and over again. The big kahuna of tyranny we've always known is getting rid of cash, and they're still pushing it.
And what about the underground economy? It's not going to go away if they take away cash. They'll just have to find an alternative to cash. And what's the oldest alternative available? Gold. It's right over there. What are people going to use? They're going to go back to real money, traditional money. This experiment with fiat money is blowing up all around us. It's ironic that just before the greatest bull market in gold's history, there was so much negativity. In fact, at the end of last year, just about all the hedge funds were short gold. It was the first time in history that hedge funds were net short gold. Look at what these geniuses did: they were all short gold below 1,100, and look where it is now. How badly does that hurt, when the one thing they shorted went up? Who knows. Hedge funds are probably going to blow up. Look at the banks they own, the financials: the banks have been cut in half. A lot of their favorite high-flying tech stocks have been demolished. Everything they were buying is plunging, and the one thing they were shorting is what's going up. Gold is the anomaly.
I hadn't thought of that. You talked about this a decade ago, and Ron Paul has talked about it too. Many people have talked about manipulation of the gold and silver markets, and now it has come out that they've been doing that. Look at Goldman Sachs, almost desperately trying to encourage everybody to short gold. They've come out several times, telling people not only to sell gold but to short it. They're saying gold is going to fall. Can they suppress it? How long can they suppress it? Obviously, not long. This whole fantasy is evaporating and falling apart before their eyes. They're desperate to do something and want to talk the price down, but the truth is out. They raised interest rates by a tiny bit, and what do we have? The worst start in history.
So let me get this straight. I haven't sold one piece of gold or silver I bought in 25 years. My gut tells me to keep what I bought at 300 when it went to 2,000, and when it goes down to 1,000, I don't care. This whole paper fraud is garbage. The enemies of freedom lie about it constantly, so I know it's there as an emergency backup. My gut tells me I did the right thing. But when I talk to someone like Dent, to be fair, he didn't say it was worthless. He just said it's overvalued. He's right about many things, but wrong on this, because he somehow believes it's all going to fall apart, the US is going to collapse, and the dollar will somehow gain value in that environment. That makes no sense. It's like telling me a corporation is about to go bankrupt, but I should buy its shares because the stock price is going to go up.
He says it's the best house in a bad neighborhood, and so far that's been happening. It's not the best house; it's actually the worst house. The only reason people perceive it as good is that it's been a self-fulfilling prophecy, and people have believed the con game. You know the guy who brought down Madoff? He says there are three bigger scams right now that he's investigating. Well, we've pierced the illusion. We pretended we could raise interest rates. I've said many times on your show that the Fed needed to talk about raising interest rates to pretend they could do it, but not actually do it, and thereby prove they couldn't. We just raised interest rates a quarter point, and all hell is breaking loose. If you look at the banking sector, it hasn't been this stressed since before.
That's my next question. You're getting into all the technicals, and you called it exactly the whole time with Kiwi. What would happen next? I'm not disagreeing with you, but somebody like Dent says the US is great and China is bad, that China is going to hell in a handbasket. You often say China is better than the US. China has banned all foreign media from publishing online. That's independent? China has obviously seen a third of its wealth go away. What do you really see going on? Where are the best places to be, where are the worst, and what's the next shoe to drop?
Look, what does China produce? They produce all sorts of products that everybody in the world wants to consume. We have a huge trade deficit with China, not the other way around. All we produce are Treasury bonds. We go into debt, we borrow money to buy the things the Chinese economy is productive enough to create. So we're the country in a lot more trouble, not China. They're the ones who have been lending us money, the ones who have allowed us to have all the stuff they produce. So I think people who are worried about China are missing the bigger picture. China has problems, but our problems are much larger. Dent thought China would be the detonator, but isn't the argument really that the detonator is QE, unlimited? Yes, and a lot of these hedge funds that were shorting gold, or different hedge funds, are now shorting the Chinese currency, the yuan, because they think it will collapse. But it's actually the dollar that's going to collapse. It's been the idea that we can raise interest rates that has supported the dollar. This is the biggest bubble the Federal Reserve has ever inflated. The US economy is in worse shape than it's ever been. We doubled the national debt.
쉬프: 이건 결국 통제의 문제입니다. 금융 사생활을 잃는 문제이고, 자유를 잃는 문제이며, 돈의 가치를 떨어뜨릴 수 있게 되는 문제죠. 지금 마이너스 금리의 문제를 생각해 보세요. 제가 은행에서 돈을 찾아 매트리스 밑에 넣어두면 마이너스 금리를 피할 수 있습니다. 그런데 정부가 그걸 불가능하게 만들면, 즉 "은행에 넣든지, 아니면 돈이 없든지 둘 중 하나"라고 하면 돈은 거기 묶이고, 마이너스 금리로 돈을 잃게 되죠. 그리고 이건 구제금융을 하거나 세금으로 돈을 거두거나, 기본적으로 국유화하는 것과도 관련이 있습니다. 유럽에서 여러 번 그렇게 했죠. 우리가 늘 알고 있던 폭정의 대장격은 현금을 없애는 것입니다. 그런데 그들은 여전히 그걸 밀어붙이고 있어요.
그럼 지하경제는 어떻게 되냐고요? 현금을 없애도 지하경제는 사라지지 않습니다. 그들은 현금을 대체할 수단을 찾아야 할 겁니다. 그렇다면 가장 오래된 대체 수단이 무엇일까요? 바로 금입니다. 사람들은 다시 진짜 돈, 전통적인 돈으로 돌아갈 겁니다. 지금 법정화폐 실험이 우리 주변에서 터지고 있어요.
아이러니하게도, 금 역사상 최대의 강세장 직전에 엄청난 부정적 분위기가 있었습니다. 작년 말에는 거의 모든 헤지펀드가 금에 공매도를 걸고 있었습니다. 역사상 처음으로 헤지펀드들이 금을 대거 공매도한 거죠. 1100달러 아래에서 전부 숏을 쳤는데, 지금 어디에 있는지 보세요. 그들이 산 모든 것, 그리고 공매도한 것이 올랐습니다. 헤지펀드들은 금 역사상 최고의 연초 성적을 내고 있는 셈입니다. 금은 지금 1230달러 정도이고, 연준이 금리를 올린 다음 날에는 1050달러였습니다. 어제는 ABN AMRO의 가장 유명한 금 약세론자 애널리스트가 2016년 금 목표가를 900달러로 잡았다가 어제 1300달러로 바꿨습니다. 대형 은행으로서는 꽤 큰 입장 변화죠. 그녀가 금 가격 하락을 전망했던 근거는 연준의 금리 인상이었는데, 이제는 2016년에 연준이 금리를 전혀 올리지 않을 것이라고 봅니다.
진행자: 덴트 같은 사람들, 여러 면에서 꽤 정확했던 사람이 금은 결국 떨어질 것이고 사실상 상품도 아니라서 기본적으로 가치가 없다고 말합니다. 이에 대해 어떻게 생각하세요?
쉬프: 그의 일부 주장에는 동의하지 않습니다. 금은 분명 상품입니다. 산업적으로 쓰이고, 문화적으로도 인플레이션이나 비상시를 대비하는 헤지 수단으로 쓰여 왔죠. 중국, 인도, 멕시코처럼 인구가 많은 나라들이 금을 사는 걸 보세요. 가치가 없다고 할 수 없습니다. 상품으로서의 역할을 제쳐두더라도, 금은 수천 년 동안 그 속성 때문에 가치를 인정받아 왔습니다.
지금 우리가 처한 환경을 생각해 보세요. 제로금리에 그치지 않고 마이너스 금리가 있고, 정부들은 현금을 금지하겠다고 위협하고 있습니다. 100달러짜리 지폐나 500유로짜리 지폐를 없애겠다는 얘기도 나오죠. 그렇게 되면 금이 진정한 물물교환 화폐로 남게 될 겁니다. 그것은 우리를 다시 실제 화폐로 돌아가게 만들 겁니다. 이런 상황에서 미국이 무너지고 있는데 달러 가치가 오를 거라고요? 그건 말이 안 됩니다. 파산하려는 회사의 주식을 사라는 것과 같아요. 주가가 오를 거라면서요.
덴트는 이게 "나쁜 동네의 최고의 집"이라고 말하는데, 지금까지 그런 일은 일어나지 않았습니다. 이건 최고의 집이 아니라 사실상 최악의 집입니다. 사람들이 그걸 좋다고 여기는 유일한 이유는 자기실현적 예언이 되었기 때문이고, 사람들이 이 게임을 믿어 왔기 때문입니다. 마도프를 무너뜨린 사람이 지금 조사하고 있는 더 큰 사기가 세 개 있다고 말하더군요.
우리는 환상을 깨뜨렸습니다. 금리를 올릴 수 있는 척을 했죠. 이 쇼에서도 여러 번 말했지만, 연준은 금리를 올릴 수 있는 척하기 위해 금리 인상을 얘기해야 했지만 실제로는 올리지 않고, 그럴 수 없다는 걸 증명해야 했습니다. 그런데 금리를 0.25%포인트 올리자마자 모든 게 무너지기 시작했습니다. 은행 부문을 보면, 이전 이후로 이렇게 스트레스를 받은 적이 없습니다.
진행자: 그다음 질문으로 넘어가겠습니다. 기술적인 부분들을 짚으셨고, 양적완화가 어떤 결과를 낳을지 정확히 예측하셨습니다. 다음에 무슨 일이 일어날지 말씀해 주세요. 제가 반박하려는 건 아니지만, 덴트 같은 사람은 미국은 훌륭하고 중국은 나쁘며 중국은 지옥으로 가고 있다고 말합니다. 당신은 종종 중국이 미국보다 낫다고 하셨죠. 중국은 해외 언론의 온라인 보도를 금지했는데, 그건 독립적인 중국입니다. 중국은 분명 부의 3분의 1이 사라지는 것을 봤습니다. 실제로 어디로 가고 있다고 보시나요? 어디가 가장 좋은 곳이고, 어디가 최악인가요? 그리고 다음에 떨어질 신발은 무엇인가요?
쉬프: 중국이 무엇을 생산하는지 보세요. 중국은 세계 모든 사람이 소비하고 싶어 하는 온갖 제품을 만듭니다. 우리는 중국과 거대한 무역적자를 안고 있어요. 반대가 아닙니다. 우리가 생산하는 것은 재무부 채권뿐이고, 우리는 빚을 지고 있습니다.
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