저자: PeterSchiff · 외국인
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금·은이 동반 신고가를 기록하는 것은 달러 및 미국 국가채무에 대한 신뢰 상실의 경고 신호라고 주장. 연준은 금리 인하와 사실상의 QE로 물가 압력 속에서 실질금리가 하락(일부 음수)하고 있다고 봄. 은은 통화적 요인과 산업 수요(전기차·AI 인프라)가 겹친 구조적 강세로 설명. 금광주는 금 가격 대비 여전히 저평가, 조정 시 매수 권고. 비트코인은 디지털 금 역할을 못 하고 있어 붕괴 가능성이 크다고 전망.
다듬은 글
Well, gold is at record high. Silver is outperforming almost every major asset class, and the US dollar is quietly sliding even as equities hover near their peaks. One of the most vocal critics of fiat currency says this is not a coincidence and not a safe haven trade, but a market warning that investors are misreading.
Peter Schiff has been blunt about what he thinks comes next. And today we're pressing him on trade, the timing, and what investors may be getting wrong. Peter, always a pleasure. Thanks for talking to us. Oh, my pleasure. Thanks for having me on.
Well, listen, Peter, gold and silver both breaking out at the same time, but this isn't 2008, right? It isn't a recession yet. What specific signal are these markets sending right now that equities and bond markets are ignoring?
Well, first of all, gold really broke out in early 2025, I'd say, or even 2024, when we broke above 2,000, and we really haven't looked back. It's been a pretty steady march that has accelerated in speed. Once we got to 4,000, the move to 5,000 happened almost instantly. But silver didn't really start to break out until last year, 2025, and later in the year, kind of Q4. Now we have silver confirming what happened in gold, and now even leading gold, because first it had to catch up, since it was lagging for so long, and now it's taken the lead, which is something I always forecast was going to happen.
It really is just a newer leg of this ongoing bull market. It's a stronger leg, where silver is leading gold. And the next phase is going to be the mining stocks really taking the lead, the silver and gold mining stocks, because investors are going to start to accept the reality of not only higher gold and silver prices, but ever-rising gold and silver prices.
But to answer your question, what is this signaling? I believe this is a major warning of an imminent crisis in the US dollar and US sovereign debt. The impetus to buy gold and silver is a desire to be out of the US dollar because of a lack of trust in the US government and in its ability to manage its fiscal house. You're losing confidence in the government, in the dollar, and you need to go into gold and silver. It started with the central banks and it's now spreading to private investors.
Peter, if I'm an investor, where do I actually see that fiat stress? In the dollar index, real rates, foreign demand, or capital flows? What's the cleanest evidence?
You see it in the exchange rate of the dollar weakening to a four-year low. The dollar just hit an all-time record low against the Swiss franc. Record high gold and silver prices. And you could also look at the substantial outperformance, going back to the beginning of last year, of foreign stocks versus US stocks. Investors are clearly expressing a preference to invest outside of the United States, and the returns are showing that. More and more people are going to be withdrawing money from US markets so they can redeploy those funds into foreign markets.
Gold is rising even with real yields still elevated by historical standards, Peter. Traditionally, that shouldn't happen, right? Is the market telling us real rates are mispriced, or is that policy credibility itself breaking down?
Real yields are not elevated in the sense you describe. The Fed is cutting rates, but inflation is picking up. So I think real yields are falling, and in fact I think they're negative, because I think inflation is being under-reported. There's a much bigger inflation problem than US government data acknowledges. So there are negative rates, and I think that's a big driver into gold.
Silver has outperformed gold in this move. Is that a monetary vote against fiat, or a structural bet on electrification, energy, and supply tightness? Which one matters more right now?
A lot of the move in silver is just catching up to where it should have been anyway. Silver was suppressed for years, and that never made sense to me. But I think the main driver is monetary. Yes, there are additional demands and uses for silver being developed, in batteries and the whole move toward more electric vehicles, and the need for more power and energy to feed the AI build-out. So you have a perfect storm for silver: increasing industrial demand and increasing investor demand happening at the same time.
You have banks like TD shorting silver. What's your take on that?
Obviously, there was a pretty big short book built over the years in silver. I feel badly for anybody who's short silver, but I can't necessarily say they don't deserve what's happening. If you're still short silver, you're in a lot of trouble. Many of the shorts have likely covered, but I'm sure there are shorts out there, and there are probably some new shorts. People took a stand: "It's a bubble, let me short silver." I think people who think this is a bubble are in for a rude awakening, especially if they bet the bubble will pop. It's not going to pop, because it's not a bubble. That doesn't mean silver can't pull back, but I think the pullbacks will be short-lived and a lot of buying will step in. The shorts are more likely to have to cover at higher prices than to be able to do it at lower prices.
Let's talk Federal Reserve. We're obviously recording this before the Fed makes a decision. If metals are right and the dollar is under pressure, is the Fed actually boxed in, or can tighter policy still reverse this move without breaking markets?
The Fed is boxed in, in the sense that the right thing to do is raise interest rates, but if they do that, they'll cause a financial crisis. So they can't do the right thing, and they end up doing the wrong thing, which is going to create an even bigger problem in the long run. But they're more focused on the short run. That's why they've been cutting rates, and that's why they've gone back to quantitative easing. They haven't admitted that what they're doing is QE, but it basically is, and I think they're going to be expanding the program. At some point it will be impossible to deny that it's QE.
A beautiful and active investor today, not a gold bug. What's the biggest mistake right now? Being under-exposed to precious metals, or overestimating how quickly fiat stress translates into broader market pain?
The biggest mistake is probably having no exposure at all, which is where most people would fall. Then it would be not having enough. Another thing people could do wrong would be getting out, thinking, "Oh, this is it, I just tripled my money, let me get out." I'd think that's leaving much too much on the table, because this trade is not about tripling your money. It's about preserving your wealth. Ultimately, if you triple the number of dollars you have and the dollar ends up being worthless, it doesn't matter how many you have. I'd rather accumulate ounces of gold and silver than dollars. I don't think you need to get out of real money into fake money. But you need to diversify. I have a lot of my own portfolio in good dividend-paying foreign stocks, and people should look into alternatives to US financial assets, not just holding a metal.
You have Bitcoin supporters arguing it's absorbing the same monetary anxiety gold once did. What's your take on that?
The argument for Bitcoin made by Bitcoin promoters was pretty much the same argument I was making for why you should buy gold and silver. I always said the Bitcoiners had the argument correct, they just had the wrong solution: Bitcoin was not going to behave like gold and silver. Last year proved that. Last year was the best year for gold since 1979, up about 65% or so, and Bitcoin went down. This year, gold is having its best January ever and Bitcoin is flat. Bitcoin has now proven that it is not digital gold. It never looked like digital gold to me, but that was the story: Bitcoin was an alternative to gold you'd buy for the same reason you might buy gold, but you could expect an even better return. Gold went way up and Bitcoin not only didn't go up more, it went down. So the whole "Bitcoin is digital gold" story has unraveled. And if Bitcoin isn't digital gold, what is it? There is no reason to buy it because it doesn't really do anything. I think the bottom's going to drop out of Bitcoin soon. You're going to see a big collapse in the price, and it's going to cause all the speculators who bought the Bitcoin ETFs to get out, and that's going to fuel the decline. Then you're going to run into leverage, and a lot of Bitcoin held on margin is going to be liquidated. I think there's a lot of selling pressure coming in Bitcoin.
Finally, Peter, I want to go back to what you said earlier about physical metal versus mining stocks. We spoke last year, and even then the mining stocks were still trying to catch up. Where does this race end? When does it eventually catch up, and what should your move be right now?
Any day the gold mining stocks could just take off. Right now they're subject to the swings in the precious metals markets, which are volatile because we've had such a big move. Every time you see a sharp sell-off, these stocks tank because investors think, "Oh, this is it, it's going to crash, it was a bubble." That's why it's been hard for gold and silver mining stocks to really move up: they lose so much every time gold dips. Even though gold is at a new all-time high today, the gold and silver stocks are not, because they fell much more than gold did in the correction. These corrections are meaningless, because even when gold falls, it's not falling nearly enough to make these stocks expensive. If gold was down $500 today, gold mining stocks should still be cheap. Say gold is at 5,300. If it went down $500 to 4,800, that's still a very high price for gold, and mining stocks would still be cheap at 4,800. At some point investors are going to notice this. The sellers are going to be gone from the mining stocks, and they're going to take off. In the meantime, people should be buying into any dip in these stocks.
Peter Schiff, always a pleasure. Thanks very much indeed for that insight.
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