I've been seeing these videos cropping up on other blogs. Here are the YouTubes featuring Peter Schiff that will remind you of how wrong a lot of conservative economists were. Peter Schiff seemed to have been dead-on right, in retrospect, over 2 years ago about where the economy would end up today:
Peter Schiff is also afraid that Obama will continuing down the same failed path that the Republicans went down, borrowing from countries like China, letting foreigners produce everything that we consume, and spending, spending, spending. He's predicting the collapse of the US dollar and warns against trying to spend our way out of this recesssion:
It's important to realize that Peter Schiff was one of Ron Paul's economic advisers and he wasn't the only one making the prediction. Back in 2006 Nouriel Roubini, an economics professor at New York University, made a similar prediction before an audience of economists at the International Monetary Fund. He predicted a housing bust, an oil shock, sharply declining consumer confidence and, ultimately, a deep recession.
As for me, well, I'm not yet ready to credit Schiff with too much and prefer to listen to Robert Reich and Paul Krugman. Krugman is, of course, advising just what Schiff fears -- spending lots and lots of money on public works projects, repairing highways and bridges, and getting jobs for people that way so they can spend money.
Krugman alludes to seeing ahead too:
A few months ago I found myself at a meeting of economists and finance officials, discussing — what else? — the crisis. There was a lot of soul-searching going on. One senior policy maker asked, “Why didn’t we see this coming?”
There was, of course, only one thing to say in reply, so I said it: “What do you mean ‘we,’ white man?”
But did Krugman ever express it as clearly as Schiff or Roubini did? I don't know, but if any readers can find what Krugman and Reich were saying back in 2006, then drop a link into my comments.
UPDATE
The Great Wealth Transfer ia an article from Paul Krugman for Rolling Stone which dates from 2006. It actually predicts a much larger problem not yet fully realized, but there is a vision of what was coming down the line today.
