Peter Schiff: Joe Biden Doesn't Have Anything To Take Credit For
Most mainstream pundits characterized the November jobs report as a “Goldilocks” report. Job growth was strong enough to support the “soft landing” narrative but not so strong it might scare the Fed into raising interest rates again.
President Joe Biden used the report to boast about his economic achievements. But according to Peter Schiff, Biden doesn’t have anything to boast about. He talked about it during a recent interview on the Capitol Report on NTD News.
After the jobs report came out, Biden released a statement bragging, “On my watch, we have achieved better growth and lower inflation than any other advanced country. A year ago, forecasters said it couldn’t be done.”
As far as Biden taking credit for the strong economy, Peter said he doesn’t think there is anything for the president to take credit for.
First of all, the job numbers – sure, it was better than expected. But we’ll probably end up revising it to ‘worse than expected’ next month. That’s pretty much what they do. They come out with a number and then the following month they revise it lower.”
Peter pointed out that 24% of the “new jobs” were striking auto workers and motion picture workers going back to jobs they already had.
That’s not really job creation.”
And 82% of the remaining jobs created were in the government and healthcare sectors.
These are not the productive jobs that are producing goods that we need, that we can consume, that we can export. And all these government workers have to be paid for by the private sector. That means the government has to run even bigger deficits. That means they have to create more inflation to pay their salaries. That puts more upward pressure on prices. I don’t think we have a strong labor market.”
Meanwhile, the economy is creating a lot of part-time, low-wage jobs.
People are taking second and third jobs because the economy is so weak that you can’t get by on one job anymore. So, most people need multiple jobs.”
The NTD anchor noted that gold hit a record high prior to the jobs report. What does that say about the state of the economy?
Peter said he thinks if people understood how bad things really are, and how much worse it will likely get, they would be buying even more gold. For one thing, despite Biden bragging about “lower inflation” Peter said it’s a huge problem that’s going to get worse.
The talk of the Fed successfully returning inflation to 2% — that’s all talk. It’s not going to happen. The genie is out of the bottle. There’s no putting it back in.”
Peter said in the meantime, we’re heading toward a severe recession.
I think we’re going to have a worse financial crisis than the one we had in 2008. In fact, we’d already be in it if it wasn’t for the bailouts of the banks earlier in the year, back in March. But that has a short shelf-life. I think the problems underlying the banking system are building. The entire banking system is insolvent based on more than 10 years of zero percent rates. They’ve loaded up on long-term, low-yielding bonds. They’re underwater in those positions. Meanwhile, I think the real economy is weakening. The deficits are skyrocketing.”
And as the national debt surges upward, the interest expense on the debt is rising. Interest expense rose by 23% to $879 billion in fiscal 2023.
This is a fiscal time bomb that’s going to blow, and I think people would be buying more gold if they understood how short this fuse was.”