I don't find these articles that interesting. Look hard enough, and you can find a broken clock that was telling the correct time at a given point in time.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Schiff

> On October 28th 2008, Schiff stated in an interview on Bloomberg TV that the investment strategies outlined in both books currently "are NOT working" due to the collapse of foreign currencies, foreign stocks and the failure of gold prices to go up significantly as most of the world entered an economic recession and foreign investors flee to cash. Schiff, however, remained optimistic on his theories and stated this was a good opportunity to buy foreign stocks trading at yearly lows.

So I guess he called the dollar wrong, at least for the time being; it's been strengthening a lot, lately.

He was thoughtful enough to admit that his previous ideas about investing were untenable in the current market. That is a good thing. It beats all hell out of screaming that you are right nevertheless and what is really wrong is /..whatever favorite scapegoat../

... as an aside, HN only recognizes the British spelling of "favorite" as being correct...

At any given point in time, there are some people saying we're heading for a recession, some saying we're heading for a crazy bull market, and lots of people everywhere in between.

There is nothing that could happen to the stock market that somebody didn't predict on CNBC two years ago because people predict crap on there 24/7.

Poor Laffer, though, can't seem to get anything right.

he's wrong as well. he said gold will go up to 1k/oz, but actually metals have gone down tremendously. with the economy slowing down, industry around the world has slowed down, and the dollar has regained value.

now, i don't think the dollar will stay high for too long, unless drastic measures are taken by the US govt to cut spending, not print money, and create industry within the US).

another thing to watch out for is china. today they loosened licensing requirements for media (financial related data): http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/14/business/media/14media.htm...

what this means is that they are trying to pull more investments and spending into their own country; this could hurt the dollar if they are successful. interesting thing to notice is that the dollar never really regained when compared to the yuan: http://finance.google.com/finance?q=usdcny

Gold did go up to about 1k/oz earlier this year. Check price of ticker GLD (which was his recommendation) around March.

http://www.bostonherald.com/business/general/view.bg?article...

Now metals have gone down tremendously and the dollar is getting stronger, but his prediction was right.

by that logic, the other guys were right too, because most stocks were on their 52week high in march 2008.

Good points sahaj. I stopped watching the business shows a long time ago because all the guests are just trying to sell the kinds of investments they profit from.

What we're going through is a "liquidity crisis" more than a "recession" and that's why gold isn't doing much and commodities are going down. There simply isn't any money anywhere.

There's a reason these yo-yos don't go into science. Although, I do believe Ben Stein has his name on a Phys Rev Letter.

What are you implying? That a biologist would be a chemist if s/he were smarter? That a chemist would be a physicist, and a physicist a mathematician?

Doesn't sound like a particularly useful (or accurate) way of looking at the world.

Nothing about how smart they are, but how they make their argument. To answer whether or not something is "strong" ('financials,' for example) comes down to "no it's not" -- "yes it is" -- "is not!" -- etc-- with the majority opinion actually trying to laugh the guy off. The "right" answer goes to the better showman. It's really E! television with the economy as the topic.

What's annoying is that millions of people will be influenced by this kind of nonsense. /buries head back in sand

I didn't watch it and maybe it says, but the real question is whether he invested his own money in what he thought.

I found this account enlightening:

http://www.portfolio.com/news-markets/national-news/portfoli...