The Man Who Saw It All Before It Happened

The man who saw it all before it happened

Published Friday February 20th, 2009

Telegraph Journal

Market matters

Peter Schiff named keynote speaker at Fullsail Summit in Fredericton May 11, 12

Peter Schiff turned bearish on the U.S. economy and greenback long before the markets collapsed and was bashed for his public doomsday predictions until they rang true.

Peter Schiff

Known as the man who saw it all before it happened, the president and chief global strategist for Connecticut-based Euro Pacific Capital Inc. has been nabbed for a speech in New Brunswick to share how he formed his views and what investors should do to cash in on tough markets.

The New Brunswick Securities Commission announced Thursday that Schiff - a popular commentator on market matters and career investment advisor - will be the keynote speaker at the Fullsail Summit in Fredericton on May 11 and 12.

In a statement released by the securities commission, executive director Rick Hancox said of Schiff: "Once referred to as Dr. Doom, and more recently as Mr. Right, Mr. Schiff is the acclaimed predictor of the 2008 market collapse.

"He will be sharing how he predicted the current market crisis, his recommendations for meeting these challenges and his predictions for the economy's future."

Schiff takes credit for anticipating last year's market crash in his February 2007 book, Crash Proof: How to Profit From the Coming Economic Collapse.

In October 2007, during a TV interview with Fox Business, Schiff forecasted the global economic meltdown and that the Dow Jones Industrial Average would fall below 10,000 points.

"It's gone exactly the way I've said it would," Schiff said in a video posted to Amazon.com advertising his newest book, The Little Book of Bull Moves in Bear Markets: How to Keep your Portfolio Up When the Market is Down.

"The U.S. economy was headed for a major crash because our economic growth over the last seven or eight years has been phony," he said.

"Our growth has been a function of how much we've borrowed and spent, not how much we've saved and produced."

The executive's guidance for investors is to include precious metals in their accounts - gold, silver and other "inflation hedges,-" and to rethink stock portfolios.

"The idea is to sell your U.S. stocks and replicate a portfolio of diversified stocks outside the United States," Schiff said in his video.

Most recently, Schiff has criticized government bailouts as adding to structural economic problems.

He has argued that the solution to the current recession is to avoid spending federal money, rather than bailing out lenders and businesses and homeowners and flooding the economy with loans and subsidies.

"The stimuli are basically the equivalent of throwing gas onto the fire," Schiff told Fox Business recently in an interview.

"The solution is this recession," he said, suggesting Americans need to be saving their money: "We need capital available for private enterprise."

Panelists also announced Thursday for the Fullsail Summit include Rahaf Harfoush, a new media strategist who volunteered full-time for President Barack Obama's online social media team, and Tod Maffin, an authority on the strategic use of social media. Both will inform delegates at the conference about outlets and technologies that can help advance business goals and allow companies' messages to reach key audiences.