I’ve written quite a bit about Peter Schiff here on the blog, and finally got around to including one of his video blogs.  In it, you’ll hear Schiff address a couple of issues that I believe escape true public scrutiny, given the way these stories are shaped by the media.

With respect to gas prices, we’re now being subjected to the usual refrain that greedy oil companies are once again fleecing us at the pump.  But this infantile argument begs an easy counterattack if one were to think about it for a mere minute or two.  For example, when gas prices were falling, was that due to oil companies generosity?  I mean, c’mon -- if rising prices are due to their greed, then falling prices must be due to their generosity.  So how come we didn’t hear about the “generous” oil companies from 2009-11?  Bottom line is, the people touting this line of reasoning (or substitute it with the “blame Iran/Wall St greed/etc” screed) would have been rank-and-file “the-earth-is-flat” cheerleaders centuries ago.

I also enjoyed Schiff’s analysis of Warren Buffett’s crusade to get millionaire’s to pay more taxes (good thing he’s a billionaire so he can avoid too hard a hit).  Would be nice if Buffett was more up front about how he hides 99% of his income from the tax man.

Enjoy.

Followers of this website know that along with Nassim Taleb, Peter Schiff is the other market and investing guru that I follow closely and have a deep respect for -- and so you wouldn’t be too surprised how happy I was to hear that he was given an opportunity to testify before Congress on the current economic conditions.  The testimony occurred back on September 13, and you can watch part 1 and part 2 of his testimony on YouTube.

Basically, Schiff sticks right to the same message that he’s been touting for years, and that he used as a platform for his unsuccessful Senate run in 2010.  The major points you’ll hear in the testimony:

-- The government is a net destroyer of jobs.  For every job we see created in the tangible sense, we have no way of estimating how many jobs were destroyed or stopped from being created due to the burden of higher government spending, debt, taxes, regulation and overall intrusion into the economy.

-- Stimulating the economy with more borrowed or printed money does not make for an economic recovery; rather, it lays the foundation for greater economic pain down the road, by acting as a “sedative” that delays the necessary corrective forces in the market, thus exacerbating them when they finally run their course.

-- Speaking as a businessman (Schiff owns and runs Euro Pacific Capital), he emphasizes the fact that he has been discouraged from hiring new workers due to the high-tax, high-regulation environment our economy is subjected to.  Schiff goes so far as to point out that he has now resorted to opening new offices/branches overseas (he mentions Singapore and the Caribbean) in order to escape the tax and regulatory burden here in the States.  Effectively, these are jobs the government has driven out of the country through various misguided laws and policies.

Of course, these are just a few high points from the testimony.  If you enjoy following Schiff, or want to hear an alternative argument as to how to truly stimulate the economy as opposed to the ones consistently put forth by the government, then I recommend you take a look at the video clips contained in this post.