Peter Schiff Was Right 2006 - 2007

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Ed, you justify the fact that people borrowed to pay bills because they weren't making enough money.

I do? Where? Quote what you've read that you imagine says that.

You say it almost everyday around here; That they had "no other choice".

No. I tell people what was happening and what motivated people to spend more than they made. Let me go a tad further and tell you that Americans' optimism was misplaced but consistently fed to them by our media, too.

Look at Old man McCains irital kneejerking reaction to the economic meltdown as an exacmple: The American economy is fundamentally sound" What utterbullshit that was. Yet he and Bush were BOTH tellnjing the people that, just as now, the wall stree mavens are all telling us the recession will be short and shallow.

We are a nation of lies, Paul.

Times were always going to get better, weren't they? Only for at least half the American working population they just keep getting worse...and I mean since 1969 they've been getting not better, but worse.

I don't have any debts, dude. I havn't used a credit card since 1992.

I'm probably one of the most conservtives people (economically speaking) you'll ever meet. If I told you how little I make, and what I've managed to do with that, you'd think I was a freaking home economist genius.

But if I told you that somebody murdered somebody else because they were jealous, would you construe my explanation of their motive as an me excusing their murder?

That's what you're trying to do when I describe the unfolding economic disaster this nation is facing, ya know.

Reading into it things which are clearly not there.

To say consumers had no other choice but to borrow, is insane

It's funny that you say consumers had no other choice but to borrow their way out of debt, but you make no excuses for the government when THEY do it..

Try and find any thread or post where I wrote anyting remotely like that. People did what they di because they kept thinking tomorrow would be a brighter day...but it wasn't ... for most of them

"consumers had no other choice but to borrow their way out of debt,"

You won't find anything like that in my posts, Paul.

You keep reading what is not there.

The American people have been making less money, while costs continues (despite all that free trade nonsense about how good that is for all of us "consumers" ) actually rose.

First, starting in the early 1970's American families send our women out to make up the decline in their purchasing power

Then American families started working nearly 200 hours more (on average) per year than their father's generation did, too to make up that imbalance between their structual debts and their acutal incomes.

Then people started borrowing money on credit cards to maintain the lifestyles they'd come to expect, and in many cases the'd already structurally trapped themselves into, too.

Then people started borrowing on the absurd values of their overpriced homes to pay down those CC debts, or worse, talked themselves into paying far more than those homes were REALLY worth on the assumption that the price of real estate would forever rise.

You were there" You didn't notice all this happening? while it was going on. I sure as hell did. That's why people have thought me a cynic, when in fact I am a realist.

Now do you see me excusing people or merely describing the events as they unfolded??

You need to Learn to read that when I write what I write, I am not writing what you imagine I must be writing, dude.

I am more than capable of expressing exactly what I mean to say.

Rather than advocate a better collective understanding of finances and money, you advocate regulation to insulate consumers from HAVING to learn about money, finances, and proper budgeting.

I do? show me where I've done that. I've been trying to explain to this board how much of what they believe about this economy is basically nothing more than lies.

They are lying to us about the emppployment picture, the rate of infaltion, and the benefits of free trade, pal.

If they're been telling us the truth, our eeconmomy would not be in the crapper.

Maybe you don't see it that way in your own convoluted view, but it shines through regardless.

Only to those whose reading comprehension is severly challenged, Paul.

I'm not the nitwit who thinks the path to national properity is to put people out of good paying industrial jobs and into service jobs that pay ahalf as much.

Are you?

Listen, the only reason I pick on you so much is because I respect you and your opinions. For the most part, I agree with a lot of what you say. You understand what the real problems are in this country, I just don't necessarily agree with your proposed solutions, so I challenge you. Don't take so much offense to it.

Of course I'm offended when you put words in my mouth and then chastize me for your assinine interpretations of them.

Who the fuck are you to tell me what my words mean?

EDIT: Ed, are you a LaRouche follower/supporter?

No.

I hear his name bantered about, occassionally, but I've never paid any attention to him.

If anything my current favorite global nationalistic economic thinker is Pat Buchanan.

Apparently he and I are still on the same nationalistic and economic values page as the 1950's Republican Party.

He and I (and the founding fathers and every POTUS up to Wilson and FDR) all agree that protecting a nations industrial might is parmount to protecing the people and the nation itself.

We're somewhat out of step with both parties and most economists, but the reality of what we're saying is unfolding right before your very eyes.

Free trade is anything BUT free.