I’ve read this book, given it to my father to read and highly recommend it to others. Its funny when reading it that it sounds almost like it was written just a few weeks ago, given how accurate it is.
I like Peter Schiff, I’ve been a fan since the dot-bomb days when I listened to his advice and cashed out a few months before that bubble burst. He and I share a strong passion for fundamentals.
Some of his ideas are a bit loony, which kind of makes sense considering his father, Irwin Schiff, is a tax protester. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irwin_Schiff
I sometimes wonder if much of his position is just ire directed towards the US government due to them locking up his dad in his golden years.
Now onto the points you mentioned:
1) Kind of hard to argue with this given the current monetary policy of the Fed. However, I don’t necessarily see a declining dollar as a totally bad thing, as long as the decline is orderly and hits a bottom of something around 50% of its current value compared to other currencies.
I say this primarily because I am an ardent conservationist and disgusted by the over-consumption of Americans. We eat too much, buy too much crappy imported junk and our homes and cars are too big and inefficient. Rising commodity prices would *force* us to cut consumption. Basically, we would have to live like Europeans (expecting my door to get kicked down and black-bagged any second now).
This will also be a win for the US worker as it makes the cost of outsourcing American jobs (particularly white collar ones) much higher. I personally would much rather be employed and collecting a salary in American pesos than jobless with a handful of strong dollars.
Finally, a devalued currency devalues our debt with it and increases the values of our exports.
Hopefully the net end result of this is a kind of global gentrification where the American standard of living declines somewhat (we can handle it) while that of Asia rises a bit. This is in everyones best interests, IMHO.
2) This has been a winning strategy for at least the last few years. All my savings plan is in foreign stocks, diversified emerging market, gold and energy index funds. I rent and don’t have a savings account, all my discretionary income goes towards debt reduction and investing.
Saving, especially US dollars, is for suckers. They are losing purchasing power on a daily basis.
The real question in my mind, however, is what the effect of s US economic crash would be on the world market. Schiff’s take is that as all we do is consume foreign goods with borrowed foreign money, we can be replaced by consumers in other markets. Basically, the Chinese start buying their own stuff with a stronger Yuan instead of shipping it over here (fine by me, the can keep their poison pet food and lead covered toys).
The analogy is we are a drag on the global economic train, which will take off once the US is cut loose. I’m much less confident about this than Schiff is. Historically, this has not been the case.
3) Peter has a right to make money and is a capitalist, so I don’t have a problem with hawking his services. I have heard that EPC’s fees are high, but there is really no need to go with them. My organizations savings plan makes it easy to implement his investment model, so there is really no need to go through them if you don’t want to.
For the record, I don’t agree with his opinions on Social Security (says its a Ponzi scheme) or the idea that we are going to return to some sort of global gold standard.
