Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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65 of 68 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
When the government takes the capital out of Capitalism, the only signal left is static., October 22, 2008
Mr. Schiff's new book is a follow up to Crash Proof. I bought six copies of that book, because it was my introduction to real economics and I wanted to share it. Both his books are important because they accurately describe economic function in the context of what is happening now in our markets. He understands what is transpiring and warns people in advance. Protecting yourself from the economic forces now playing out is the focus of his work, not the full blown explanation of economics in general. For that, I recommend Economics in One Lesson, so that you may be fully educated on the subject. Read it as many times as you need to.
The foreword to Bull Moves is by Marc Faber, who endorses the common sense approach for the long term. The book's introduction warns of the inevitable downturn of an economy that was only possible through speculation borne of low interest rates. There is now no doubt that we are in that recession. The first chapters talk about the loss of America's purchasing power. The 1950's were a healthy economic time, because we produced goods that went around the world. High rates of production coupled with Reserve Currency Status gave the dollar an unbeatable edge back then. He then tracks reasons for the dollars' demise over time. He clarifies what inflation truly is. Unfortunately, most people don't understand it and how deadly it is. I don't like the way he explains Bretton Woods, and this is the second time he's done it in this manner. Bretton Woods was a poor excuse for a metallic standard and doomed to fail. Therefore it is my opinion that it was a dysfunctional group effort with multiple culprit nations. "My country's name is France and I'm a central banker." "Hi France."
Mr. Schiff's theory of decoupling hasn't yet come true. It probably will, but I have to wonder after the recent worldwide interest rate reduction, if every central banker will see their citizens lose it all in their efforts to stick to the modern planned economy mantra. Additionally, the one prediction from his last book that is still unfulfilled is about the bond market. US Government bonds comprise the last bubble yet to feel the smack down from Adam Smith's invisible pimp hand.
Chapter three steers you through the confusion of government statistics. After reading about it, you'll finally realize what the government isn't telling you with their numbers. Chapter four explains historic market cycles and tells you how to restructure your investments. Chapter five is about investing in commodities. Let's take a breather shall we... Chapter six is specifically about gold and silver. He tells you about the different ways to invest and what to avoid. Seven gets you acquainted with investing in foreign countries and companies. Eight is about stable foreign economies that are his favorite to invest in. Nine is about how and where to invest in emerging markets. Currently, there are big problems in the foreign markets, but again, this book is for the long run. So keep that in mind.
Chapter ten is about employment. He talks about industries that will suffer, as well as the jobs that offer the most opportunity. Eleven is about what your declining standard of living will be like and ways to adjust. Twelve is about immigrating to a different country. To this one, I have to say "No Thanks." There are many problems in the rest of the world, not to mention, they're probably gonna hate Americans a lot at that point.
The last chapter is about bringing your money back to the USA. Peter says to wait until at least 2012 to see if the economy is functioning properly. I'm sure if you listen to his radio show, you'll be able to tell if we're there.
Throughout, Peter explains how interference into the markets has brought about so many of the problems that we now must face. He's one of the few who realize that government intervention is really the helping hand of a leper. Bull Moves is an informative and timely book.
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102 of 115 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
They laughed at him with his negative outlook several years ago. , October 9, 2008
Gold, commodities, foreign companies with little exposure to the USA. That is the gist of Peter Schiff's investing recommendations. Why? He's not unpatriotic, but rational in his thinking that the US has lost its way through outsourcing production of goods, and overwhelmingly becoming a country of service oriented personnel. We make nothing, we buy most, and are up to our ears in debt, which will take its toll now and in the future on the dollar. There are several well known "Doctor Dooms" around. Rubini, Jim Rogers, Jim Sinclair, and Peter Schiff. I never thought that I would ever be a bear on the US stock market, until I started reading not only Peter Schiffs books and the others, but books on derivatives and other financial inventions, that could bring markets down entirely, and for a while. Impossible you say? If you think so, you need to read this. The Dow was down again today nearly 700 points. Maria Bartiromo is starting to call this a market crash. I stayed up the whole night reading this book. The writing flows and points are great, except when he recommends that you buy a gun, and learn how to use it- maybe he's correct there too. He's half tongue-in-cheek. He makes one recommendation that he says will make the dot.com bubble look like "warming up", during the next decade. Curious? Ans: gold producer stocks. Great book.
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310 of 365 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Not exactly timely, and not exactly right, October 22, 2008
I was intrigued by Mr. Schiff's little book purports to pull back the curtain on the invisible erosion of the value of your money, your investments, the U.S. economy and our financial system in general. Let me say first and foremost that Mr. Schiff has a lot of smart things to say. Yes, the Federal Reserve is culpable and careless about its monetarist policy of inflationary increases to the money supply, especially as it helps put more air into asset bubbles (think the housing market). Yes, Americans borrow too much money for consumption that they don't really need. Yes, fiat currency is beholden to the whim of the market.
Schiff also makes some good and useful points that do not often appear in books about investing. First, he tells you how to actually invest in the things he recommends. Granted, he is often hawking his own wares (his company does many of the things he says investors must have, like stocks bought on foreign exchanges and custodial services for precious metals), but he also presents some things I'd never heard of (like GoldMoney.com) that could have some utility, even if you don't buy his argument whole. Second, he gives some guidance for potential career and business choices that stand to benefit from the disasters he sees befalling the U.S. economy. Though I disagree with him on numerous points, I think his efforts here are an important part of any plan that relates to investing--that is, how you get the money you plan to invest--but are generally ignored in most books on the subject.
However, I have some serious problems with this book. Six of them. First, it looks like it was rushed to press to capitalize on the recent market turmoil. I don't think they pushed it to market in the wake of the disastrous first few weeks in October, but when everything was going to hell back in July it looked like Schiff's predictions (ever-higher commodity prices and perpetual dollar weakness) were prescient. There are numerous typographical errors, and the title doesn't really seem to fit with Schiff's premise. These aren't bear-market strategies: this what Schiff thinks everyone should have been doing back when things were swell, and he even says that he said this very thing in a previous book. So while this book has a timely title, I don't think it is as useful as it wants to be.
Second, since July, commodities have been largely in freefall and the U.S. dollar has been the strongest performing developed-market currency, undermining most of Schiff's major points. Now he would say--as I do when my own strategies meet an extended bout of resistance--that this is merely a cyclical change and does not run counter to the secular pattern of surging prices of hard assets and the concomitant decline of the greenback. Still, it is hard to find his claims credible when he trumpets the early-July status as proof that his strategies work--including investing in developed foreign stock markets, whose performance has been in many cases worse than that of the U.S. and has been further savaged by weakness relative to the dollar.
Third, he underestimates or misrepresents exchange-traded funds (ETFs). At one point, Schiff lumps in ETFs with actively managed mutual funds as a bad idea because their sole purpose is to beat the market. Not so, and he even says so later on. Why the inconsistency? At another, he describes how he talked a prospective client out of investing in ETFs (admittedly in favor of paying Schiff to build and manage a custom portfolio) because he couldn't find any to invest in that didn't have large allocations to financial-services companies. True, financial serivces are often large chunks of broad-market ETFs for any country, but writing the entire product line off for that alone is short-sighted at best and self-serving at worst.
Fourth, he really skimps on his foreign-market preferences. Yes, he gives a long list that includes Australia, Singapore, Norway and Switzerland, but the information he offers to buttress his preference is apparently gleaned from the CIA Factbook, which anyone can access for free on the Internet. Why do I need him to regurgitate that? If I'm going to pay for his book, he needs to give me something more than information I can acquire at less cost elsewhere.
Fifth, Schiff says the only way back for the U.S. economy is to return to a production-based economy, one where the U.S. produces goods, not services. (At the same time, he says that the entertainment industry in the U.S. is evergreen.) I think he has something there, but it won't be that we'll start again making cotton underwear and tires. We might eventually, but only once the supply of places where workers will supply labor for less money is exhausted, and we've still got big sections of Asia, the Middle East, Eastern Europe and all of Africa to go through before we get there. We're going to have fulfill the single greatest requirement of any business in a free market: make what people want. Obama thinks that's energy technology. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. The point is that innovation and education are key, not an overpriced industrial base.
Sixth and finally, Schiff's notion of decoupling is debunked by this year's events. His analogy is that the U.S. thinks it is the engine of economic growth in the world, when really it's the caboose. If the rest of the world lets the caboose go, the rest of the train will be able to move faster. True, China and India will have their hands full of production and demand just supplying goods and services for their own populations. But for better or worse, the financial and economic fortunes of the developed and emerging worlds are married, perhaps not happily but married all the same.
In all, I am glad Schiff wrote this book, as it has allowed me to firm up my own ideas about markets and economies. I disagree, but I understand Schiff's strategies as a reaction to real problems. And in his defense, I don't think that investors would necessarily be all that bad off doing what he says. Inflation is a mostly invisible monster, but one that can be tamed. Paul Volcker did it (and Schiff credits him for it), and even feckless Ben Bernanke seems to have some newfound interest in pricking asset bubbles with interest rates and open-market actions. We'll see, but for now I'm sticking with my cheap U.S. stocks and my Treasury inflation-protected securities.
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