***Ron Paul economic adviser Peter Schiff was right***

*Great article from Canada*
http://westernstandard.blogs.com/shotgun/2008/12/ron-paul-ec...

Listening to National Public Radio (NPR) the other day, they did a little piece on Peter Schiff, former Ron Paul economic adviser, president of Euro Pacific Capital, and an advocate of the Austrian school of economics. Schiff is often on various financial and business shows as a talking head. On all of them, over the last three or four years, Schiff has been busy predicting an economic catastrophe.

They laughed at Schiff then.They don't laugh at him anymore.

From NPR (you can listen to the broadcast by following the link):

"What's going to happen is that the American consumer is basically going to stop consuming and start rebuilding his savings, especially when he sees his home equity evaporate," he said. "And when you have the economy 70 percent consumption, you can't address those imbalances without a recession."

Schiff was even more blunt when speaking on Fox News Channel in December 2006: "You're going to start to see both the government and the lenders re-imposing lending standards and tightening up on credit — and these sky-high real estate prices are going to come crashing back down to earth."

And here's a little video montage on Schiff on various shows, getting the economic crisis exactly right:

Since everyone is jumping on the Keynesian bandwagon, it's worthwhile remembering that Austrian economists have been predicting precisely this economic crisis for a very long time. They've been bearish on housing, concerned about a looming credit crisis, and raising alarm bells about the value of the U.S. dollar (we have yet to see the massive inflation that they've been predicting, but I'm no longer as skeptical of their predictions as I used to be).

Now they're screaming from the rooftops about the various bailouts. They're radical free marketeers -- my sort of people -- and they think the governments are making a big mistake by throwing good money at bad investments. Having predicted this crisis, it will be interesting if they will also turn out to be right about the disastrous effects of the bailouts.

Keynesians? We should all be Austrian economists now.

*digg*
http://digg.com/business_finance/Peter_Schiff_was_right_abou...