by zerohedge.com Via SchiffGold.com
Peter Schiff appeared on NTD News to talk about the bank bailout and the March Federal Reserve meeting. During the conversation, Peter explained that everybody is going to pay for these bailouts because they will ultimately devalue the dollar as inflation skyrockets.
During his press conference after the March FOMC meeting, Jerome Powell said the banking system is “sound and resilient.” Peter said it’s not sound at all.
It’s a house of cards that is starting to collapse.”
Peter explained how the banking system became so unsound.
First, the Federal Reserve kept interest rates at zero for over a decade. During that time, banks loaded up on low-yielding, long-term Treasuries and mortgage-backed securities. With interest rates so low, they had to go out further on the yield curve. And the reason they were able to take so much risk is because the government guarantees bank accounts. That created a moral hazard. Customers didn’t care what the banks did with their money because they knew the government would bail them out.
Thanks to the mistakes the Fed has made since the 2008 crisis, we have a much bigger bubble now. The Fed caused the bubble that led to the financial crisis of 2008, and then they inflated a bigger bubble to try to paper over those mistakes and kick the can down the road so that we wouldn’t have to deal with the full consequences of resolving all those mistakes. And of course, we just compounded the problem with bigger mistakes and now the US economy is poised on the biggest economic disaster in its history.”
In the wake of the failures of SVB and Signature Bank, Peter said it was the beginning of the next financial crisis. But virtually nobody in the mainstream is calling it a financial crisis. Peter compared the situation in 2008 with the situation today. In a nutshell, the 2008 financial crisis was about debt people ran up during a bubble and the inability of borrowers to pay when the air came out.
That’s exactly what’s happening now. It is a banking crisis, and banks are financials. I think people are reluctant to call it a financial crisis because they don’t want to evoke the memories of 2008 and they don’t want to make any comparisons. They don’t want to acknowledge that.”