[fyzix]

Schiff didn't account for the economic ignorance of the masses in his prediction. He understood that runaway inflation would cause the gold price to spike, he didn't foresee the confidence that traders have in the FED to fight off inflation.

The FED cannot win the inflation fight (confirmed by their recent soft pivot back to QE) and gold will not go up until the traders realize this fact.

[dragonwriter]

> Schiff didn’t account for the economic ignorance of the masses in his prediction.

Literally every economic misprediction can be blamed on not accounting for the way people actually behave in real-world economies, but…that’s not something that adds credibility for the next prediction by the same predictor.

[ZhadruOmjar]

I don’t know if it’s the newspapers or economists I dislike more but I am pretty sick of watching these people incorrectly predict everything for the last 15 years and then turn around and say they are right when ONE thing sort of looks like the thing they kind of predicted.

[mo_42]

It’s a convenient symbiosis: Doomsday economists get cited by newspapers, which serves him/her in publicly and the newspaper in clicks.

Simple heuristic: if it’s easily digestible, it probably doesn’t serve true understanding. I think that especially true for newspaper articles related to economics.

[fyzix]

1.decade of 0% apr >>> 2.high inflation >>> 3.gold price surge

We have gotten 1 and 2 but we haven't gotten to 3 because traders believe that the FED can win the inflation fight. The FED abandoned the inflation fight with a soft pivot yet traders are still not buying gold. This is what Peter couldn't foresee...traders' unwillingness to go against the FED.

This is not a misprediction because in any sane world, the prospects of very high inflation would result in a spike of the gold price.

[riffraff]

> This is not a misprediction because in any sane world, the prospects of very high inflation would result in a spike of the gold price.

Keynes mentioned "animal spirits" and "the market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent" almost a hundred years ago. If your prediction doesn't account for reality and well know facts it's a bad prediction.

It would be like guessing that the next election will favor candidate X and when they don't win explaining it away with "well but people are dumb".

[dragonwriter]

> This is not a misprediction because in any sane world, the prospects of very high inflation would result in a spike of the gold price.

Since it was a prediction of the behavior in the real world, and it doesn’t reflect what actually occurred, it is a misprediction.

The fact that the predictor (or you) believes that a world in which the prediction was accurate would be more sane doesn’t make the wrong prediction better, since it wasn’t offered as a prediction of what would occur in some hypothetical sane world.

[lottin]

So he basically predicted "high inflation". He's been predicting that since at least 2010, probably earlier. Over a long enough period there is bound to be some episode of "high inflation", so sooner or later the prediction of "high inflation" will become true. This doesn't mean that the individual who made the prediction is some kind of visionary.

[fijiaarone]

The simple solution to this equation is that the assumption in number 3 isn’t correct.

Gold is not a store (or measure) of value. Nobody cares about gold. Sure, some people might like to have a gold ring or necklace, but that’s a tiny amount of material for a small number of people and it’s demand (like diamonds) is primarily marketing driven, and easily satisfied by a side effect of copper mining. Until the average Joe demands that his life savings be spent on a gold sarcophagus, it just won’t matter.

People tend to prefer fancy cars and houses and electronics and vacations and food and drink.

And you can see the cost of all those things has more than doubled in recent years, a clear indicator of inflation cause by (practically) zero percent interest rates.

[bruce511]

>> This is not a misprediction because in any sane world,

Describing any part of the financial system as sane (rational) is laughable. The system is built on the irrational nature of people.

In some absurd way, bank runs are an expression of actual rationality - give me my cold hard cash now, I don't trust you lot anymore.

[paulpauper]

Schiff didn't account for the economic ignorance of the masses in his prediction.

If he is as smart or knowledgeable as he claims or held up to be, then he should have factored that into his forecast and advice. IF the fed is going to do everything in its power to save the economy, why fight it?

[fyzix]

>IF the fed is going to do everything in its power to save the economy, why fight it?

This is a popular sentiment among traders...why fight the FED? Because there is nothing they can do to bring inflation back to 2%. They all but admitted this with their return to QE. When the masses realize this...gold will surge.

[bruce511]

Certainly those who bought gold as a cash-hedge are hoping it surges...

Alas if, for some inexplicable reason, those unwashed masses don't realize that the gold I bought cheap, isn't the only thing worth buying (at my inflated price) then I will be most disappointed.

I guess it doesn't help that gold-hawking is looking more and more scammy everyday, like when c-level political celebrities with large followings seem happy to flog their "sponsors gold" during political messaging.

[sanp]

Ah! Blame the economic ignorance of the masses and the traders. Peter was always right even if reality turned out to be different.

[kube-system]

The actions of the masses is the economy.