The dollar index is on a nine-straight month rise. This change has caught investors by surprise and has forced a shift in perspective where the dollar is consistently in a state of debt-fueled decline.
While some minds are changing, Peter Schiff, CEO of EuroPacific Capital, said don’t believe the hype, calling the storyline a “false narrative.”
“I’m surprised it’s rallied this much but that doesn’t mean it’s permanent. When traders wake up to reality and realize how wrong these [bullish dollar] bets are, they’re going to unwind these trades, and the dollar is going to implode very quickly,” he said. “I think the people who have been betting on the dollar and have made a lot of paper profits, if they’re caught in this when it reverses, they’re going to end up losing a lot of money,” he explained.
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Schiff compared the dollar to the subprime mortgage crisis where the banks making those bets would have failed if the government didn’t bail them out.
“The question is how many banks are going to fail when the dollar collapses,” he asked. “I wonder how many of our lending institutions are levered up short along the dollar. I wonder what happens when they get caught in that trade.”
“When people realize we can never raise rates and it’s permanent QE, that the Fed can’t shrink its balance sheet and has no ability to control inflation – there’ll be no place to hide,” he said. “The real move of the dollar is going to be a crash.”
Schiff has a bleak outlook for the dollar, but, on the other hand, Schiff said his long-standing advice to buy gold will pay off for investors. “Traders are bearish on gold, because they’re bullish on the dollar,” he added. If you were surprised by how much gold increased after quarters 1 and 2, he said, that quarters 3 and 4 will be even better. Schiff said that he’s not sure how high gold will go. “There’s no real ceiling on gold because there’s no floor on the dollar,” he added.
