Peter Schiff is Wrong __ James Turk is Wrong
Peter Schiff's Euro Pacific Capital newsletter from April of 2009 stands out as especially revealing. That newsletter clearly demonstrates just how far off the proponents of the Austrian school are on understanding inflation and hyperinflation. The newsletter featured a guest article written a month earlier by James Turk entitled "On the Cusp of Hyperinflation". [James Turk is the author of The Collapse of the Dollar and the founder of goldmoney.com.] In this March 2009 article, James Turk enumerated 6 reasons for his predicting that "hyperinflation of the US dollar is imminent" and also said "[the US dollar] is on the cusp of hyperinflation. I expect this to become increasingly clear within twelve months." Of course this hyperinflation prediction has proven to be wildly off the mark. Average consumer price inflation by any measure has registered in the low to mid single digits in the 2½ years since. Nevertheless, in September of 2010, eighteen months after his 'hyperinflation within a year' prediction, Turk unapologetically published another such prediction, in which he hyperlinked to his original prediction. Though no doubt he is sincere, James Turk is dead wrong. It will be interesting to see for how many more years James Turk and Peter Schiff, et al, will continue to reiterate these runaway inflation predictions that will completely fail to materialize.
Austrian Economics is Wrong
This, folks, is your fair warning: Peter Schiff, James Turk, John Williams, Marc Faber, Charles Goyette and others will surely continue ad nauseum with their predictions of runaway inflation in the dollar but consumer prices simply aren't going to cooperate with them. Sooner or later these pundits will have to face the reality of radically lower consumer price inflation than they predict. Eventually their predictions will lose all credibility. These guys really don't understand economics holistically—especially the factors affecting why people raise prices. Yes, I say factors (plural), as Milton Friedman's famous quote, "Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon" is simply wrong. And I say people, as the Austrian school simply views consumer prices as inextricably linked to the money supply, as if little else matters, such as people's perceptions, and people's propensities for taking pricing action (or no action). You just can't have a viable price inflation model that completely removes human behavior from the equation. Sorry Milton.
Keep on reading for an education about the theories mr. siriuslywrong holds dear to his heart.
http://www.hyperinflation-us.com/