Daily Bell: Hello, Peter. Thanks for being with us. How's your father (Irwin Schiff)?
Peter Schiff: He's hanging in there. He's still a political prisoner but his spirits are still quite high. He's still hopeful that one of his legal motions will get him out, but unfortunately, the court system is very corrupt in the United States and so being innocent doesn't necessarily mean you're going to be free.
Daily Bell: How is your brokerage doing? You are offshore now? Are the regulators still giving you a hard time?
Peter Schiff: They give everybody a hard time. I don't think they single me out. That's part of the problem in the US economy and so many economies around the world. Governments are overregulating and driving up the cost of doing business, driving a lot of entrepreneurs out of business. One of the reasons we have so few jobs today is because the government is waging war on the job creators. My offshore business is actually growing very rapidly. In fact, I think my business in the Caribbean, EuroPacific Bank, is my fastest growing business. I don't think it's an accident that it's the fastest growing and it's the least regulated, even though it is highly regulated as a bank. But as a financial institution, I think that there are fewer regulations offshore than in the United States. So that is my fastest growing business. Revenues are growing fast, profits are growing fast and we're hiring more people. Hey, what do you know! My US broker-dealer business, Euro Pacific Capital, is stable. The Canadian business, Euro Pacific Canada, is doing well. My precious metals business, Euro Pacific Precious Metals, is relatively stable. So the real growth is offshore. I have my asset management company, Euro Pacific Asset Management in Puerto Rico now and that's growing slowly as well but nothing like EuroPacific Bank. That's been much more rapid. I guess that where you have fewer regulations and where you don't have the onerous labour regulations, it makes it a lot easier to grow a business.
Daily Bell: Have you moved to Puerto Rico?
Peter Schiff: Not yet. It's something that I'm planning on doing. I've purchased property there, I have an office there, I have employees there so I'm developing my connections in Puerto Rico and they're going to grow and ultimately, I'm going to be there. I just haven't made a decision as to exactly when. I have family here, I have a son, so it keeps me here even though I would prefer not to be. I would actually prefer to live in Puerto Rico right now but I have other reasons to stay here. Certainly from a tax perspective and even from a lifestyle perspective I think spending more time in Puerto Rico would be the right thing to do so ultimately, I am going to be out there. In fact, if anybody is interested in learning more about Puerto Rico they should go to USTaxFreeZone.com. We've prepared a video for people who are interested in learning more about how to move to Puerto Rico because many people have already done so just because they've heard me talk about it on my radio show. Go to USTaxFreeZone.com to see video and get more information to discover whether or not they should consider moving to Puerto Rico themselves. I think more and more Americans from the mainland are going to be washing up on Puerto Rican beaches because the opportunities and the incentives are really, really too big for people to pass up.
Daily Bell: You had an appearance on "The Daily Show" with Jon Stewart a while ago that stirred some controversy. Tell us about it.
Peter Schiff: The way they edited it out – they interviewed me for over four hours to condense it down to a few minutes of trying to make me look bad because I want to abolish the minimum wage. Of course, I want to abolish the minimum wage because I care about people, I care about jobs, I care about young people in particular and minorities. I want to make sure that they can get jobs, they can get on-the-job training, that they acquire additional skills that would enable them to earn higher wages in the future and I want them to be able to step on the job ladder so that they can climb up and go to higher and higher rungs. The biggest job killer is the minimum wage law. But the woman who interviewed me from "The Daily Show," one of the things she mentioned in that four-hour interview was that she was a socialist, a Marxist. Of course, they didn't show any of that but I had her admit that she was basically a communist. So people at "The Daily Show" buy into this nonsense. They don't believe in the free-market system.
Read the rest here.
(ht Felix Bronstein)
>they interviewed me for over four hours to condense it down to a few minutes of trying to make me look bad
ReplyDeleteOne would think Schiff would be savvy to all of this having run for a U.S. Senate seat, having done many interviews, but guess the siren call of something like the Daily Show, Colbert, etc., causes their guard to go down.
Wasn't it Lew Rockwell that blew off a NYT or some other MSM interview, most would want for the exposure, and he likely in part did it knowing he had zero control over the output.