Gold To $5,000 - Interview With Peter Schiff Part 2

Below is an abridged transcript.

Q: With the price of gold hitting record highs, do you still recommend it as a viable investment, or has it topped out in value?

A: I don’t even look at gold as an investment. I look at gold stocks as an investment, although I would consider them to be more speculation at this point because they don’t offer much in terms of yield. I would look at gold more the way I would look at cash. It’s liquid. It’s a store of savings. I look at it as if you don’t want to invest your money, you hold it in gold. It’s like putting your money in a bank and saying you don’t want to risk it, I just want to save it. I don’t really view it as an alternative to stocks or bonds, it’s an alternative to the euro or the dollar or the Japanese yen. And from that perspective, it’s an absolute winner.

For awhile, gold was on the back-burner. People had confidence in Alan Greenspan and central bankers, you could get a good rate of return, there was a lot of interest you could earn by keeping your money in a bank and gold had declined for 20 years. No one was really interested in it. But it’s making a big comeback. Eventually, more and more people will be owning gold. Right now, I think there’s only a small segment of the population that has caught on to gold and rediscovered it. And is more and more people return to gold and understand why it’s been money for so long and have more distrust of governments and central bankers, its appeal is going to strengthen and the price is going to go up. I think it’s going higher. I think it’s going over $5,000 an ounce.

Q: If you could offer Benzinga one piece of advice to grow its business and maintain its success, what would it be?

A: Definitely focus on the types of issues you’re focusing on with me here and helping people to understand what’s going on. There’s a lot of bad information and misinformation out there in the conventional media. A lot of people around the world, even high school and college kids, know me because they’ve searched me out and found my writings and videos on the internet. I’ve been able to penetrate into their world when in the past, when I was growing up, if my teacher didn’t explain it to me or I didn’t see it on CBS News, how did I know about it? There was no Internet, so there was no way to get these alternative perspectives outside your parents or your teachers or the network news.

This is a great tool and if you’re providing content online, you can try to ensure that it reaches a broader audience. And I would also look to try to expand and have your content available in places like Asia, where I think the economies are going to grow better. You need to go where the wealth is and where the future looks brighter when you’re trying to monetize and make money. Right now, the future is pretty grim here unless we can really take hold of our destiny and make major changes. And that’s not necessarily the most probable outcome. It’s certainly possible and I hope that we do. I’m trying to influence it in the right direction. But the safe bet is that we fail. We’re on the road to serfdom, and the safe bet is that we arrive at our destination. It’s a long shot that we avoid it. But we can still hope for the best and try to influence what happens, but we’ve got to plan for what might happen.