The Wisdom of Peter Schiff

No, seriously. Well, sort of. Danny Vinik sends us to the latest from Schiff, who made a big splash in 2008-2009 predicting runaway inflation if not hyperinflation; he was a favorite of Glenn Beck’s.

And in his new piece Schiff lays out the analytical issue very clearly:


The truth is that high levels of unemployment are historically correlated with higher inflation and low levels of unemployment with lower inflation. That is because an economy that more fully utilizes labor resources is more productive. More production brings down prices. In contrast, an economy that does not fully employ its citizens is less productive, and its government is more prone to pursue misguided inflationary policies to stimulate the economy.

OK, leave aside the business about defining money-printing as inflation; guys, nobody cares. But what Schiff says very clearly is that according to his worldview, rolling the printing presses should cause inflation (by the normal definition) even in a depressed economy, and that high unemployment should in fact make inflation higher, not lower.

He has that exactly right: the central dispute is between those who see depressions as the result of inadequate demand, implying that inflation will fall and that printing money does nothing unless it boosts employment, and those who see depressions as the result of maladapation of resources or something — anyway, something on the supply side — who predict that running the printing presses will lead to runaway inflation.

How could you test those rival views? Why, how about having a huge slump, to which central banks respond with aggressive monetary expansion? And that is, of course, the test we’ve just run. And everywhere you look, inflation is low, verging on deflation.

So we’ve just run the Schiff test — and his brand of economics, by his own criteria, loses with flying colors. And that goes for just about all anti-Keynesian doctrines: we ran as close to a clean experiment as you’re ever going to get, and the answer is no.

Now, just about everyone on that side insists that it’s not true, that sinister bureaucrats are smuggling away the inflation evidence and burying it in Area 51. That tells you a lot about who we’re dealing with. But at least Schiff states the issue clearly before refusing to admit error.