Dollar, Meet Cliff 🤯

As the great American carnival rumbles on, a most unpleasant convergence of inflationary risks, tariff threats, and fiscal policy flaws is brewing, threatening to unleash a triple-headed beast upon the markets. One can almost hear the distant rumble of a catastrophic asset-wide selloff, an event that would doubtless leave many a speculator quaking in their boots.

Economist and gold aficionado Peter Schiff, that most vocal of Cassandras, has taken to the digital soapbox to warn of an impending sharp selloff in the U.S. dollar, Treasuries, and stocks. This impending doom, he avers, shall be precipitated by a resurgence of trade tensions and inflationary risks, a toxic cocktail that shall set the markets aflutter like a murder of crows taking flight.

Prepare thyselves, dear investors, for a repeat of the sharp selloff in the U.S. dollar, Treasuries, and stocks, as the realization dawns that those ‘reciprocal’ tariffs are making a comeback, like some ghastly revenant from a bygone era.

Schiff, that most indefatigable of gold bugs, further cautions that these tariffs, though perhaps not as draconian as their predecessors, shall nevertheless be higher than what those intrepid dip buyers in stocks and bonds had bargained for. The market, he laments, has yet to fully grasp the implications of these renewed trade restrictions, a myopia that shall ultimately prove its undoing.

And then, of course, there is the matter of President Trump’s putative trade agreement with Vietnam, a deal that Schiff dismisses as a mere chimera. “Vietnam,” he astutely observes, “shall pay us nothing; rather, it is the American consumer who shall be saddled with a 20%–40% tariff on goods made in Vietnam, even as the Vietnamese themselves pay their government not a single sou to purchase goods from us.” Ah, the vaunted art of the deal, wherein the American consumer is left to foot the bill, like some latter-day Danegeld.

But Schiff’s jeremiad does not stop there. Oh no, for he also takes aim at the Trump administration’s fiscal policy, which he deems structurally flawed, a mere palliative that fails to address the supply side of the economy. “These tax cuts,” he warns, “shall ultimately result in higher long-term interest rates and inflation, a toxic legacy that shall haunt us for generations to come.”

For sustainable growth, we require incentives for savings and capital investment, not some fleeting consumer stimulus, a sugar rush that shall inevitably be followed by a crushing crash.

Thus, dear reader, we find ourselves at a crossroads, with Schiff’s warnings serving as a clarion call to those who would navigate the treacherous shoals of economic policy. Shall we heed his counsel, or shall we continue down the primrose path of fiscal profligacy, blithely ignoring the siren song of economic reality? Only time shall tell, but one thing is certain: the consequences of our choices shall be very real indeed. 🤔

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2025-07-07 03:58