However, his personal history and politics are what make for problems. He’s an old school gold but waiting for the day when Joe Average dumps fiat currencies for something historically “real”. That’s the basis of his commodities push, with oil being gold’s shadow currency. This is a bold play. Currency protection and statist manipulation has tools that a world full of investors cannot match.

That said, Schiff’s analysis of the US$ being brittle has a lot of weight and historical accuracy behind it, even from mainstream economists. The trade gap and especially the overgrowth in US government debt is a prelude to a major US$ depreciation (then gold will rise). We’re already seeing this as China and Japan and EU countries hedged at Davos that they may not be able to buy as many US Securities. That’s not a friendly note; that’s a brutal warning that external sources of revenue may not be available to the US government except at significant premiums and short schedules. I think Schiff is right about the consequences of the US over-consuming on borrowed money, and under-producing to trade and repay. His structural breakdown goes to the heart of the US domestic economy. All this “stimulus” and lack of government revenues will have currency consequences. Many overseas private investors (I am one) are now averse to investing in US companies using US$. When I hear the US talk about raising taxes on wealth to match Euro levels to pay off all this debt (your middle class are bankrupt, so taxing them more is not a solution), then I’ll look again at the US. Right now there is no plan—none—on how to pay back foreign debt.

So, I think Schiff is early, but that’s a problem when he invests other people’s money. He’s timed it wrong. He’s got a lot of ego.

He has not managed money well.

Basically Schiff was one amongst a small group of investors who were all banking on a hyperinflationary outcome for the dollar (driving up commodities) and a decoupling of Asia (maintaining commodity demand), and still hold out hope for this in the long run. Extremely high inflation seems to be the only way to get 125% asset price appreciation in 3 years. Mish doesn’t think this is very likely, and even if it is, one should really be in real estate and not commodities.

All those viral videos about Schiff was right that are being circulated on the Net involve a lot of cherry picking and confirmation bias. Past performance is not an indication of future performance.

There are fund managers who performed better than he did despite the fact that they did not predict the crash. There is nobody more tiresome than someone who is right just for the sake of being right.