PolitiFact Detractors are even on YouTube!

This latest PolitiFact detractor, some fellow named Peter Schiff, who sounds like a libertarian,  has a radio show somewhere in the Virginia area. I “wikied” him and, wouldn’t you know, he’s the “CEO of Euro Pacific Precious Metals, LLC, a gold and silver dealer based in New York City.”

In this "audio" YouTube video, he interviews Jacob Geiger, a writer for PolitiFact Virginia, who ruled that Tea Party senatorial candidate Jamie Radtke was "Barely True" in a statement she made earlier this year (see below audio-video):

"We’re spending so much money that we can’t even borrow it fast enough -- the Federal Reserve has to print more money just to keep up!"

Radtke continued: "The international financial markets know what it means when a nation monetizes its debt, even if Washington doesn’t. Commodity, food and energy prices have been climbing over the past 12 months: Corn prices have risen 69 percent; wheat prices have risen 44 percent; sugar prices have risen 15 percent; and gasoline is back at three dollars a gallon... and rising."

Geiger verified the price increases as actually 75% for corn, 52% for wheat and 12% for sugar; he came to his ruling of Barely True because “Radtke goes off track when she attributes these higher prices to a Federal Reserve that helps the United States "monetize its debt."

While Peter Schiff didn’t have the bombast of say, Rush Limbaugh, he was clearly off on a lot of things as he blamed everything on the printing of money and alluded to gold and silver as the favored monetary measure. But he was incorrect to say that economic growth doesn’t create inflation or that gold prices are an indicator of inflation. Economic growth in theory should not cause inflation, but in reality it almost always does (or, in reverse, there can be “stagflation”, recessionary inflation). Gold prices may serve as an inflation or deflation hedge, but it is not always a precursor to inflation. Gold reached a high in early 2008 along with oil, and then it declined. During that time, and for the rest of 2008 and 2009, core inflation stayed very low.

But Radtke wasn’t talking about gold and silver. She was talking about agricultural commodities, and Radtke’s take on it was correct (and Geiger shouldn’t owe her an apology, as Schiff continually demanded). Corn, wheat and sugar are not a finite supply like gold and silver, so I’m guessing futures speculation, due to the droughts and floods, had driven them higher for the time being. And by the way, the price of soybeans has declined this year—shouldn’t they be going up as well?

I don’t think Jacob Geiger was used to the verbal interview and his short silences and "uh, uhs" were disconcerting. He shouldn’t have let Schiff distract him over the prices of gold and silver, clearly what Schiff was trying to push. In other words, Schiff was trying to turn PolitiFact into a marketing tool for gold investments...perhaps, as well, the reason for the YouTube video.