Smackdown!

The Daily Bell

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Libertarian financial tycoon Peter Schiff has done the free market yet another service by blasting socialist/communist Princeton Professor Cornel West virtually into the stratosphere with a brief debate moderated by CNN’s Anderson Cooper on his "360" program.

Dr. West, a leading light of the progressive movement – someone who has worked for the most prestigious universities in the world – proved on-air that he didn’t know the first thing about economic history and that his much-vaunted beliefs (endlessly quoted by the media) are based not on faulty analysis but simply on ignorance.

This cannot be denied. It is on video for anyone to see. One example is West’s astoundingly ignorant claim that 1930’s Depression in America was basically the result of the 1920s rampant capitalist speculation and greed.

Schiff immediately attempts to rectify Dr. West’s misunderstanding by informing him that the 1929 stock market crash was caused by the newly formed Federal Reserve’s expansion of the money supply in the 1920s. He doesn’t bother to tell West that this expansion was in fact both stealthy and criminal and that FDR ended up shutting down the banks in the 1930s to ensure that people didn’t try to exchange their phony, overprinted dollars for the Fed’s non-existent gold.

West denies it, of course. He apparently musters the most cogent argument he can; it goes something like this: "No, no, no … Brother Peter. No, no, no …."

West’s ignorance is breathtaking and further evidence that the Internet Reformation is beginning to penetrate the last bastion of the Anglosphere power elite’s defenses – its brainwashed progressive allies who call for yet more government, more regulations, more taxes without knowing even the rudimentary elements of real economics, let alone economic history.

Schiff’s rhetoric and arguments are a "beautiful thing" to watch and at the end of the interview Cooper allowed they were "interesting" and spoke of inviting West and Schiff back on his program for a further debate.

We will be a bit surprised if that happens.

(Video from Hollywood2NY YouTube user channel.)

Reprinted with permission from The Daily Bell.

Peter Schiff is president of Euro Pacific Capital and author of The Little Book of Bull Moves in Bear Markets and Crash Proof: How to Profit from the Coming Economic Collapse. His latest book is How an Economy Grows and Why It Crashes.