Peter Schiff argues against three typical liberals on CNN's Fareed Zakaria's GPS - Full Interview

joining me now to discuss this wild week in America and maybe we will get to Europe as well Jeffrey Sachs The Economist who serves as director of Columbia University's Earth Institute Peter Schiff is an economist businessman and author who recently ran for Senate on the Republican ticket ticket in Connecticut Peter Orszag was President Obama's first budget director he is now City bank executive and a columnist for Bloomberg and Katrina vanden Heuvel is the editor and publisher of the Nation magazine welcome to you all so the first thing we have to talk about inevitably is the Supreme Court ruling and none of us are constitutional scholars so the question I would ask is politically Katrina does it does it help Obama because you can see both both arguments does it help Obama or does it energize the Tea Party I think on balance it helps Obama it's a victory for Obama it's a victory for American people it's a victory for the forces who've been fighting for a sane health care policy for this country human morale I think it also helps with the legitimacy of leadership of his presidency because that was a question and it helps in the sense of the renewed priorities because this president if he gets out there and makes the case explains provisions that show even Republicans when it's broken down like this plan he needs to get out get out there and make the case sure it'll energize the Tea Party but they're energized anyway will it help marginally with the independents who seem to be the savior and key to this election I think so if he gets out there as the Democratic Party needs to and explain provisions pre-existing conditions being a woman is no longer a pre-existing condition your kids can stay on your health care plan this is the kind of America millions want to live in Peter I take it you didn't like the ruling but Mike but on the politics of it do you think it will energize the Tea Party probably I think it gives you more of a reason to support Romney if your goal is to get rid of Obamacare the Supreme Court didn't do it and now we have to do it legislatively but you know this is not the kind of America I want to live in and I would disagree you don't need to be a constitutional scholar to recognize this is a terrible decision it diminishes individual rights and listen to what the Supreme Court said they said that Congress doesn't the power to force us to buy something but they can tax us if that we don't that is a distinction without a difference and I think more importantly if you want to label this a tax it is unconstitutional on its face because this is a direct tax on American citizens who don't buy health insurance the Constitution says it must be apportioned this is an unapportioned direct tax it is constitutional if the Supreme Court is now saying that the Constitution doesn't apply and the federal government has unlimited taxing powers then it's a real sad day in American history because what it means to be American American has been arep ibly changed and by the way this is a disaster for health care for the economy is going to cause insurance rates to go up health care is going to be more expensive not less this is not good economics it's not good policy and it's clearly unconstitutional PETA is one of the authors of the health care plan what do you think the net effect will be well look actually there are some very exciting developments that have been happening health care costs are the past three or four years have decelerated dramatically and I don't think it's all because the economy has been weak we are moving away from fee-for-service payments we are moving towards a digitized healthcare system the dividing lines between providers and payers are eroding and that's all good so whether there are provisions in the health care bill that will accelerate this that will continue to encourage it but that's where I think the focus should be we need to continue that progress if we don't move away from the fee-for-service system we will not succeed in continuing to slow healthcare cost growth and we will all be better off if we succeed in that effort what do you think Jeff I agree completely with what Peter just said and with Katrina this is a good decision for the American people it brings us to a fairer more normal state and it also creates a basis for getting our health care costs back under control we're moving to more towards the kinds of systems that other countries have which cover everybody and keep the cost down we have a system which is quote most market oriented what do we get for it the worst coverage and the highest prices and the kinds of things that Peter helped to put into this legislation are going to make a difference you have to understand why health care expensive right now it's because of government we've got to give our government out of health care we got to have individuals buying their health insurance the same way they buy auto insurance life insurance fire insurance we don't have problems there all the other countries have more coverage at lower cost and better outcomes as other and more government just because other countries make mistakes doesn't we mean we should emulate the stateís why don't is that their outcomes are better than ours but what you want us to go even farther away I want to go back to the regular way no we haven't we did try to my way along time ago and work great we had a much better health care system that was more accessible before the government stuck its nose in because he's really gone without me back to the health care system of when exactly well before we had Medicare and Medicaid so you would live before we had to do - well did I you would rather live with the health care system in the 1950s than the one that you have access to today I don't want the technology of the 1950's but I want the free-market of the 1950's that would be a vast improvement on what we have today we've got to move on I'm sorry but I want to ask about the economy in general you've been gloomy about the dis recovery from the start and you are unusually for somebody who generally thought of as left-of-center you were critical of the stimulus because you thought it was too much fuelling consumption not enough fueling investment well I thought that it was fueling the deficit but not really providing much of a lift and also not a lift when it was going to count which is the medium term unfortunately the administration used its ammunition in the first couple of years and here we are the fourth year weak economy not going anyplace and feeling a lot of headwinds so I would have rather seen a strategy that built out our infrastructure and that improved training and education skills and many other things over a decade perspective rather than putting everything upfront and I think we're in the situation right now where we don't have ammunition right now and the economy remains weak and the headwinds are not only internal the kind of that comes from this deleveraging process they're not only unfortunately coming from Europe which is the biggest mess in the world but now they're coming from slowdowns in the emerging economies as well so we're seeing kind of synchronization of slowdowns almost everywhere in the world economy is rather dangerous a lot of the recovery such as it has been has been fueled by exports and so those exports slowdown you what strikes me about this election is it's an extraordinarily important election deeply ideologically polarizing at the same time some of the enormous issues of our time aren't fully engaged in it a global economic crisis roiling the planet what's going on in Europe people don't the campaign isn't fully engaging maybe because it doesn't have the leverage but I do think at the heart of it Fareed is that there is a kind of establishment consensus around some form of austerity not growth and unless this country now whether its movements or electeds treat joblessness is the greatest threat to our country not deficits in the short term joblessness will become the new norm in light of the structural economic problems we probably got a three to one here so I have to let Peter get his reversal I disagree that we even have a recovery all we did is borrow more money and spent it I think as a result were in a deeper hole but I think our problems are self-made I think the mess in America is bigger than the mess in Europe we are less capable of paying our debts than Europe we have more debt than they do it's a bigger percentage of our GDP and more importantly when interest rates go up in America there are about seven percent right now in Spain and the world was wondering if Spain can afford it America can't afford seven percent interest rates we're actually less able to pay that than is that then is a Europe or Spain and that's going to happen and you're talking about creating jobs you know we're not going to create jobs by creating government by expanding consumption or deficit spending in order to create jobs we need to get the government out of the way of the economy we need more capital formation we need more savings we need more production which means we need less government we need fewer regulations we need less government spending if we're simply going to expand government we're going to destroy the economy we might get jobs I talked to my main one of the main you gotta take for it is public private investment in infrastructure public private could be opposed to that all right we're gonna have to take a break because we're gonna come back and see if there's any agreement on Europe we can't agree on America we try and see if we can agree on your when we come back and we're back with Jeffrey Sachs Peter Schiff Peter Orszag and Katharina vanden Heuvel if you look at countries that have their own central banks which means that they have the ability to print money none of these countries are having any trouble borrowing that is Britain Sweden Japan the United States Switzerland the are only countries that are having trouble are countries whose debt is effectively denominated in the currency they don't good for now but you know you live by the printing press you die by the printing press the fact that we can print money isn't isn't a panacea that's going to make it worse because eventually our creditors are going to realize that getting paid back in money that has little value is the same thing as not getting paid back at all and I think it would be a mistake before Europe to follow our bad example you know we're going to pay a heavy price for our quantitative easing and our bailouts what Europe needs to do is solve these problems not take the can down the road now Europe actually has the resources to make that mistake I don't think we do you know a lot of people think that we're suffering in America right now because of the problems in Europe actually that's the best thing we got going for us right now because people are so worried about Europe they're buying dollars they're buying Treasuries that's keeping interest rates artificially low that's keeping consumer prices lower than otherwise would be the case but when Europe finally confronts its problems right or wrong you know whether it pushes them down the road and makes them worse or deals with them now the spotlight is going to move to America and we don't have the kind of time that Europe does I mean we have a Federal Reserve we have a central bank to me one of the great political dangers looking out at Europe and what austerity has done even to countries which control their own federal bank like the UK is what a Mitt Romney and a Republican Party determined to slash spending in the face of a weak recovery what that could mean what that could mean for this country it is clear putting aside our differences that one of the grave needs is to put money in the pockets of people consumers how do you do that joblessness may be the best way to a job program to give people jobs maybe the best way to avert any money see money but we shot babies couple this okay the right approach in mine is a barbell one in which we are doing lots of deficit reduction that's not taking effect immediately that's we know we need it right now and also a bunch of infrastructure and other investment upfront to try to spread the economy which I do both there is a basic point which I I think we mostly agree on which is at least looking over a period of several years you have to get your books in order and it raises the most fundamental point and probably a point of pretty big disagreement between us about at what level should we balance the books should it be all spending cuts should it be tax increases so that we can continue to do some kinds of spending I think our biggest problem right now in this country is that the powerful political interest in both parties actually though especially in the Republican Party are so controlling the tax cut side that we've gotten to the corporate income tax we're gutting the personal income tax everything is moving offshore more and more and so the amount that we're collecting at the federal level is near historic low is basically historic lows over the last 60 years now it's about 16% of gross domestic product we can't run a normal civilized country at this rate and if we tried to do that we end up with the poor without any health care people out on the streets kids without an education and that's where the Republican Party would take us the Democrats though while the rhetoric is different they also have powerful interests that are saying don't go very far on that so both parties are basically tax cutting parties and we are bleeding in that way the difference of us is that we agree that the budget should come into balance but I want rich people and hey something for every condition first of all government spending right now is as high as it's been and it's not just the spending I own a business and it cost me more to comply with regulations that I pay in taxes so it's a burden on the economy to pay all these taxes and to comply with all these regulations and the government sucks all the capital out of the economy by running these enormous deficits the government doesn't have any money that it doesn't first take if the government takes money from the private sector and spends it it destroys economic activity it ultimately destroys jobs we don't want jobs we want stuff we need more production more supply not more demand yeah the government can put us all to work but we'll have nothing to show for it how about give them skills how about some infrastructure from government meanwhile it does reduce me it we have public schools we have children that need and that's been and you're talking about the reserve I know now you want to go back financial crisis you want no health care I want the elderly you want no Ilyich schools the market the point that the federal government is broke was all the money comes back to the Supreme Court for a moment and for 36 30 seconds ago we are living at a time of concentration of wealth income and political power we haven't seen since the Gilded Age and the robber barons corporate profits are at an all-time high and FS so I think we need to take a measure of that how do we limit that and that and rebuild a politics for the 99% and we're gonna have to leave it at that Peter Schiff Katrina vanden Heuvel Peter Orszag Jeff

Channel: Peter Schiff

Views: 318,138

Rating: 4.8627968 out of 5

Keywords: CNN (TV Network), Peter, Schiff, news, Ron Paul (U.S. Congressperson), Economic, analysis, gold, money, Federal, Reserve, Supreme, Court, Ruling, Obamacare, ACA, politics, 2012, Election, Europe, Bailout, Crisis, Health, care, Insurance, commentary

Id: WrnGnwuqOA8

Length: 14min 30sec (870 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 03 2012

Reddit Comments

[u/jstock23]

Plato's cave. Sometimes I wish I never left. These people are literally insane... So difficult to watch.