PETER SCHIFF: We're not headed for a Fed rate hike - we're headed for QE4 instead!
He's certain the Federal Reserve cannot afford to raise interest rates any time soon, and his tirade (sometimes speaking over fellow guests, to audience applause) runs counter to what a lot of analysts and hedge fund professionals have been saying.
"We're not going to get a rate hike in June, we're not gonna get get a rate hike in September," he said during a panel moderated by Steve Forbes. "We're going to get QE4."
Schiff also accused the Federal Reserve of being too coy. Federal Reserve chair Janet Yellen has toggled her wording on various Fed policy matters, but Schiff says that's immaterial. He attributed Federal Reserve monetary policy over the last few years to factors like a sluggish unemployment market, noting that more older Americans than ever before are working.
"There is no recovery; the labor force has collapsed," he said, drawing applause from the audience.
It's a "campaign to try to distract the public and the markets from the predicament they're in," he said. "We'd have a worse crisis than we'd have in 2008."
We'll have more from SALT in Las Vegas throughout the day today...