NEW YORK, NY – Hedge fund manager and financial doomsayer Peter Schiff was arrested Thursday following a stunt that left the New York Stock Exchange trading floor reeling. Schiff and a team of Puerto Rican gold bugs loaded over 60 east-Asian bat carcasses into makeshift catapults and launched them across Broad Street through the exchange’s iconic columned windows. The act appeared to be an attempt to spark a massive fear-fueled sell-off – an event long forecasted by Schiff since 2008.
“I’m in the middle of a normal day, trying to track down $2 million worth of calls on NIO and the next thing I know there are rats with wings busting through the windows,” recalled floor trader Geoffrey Munch, “I’ll tell you this though, he’s going to have to throw a lot more than diseased bats at us to stop this bull run!”
Floor security was alerted to the threat minutes before the attack when Schiff tweeted hints to his more than 300,000 followers “let’s see the Fed print their way out of this one!”
Schiff heads up Euro Pacific Capital and is an avid precious metals advocate. His podcast and YouTube channel argues heavily for investors to purchase gold to hedge against the runaway inflation that Schiff has been predicting since 1987. He gained notoriety in 2008 when his 14th recession prediction paid off and has been claiming that a much larger recession is imminent every year since. His actions Thursday were the first recorded incident of Schiff taking an active role in trying to take down the financial system.
“We are appalled at the actions that took place this morning,” said NYPD Police Chief George Samson, “It boggles the mind that a gold salesman would go to these lengths to bolster the price of a material will little to no utility beyond tacky jewelry.”
Typically, Schiff’s marketing efforts for gold pivoted around his pitch that the U.S. dollar will start rapidly losing value and that holding gold is the only reasonable hedge against this outcome. Those claims were difficult to maintain however once it became clear that Schiff was happily giving away his gold in exchange for U.S. dollars from his fans.
The U.S. gold spot price sank 3% following news of Schiff’s arrest.
