In the Wednesday episode of his Peter Schiff Show, economics and current affairs commentator Peter Schiff focused in on two situations in which he argued United States President Donald Trump has worked to pump up the value of an asset so that holders of it can sell it at a high price, while leaving in a losing position people who acted upon belief in Trump’s pitch.
First up, Schiff discussed the big rise in value of shares of US government-sponsored entities Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac that operate in the real estate sector. That rise came as Trump talked up the entities and the potential for big gains for investors in them if Trump carried through with his plan to privatize them. Since then, their valuations have fallen substantially. Schiff said in the episode that he thinks Trump had acted “to get the price of the stock up so that his friends and his early donors who already owned the stock or who bought more in the week or two after he won the election and they loaded up” could then sell the stocks for a big gain to people seeking to obtain them, based on Trump’s hype, at much increased prices.
Next, Schiff argued that Trump facilitated a similar pump and dump with bitcoin. Trump, related Schiff, “made all kinds of promises and talked big about bitcoin” causing it to reach a new high. This benefited bitcoin-owning funders of Trump’s presidential campaign by providing them with an opportunity to sell at a much increased price. Further, noted Schiff, “he did the same thing with his own meme coins — with Trump coin and Melania coin; he made a fortune hyping that up.” The Trump coin and Melania coin prices since plummeted.
“The people who made money on the Trump trades were the people who front ran them — who were already positioned for what Trump was gonna promote and hype up and they were able to sell into the hype that the president created,” concluded Schiff.
Watch Peter Schiff’s Trump pump and dump discussion here:
