Peter Schiff's Online Star Turn

Money manager Peter Schiff was right about the falling economy. Now he is a rising star on YouTube.

More than a half a million people so far have tuned into a video montage called "Peter Schiff Was Right 2006-2007" on Google's (GOOG) YouTube, turning Schiff, the president of Euro Pacific Capital, into something of a video celebrity. The video traces a series of Schiff's prescient calls on America's economic woes, starting in August 2006, when Schiff told CNBC that the coming recession "is going to be pretty bad ... and it's going to last not just for quarters but for years."

It also shows rosy forecasts, now proven incorrect, by economists and pundits including Ben Stein, Mike Norman and Arthur Laffer.

A week prior to the video's Nov. 2 release, Schiff offered his views on the economy, gold and the tax plans of then Sen. Obama in a TheStreet.comTV video titled, "If Obama Wins, Economy's Doomed."

"They are trying to get Americans borrowing and spending even more money when what we need is the opposite of that," Schiff said in the video. "We have no more savings left and I think the government can turn the next decade into something worse than the depression."

Peter Schiff was on TheStreet.comTV promoting his book The Little Book of Bull Moves in Bear Markets. He originally called the economic collapse in his first book Crash Proof.

In a Nov. 1 video on TheStreet.comTV called, "Beat the Bear With Gold," Schiff predicted the government's response to the crisis would be to "print money" and socialize losses. As evidenced this week by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson's $200 billion plan to bail out student and credit card loans, Schiff is looking prophetic once again.