Peter Schiff says gold will rise to $5,000. Again. But is he really a gold bug?

For a gold bug, Peter Schiff's not nearly as goofy as one might think.

The founder of Euro Pacific Capital who made The Call as well as anyone (and who recently announced a run for U.S. Senate), was banging on yet again on the intertubes Thursday about gold hitting $5,000 an ounce.

True, Schiff didn't say it was a certainty -- just that it wouldn't surprise him if the yellow metal hits that level in the "next couple of years."

We felt we were pretty even handed last week when we said Schiff was a smart guy with bad timing. He's clearly not dumb. His doom-and-gloom prognosis for the dollar, U.S. equities -- heck, our whole economy -- is shared by sober, thoughtful economists, analysts and fund managers. It's a credible macro call, if even we would dump it in the possible-but-not-probable file.