Ron Paul's economic adviser Peter Schiff probably running for Chris Dodd's Senate seat

Learned this one on the Daily Show last night, confirmed by the Wikipedia article. Peter Schiff, Ron Paul's former economic adviser, is leaning towards running for Chris Dodd's Senate seat.

Schiff is probably best known for his prescience about the state of the American housing sector and economy, and for having enabled a cottage industry of Peter Schiff-was-right best-of YouTube videos of him getting laughed at on cable news shows as far back as 2002 for calling out the housing bubble.

Chris Dodd and his eyebrows, on the other hand, have made every possible mistake regarding the financial crisis. He's got a pretty long rap sheet, being fingered by his copiously cited Wikipedia article in multiple different scandals related to Country Wide, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, AIG, and Bear Sterns. Back in 2003 he was among the Congressional Democrats who blocked Bush's proposed reforms of Freddie and Fannie, and in 2007 he blew off his job as chairman of the Senate Banking Committee to pursue a hopeless presidential campaign.

The attack ads just about write themselves. Dodd's been blathering on camera for decades, and there's no shortage of 5-second pithy clips of Schiff being right. Peter Schiff's probably got deep pockets – he is, after all, the investor who got it right – so I expect a fierce campaign from him. I'm not sure that voters are going to look that deeply, but he'll be in a much stronger position if the dollar drops by November 2010, since he's been predicting it for years.

Unfortunately for Schiff, he's not the only one who wants the Republican nomination. He'll be up against Rob Simmons, member of the US House from Connecticut who narrowly lost his seat in 2006, and Sam Galigiuri, a state senator. But if elected, I'm pretty sure Peter Schiff would be the only believer in Austrian economics in the Senate.